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Neanderthal Democrats: Can't make fire, spear,....or budget
Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 6:52 pm
by _bcspace
Tuesday marks the
1,350th day since the Senate passed a budget.
The law requires Congress to pass a budget every year, on the grounds that Americans deserve to know how the government plans to spend the trillions of taxpayer dollars it collects, along with dollars it borrows at the taxpayers' expense. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, who last allowed a budget through the Senate in April 2009,
has ignored the law since then.
There's no mystery why. The budget passed by large Democratic majorities in the first months of the Obama administration
had hugely elevated levels of spending in it. By not passing a new spending plan since, Reid has
in effect made those levels the new budgetary baseline. Congress has kept the government going with continuing resolutions based on the last budget signed into law.
While Reid has forbidden action,
the House has passed budgets as required. Senate Democrats have been highly critical of those budgets, designed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.
But under Reid's leadership, Democrats have steadfastly refused to come up with a plan of their own.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-gop-may-use-debt-ceiling-to-force-harry-reid-to-pass-budget/article/2517837#.UOxppncZ_8R
Re: Neanderthal Democrats: Can't make fire, spear,....or bud
Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:23 pm
by _Analytics
BCSpace finds a misleading editorial and quotes it here. How strange.
The fact of the matter is that President Obama has proposed a budget every year, so it is factually false to claim that Democrats haven’t “come up with a plan of their own.”
Regarding the Senate not passing a budget, Congress’s budgets themselves aren’t laws—even when a single budget passes both the senate and the house. Rather, they are merely “concurrent resolutions” that represent a gentleman’s agreement amongst Congress itself about how it will make appropriations. While Congress hasn’t passed any budgets, they have passed appropriation bills. Per the Constitution, money can’t leave the treasury without being appropriated by Congress. If you’ve noticed, there haven’t been any government shutdowns or threats of shutdowns over the last two years. This is because the Senate and House have continued to pass appropriation bills.
The House Republicans are totally free to only pass appropriation bills that spend precisely what is stipulated by Ryan’s budget. The fact that they pass other appropriation bills isn’t the Senate’s fault.
While the grownup thing to do would be for the Senate to pass a budget, that leads to the grownup thing of the Senate and House negotiate upon a single budget that they both agree on. There is no reason to believe that the current Senate and House could agree upon a budget. That being the case, I don’t blame the Senate for not wasting its time by starting a process doomed to fail.