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NPR's David Welna reports on the alternative budget being proposed by congressional Democrats. Objecting to President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut, Democrats on Capitol Hill call for $900 billion in tax cuts, with more relief to those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The action comes as the House Ways and Means Committee took up the Bush proposal.

More than 230 people are dead following Saturday's 7.6 magnitude earthquake in El Salvador. The country is still digging survivors out of a massive mudslide in the suburb of Santa Tecla, but the search is slowly turning into one of recovering bodies. Host Lisa Simeone speaks with reporter Michael Lanchin in El Salvador.

Grace Spruch has a thousand stories about the squirrels she's been inviting into her fifth floor Greenwich Village apartment. She shares some of those stories -- and squirrel time -- with NPR's Margot Adler. (6:00) Squirrels at My Window: Life With a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels, by Grace Marmor Spruch, is published by Johnson Books. ISBN # 1555662579.

The bell at First Congregational Church in Woodbury, Connecticut rings every hour. It's been doing that for 150 years. Now, the town council is considering putting a stop to the bell's ring between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. Residents are complaining the bell is keeping them awake. Noah Adams talks with Mark Heillishorn, pastor of First Congregational.

NPR's David Welna reports from Orange, Texas, where a dozen residents took part in a role-playing exercise as a congressional committee trying to divvy up the federal budget. The group concluded that the $1.6 trillion tax cut proposed by President George Bush wasn't a prudent idea until the national debt is paid off.

According to a new NPR/Ipsos poll, 64% of Americans think that U.S. democracy is in crisis and at risk of failing.

It's been 6 months since a tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean, killing a quarter of a million people in a dozen countries. As NPR's Margot Adler reports, the billions of dollars in aid that have poured into those countries is only beginning to make a dent.

Actress Lauren Ambrose plays daughter Claire Fisher on the HBO drama series Six Feet Under. Also a classically trained opera singer, Ambrose appeared on stage last year in the Sam Shepard play Buried Child at London's National Theatre. (This interview originally aired July 6, 2005.)

India is planning its first museum celebrating the writer Rudyard Kipling. A bungalow in Bombay, where Kipling was born and lived until he was nearly 6, is being restored to house a hoped-for collection of associated memorabilia.

Executive producer and actor Jeff Garlin and actress Susie Essman discuss the hit HBO comedy series. Garlin plays Larry David's affable best friend and agent. Essman plays Garlin's wife — with a no-nonsense attitude and a foul mouth. This interview originally aired on Sept. 6, 2007.