The deal was to be made official at a joint House-Senate conference committee meeting at 3 p.m. ET. Several members of the committee showed up. The cameras were rolling. Staff filled the room. So did reporters.

Then the meeting has been postponed.

The problem: Liberals in the House are objecting to the amount of money in the bill for school construction -- apparently significantly less than either the $79 billion approved by the House or the $39 billion approved by the Senate.

Another problem: some House Democrats say the bill gives states too much discretion on how to use some of the money intended for education.

Some Senate Democrats are unhappy, too. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says there is just not enough money in the bill for school construction.

"Every school in America will get 10,000 bucks if they're lucky," Harkin said, guessing that might be enough to buy two energy-efficient windows.

"And what's that going to do for them?" he asked. "We're trying to add new heating facilities. We're trying to add renovations. And doing it by formula doesn't do it."

Harkin says he'd ultimately vote for it, but he doesn't like the concessions made to get the support of the moderate Republicans.

"I'm just dismayed at the process," Harkin said.  "I think that we on our side caved in too much in order to appease a few people. I just think we should have held strong on some of these things and seen if we could have passed it. If not, then you come back and try to fix it."

All signs suggest that this will be worked out. But right now: impasse.

McCaskill is thrilled, millions of average Americans to suffer.

"I'm just dismayed at the process," Harkin said.  "I think that we on our side caved in too much in order to appease a few people. I just think we should have held strong on some of these things and seen if we could have passed it. If not, then you come back and try to fix it."

He lamented that funding to fight preventable diseases that he had helped shepherd into an earlier version of the bill was being cut in the compromise version.

"5.8 down to a billion, there you go," said a clearly frustrated Harkin.
How would you have gotten it passed, he was asked?

"Let them vote against it. See what the public outcry would be if they stopped this. The public is on our side. They want the money. We gotta get it out there. We gotta get it out there in good measure," Harkin said.

"And yet we didn't really kind of hold the line on it and see where the votes are. Make them filibuster. I think the people are getting shortchanged. We should have a better allocation of this money as it goes out."

That was followed by remarks by the ever-unctuous and always-tanned (even his voice sounds tanned) John Boehner, who was joined by the words-cannot-describe-my-loathing-for Eric Cantor, who whined about how they had been left out of the process, and how they had much better ideas that would have been much more stimulative.  It seems to have escaped Boehner that these are the same old GOP ideas that saw us losing millions and millions of jobs; "stimulative" as it refers to legislation is not supposed to mean Boehner can skip a dose of the little blue pill, but somehow I get the impression that he thinks so.  And all those fake tanning rays have wiped out all memory of the total freeze-out of Democrats implemented by the GOP majority for years.  Boo-hoo, Boehner.

It was as distressing a 20 minutes as I have spent in recent memory and I was sorry I heard it.

My overall impression of both pressers was that none of the people I heard from have even a remote clue what they're doing.  Pelosi should have expended her anger weeks ago, and should have had a large contingent have a little come-to-Jesus meeting with Obama.

Last-minute "hiccup" on school money

The conference committee delay was the result of an ongoing "hiccup" over the size of school construction funding, according to three Democratic aides with knowledge of the situation.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are now meeting in the Speaker's office to hash out the details, according to one staffer who added: "We'll get there."