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With each passing day, the Obama administration looks more and more like it's taking its cues from the Marx Brothers. The budget battle is just the latest example. After signing a pork-laden economic stimulus package that the administration claimed didn't have any earmarks, it's now pushing an omnibus spending bill with 8,750 of them. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

The president barred earmarks from last month’s $787 billion stimulus package, but advisers say the fiscal year 2009 omnibus bill, including earmarks, is old business.

“This is last year’s business. We just want to move on. Let’s get this bill done, get it into law and move forward,” said Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

This recalls the cabinet meeting lead by Freedonia's President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) in Duck Soup:

PRESIDENT FIREFLY: Members of the cabinet, we'll take up old business.

CABINET MEMBER: I wish to discuss the tariff.

PRESIDENT FIREFLY: Sit down, that's new business.

(Nobody else speaks up)

PRESIDENT FIREFLY: No old business? Very well, we'll take up new business.

CABINET MEMBER: About that tariff…

PRESIDENT FIREFLY: Too late! That's old business already!