"Consideration of a major spending bill to increase funds for student aid and biomedical research was delayed indefinitely today because of partisan fighting in the U.S. House of Representatives on an unrelated issue," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "The House Committee on Appropriations had been poised to approve the bill, for the 2009 fiscal year, when Republicans offered a motion to strip out all of the bill's language and replace it with unrelated provisions, including one authorizing an expansion of oil drilling in the United States. The Republicans have been pushing that proposal as part of their argument, which has strong political resonance in this election year, that Congress's Democratic leadership has not done enough to bring down soaring gasoline prices."