Democrat has finger on the wrong budget On the budget that Democratic leaders have called a Medicare-slashing, Big Oil-subsidizing horror show? Alas, for Republicans who no doubt would have liked to call their plan "bipartisan," the sole Dem vote disappeared from the "yes" column before the vote was gaveled to a close. The final tally was 221 to 207 in favor, with zero Democrats voting for the proposal. We assumed that a Democrat accidentally voted in favor, then realized his or her error and switched it. With all the votes members have to keep straight, and clumsiness when using that vote-card machine (swipe of a card, then hit a red button for no, green for yes and yellow for present), mistakes can happen. Far less likely, we guessed, the "yes" voter had a very rapid change of heart. A spokeswoman for the Democratic whip's office confirmed that the momentary "yes" vote was a result of an error. But she didn't identify which of the chamber's Dems was the vote-flipper. The liberators reflect The 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion reignited the bitter debate over the war. But the quote of the week goes to Richard Perle, who was on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and was a vociferous backer of the war. On Wednesday, Perle had the perfect answer to the inevitable question, posed by NPR's Renee Montagne. But it took four years to develop the right strategy, Wolfowitz said, noting "how different things might have been if the U.S. had been pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy from the outset." The "burst of Shiite power," the article noted, "has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein." Just a week into the war, the Army's senior ground commander in Iraq was saying, "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against." We get around In this age of sequester-induced austerity, many overseas trips for Congress and federal agencies are being grounded. The GAO officials will be checking to see whether embassies there are complying with rules banning assistance to foreign security units that the State Department thinks have committed gross human rights violations, the GAO says. Friends call him Sparky? Our former colleague Bob Levey, who penned the Bob Levey's Washington column, was an enthusiastic collector of PFLNs, or "perfect-fit last names," which he described as "coincidental marriages of name and occupation that sound as if they were made in heaven." So with a hat tip to Levey - as well as our colleague Gene Weingarten, who also has a major thing for aptonyms - we present a name that recently came across our desk on a news release: a spokesman for the International Association of Fire Fighters named Tim Burn. Asked about his oh-so-perfect surname, Burn deadpanned, "I have no idea what you're talking about."