Three years ago today, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a budget. It has not done so since. A lot has happened since then. On April 29, 2009, Sarah Palin was still governor of Alaska. Chris Christie was a long-shot candidate for governor of New Jersey. Charlie Sheen was just another famous actor. Quarterback Andrew Luck, the first pick in this week’s NFL draft, had yet to play in a single college football game.

Never before has the Senate gone three years in a row without passing a budget. Since 1974, when Congress adopted the modern budget process, there have been several years when House and Senate negotiators did not agree on an identical budget that passed both houses. But according to the Congressional Research Service, there was only one year prior to the Obama era when the Senate did not pass any budget — that was 2002, when the majority Democratic Senate did not approve a budget for fiscal 2003.