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Beltway Confidential

On budget, Dems choose politics over rule of law

By Conn Carroll
Published February 15, 2012 5:00am ET
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On budget, Dems choose politics over rule of law
Yesterday, Talking Points Memo Brian Beutler regurgitated some excuses for the fact that Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget since  Obamacare became law. He is honest enough to admit that: it’s true that a big part of the reason for the delay is that vulnerable Democrats don’t want to associate themselves with a tax-and-spending plan […]

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo Brian Beutler regurgitated some excuses for the fact that Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget since  Obamacare became law. He is honest enough to admit that:

it’s true that a big part of the reason for the delay is that vulnerable Democrats don’t want to associate themselves with a tax-and-spending plan that will, by necessity, envisage high deficits, some tax increases, and unpopular spending cuts, for years to come. Republicans marched fearlessly into a similar buzz saw last year, and look where it got ‘em.

But Beutler then goes on to his excuses. First:

Budget resolutions don’t have the force of law, and they aren’t the legislative tool that mandates what the government can and can not spend. That’s what appropriations bills are for, and for the last 1000 days Democrats and Republicans have worked together, however acrimoniously, to devise spending plans for the government.

A big part of the reason why the final appropriations bills have been so “acrimonious” over the last 1000 days is because the Democrats have failed to produce a budget. If you don’t have an agreed on spending plan, making the actual spending decisions is much harder. All of the government shutdowns over the past two years are directly related to the Democrats failure to pass a budget. Beutler continues:

the much more important fact Republicans have left out is that the Senate passed a budget on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis last summer — one that unlike an annual “budget resolution” has the force of law behind it. The Budget Control Act — the law that resolved the debt limit fight — set binding appropriations caps for this fiscal year and the next and instituted a mechanism to contain spending on domestic discretionary programs — education, research, community health programs and the like — through the next decade.

But here’s the thing: last year’s Budget Control Act does not trump the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which created the modern budget making process. This law requires Congress to pass a budget every year. Nothing in last year’s Budget Control Act exempted Senate Democrats from that requirement this year, next year, or any year.

Bottom line: Senate Democrats are flagrantly ignoring federal law solely for, as Beutler admits, their own narrow political gain. And every government shutdown drama we must go through is a direct result of that failure.

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