Fiscal Summit Not Exactly a Hot Ticket By Kevin Spak Posted Feb 24, 2009 10:20 AM CST Copied House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer asks a question of President Obama at the close the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, Feb. 23, 2009, in the Old Executive Office Building at the White House. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) When President Obama announced his fiscal responsibility summit, it sounded like a momentous occasion. Turns out it was so momentous no one bothered to show up, Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post. Administration big-wigs like Paul Volcker and Leon Panetta skipped out on the panels they were supposed to moderate; Nancy Pelosi wandered in late; Harry Reid was MIA. The attendance list even came with excuses helpfully printed beside each name. Maybe, Milbank reasons, it’s because holding a “fiscal responsibility summit” in Washington these days is “a bit like having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a frat house,” or maybe it’s because the event was thrown together at the last minute. Obama didn’t get any decent recommendations (save David Obey’s that the president lock everyone in a room with some gin), but at the end he got some lavish, bipartisan butt-kissing, which is “almost as valuable.” Read These Next 11 people hurt in a "brutal act of violence" in Michigan. White House makes Hegseth put his polygraph away. A new book argues the Sacagawea legend is all wrong. The NFL's heaviest player told to slim down. Report an error