The Senate votes to undo one of the string of nasty cuts in the Bush budget:

The Senate voted this afternoon to restore some $14 billion in Medicaid cuts that had been proposed for the next five years, setting up a confrontation between the two houses of Congress over tax and spending policy. The 52-to-48 vote to restore money to Medicaid, a federal-state program for poor people, came on an amendment offered by Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon. His was one of a long string of amendments being deliberated on the $2.6 trillion budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The Senate action came as the House of Representatives was debating its own version of the budget. House Republican leaders, who have been arguing that the explosive growth of Medicaid must be reined in, had warned that passage of the Smith amendment would create a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the chambers. House members were deliberating up to $20 billion in Medicaid cuts this afternoon. Before the Senate vote, Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who heads the Budget Committee, had pleaded to keep the Medicaid cuts. Mr. Gregg said assertions that the cuts would hurt people were "absurd, misleading" and "just scare tactics," according to The Associated Press. But Republicans as well as Democrats have told of being pressured by their home-state governors, who have been struggling to keep up with Medicaid needs. Seven Republicans joined all 44 Democrats and the independent Senator James Jeffords of Vermont today in voting to restore Medicaid money.