"You’d think from the increasingly testy debt-ceiling talks at the White House that budget negotiations have to be unpleasant or tedious affairs. Maybe that’s not necessarily so.

There had been talk that President Obama was looking to change the negotiation venue to Camp David — on Catoctin Mountain, 60 miles from Washington — in order to at least clear the air, literally, and get folks focused in a happier state of mind more conducive to reaching a deal.

That move is not in the works. But maybe it is in that spirit that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal/Interior Budget Council is holding its quarterly budget meeting the first week of August in beautiful Bar Harbor, Maine, at the Bar Harbor Regency, which is conveniently located right on the water and near the entrance to Acadia National Park.

Unfortunately, the 50 rooms the BIA had booked at the waterfront hotel at the cheapo $219 rate — far higher than the allowed per diem, but we hear there was a special dispensation — are long gone. (Maine gets to be a bit pricey this time of year.)"

Get the Story:
In The Loop: A cool, if pricey, place for a budget meeting (The Washington Post 7/14)