House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., recently announced that Congress will not pass a budget resolution this year. That hasn’t happened since Congress adopted the landmark Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974, which among much else was supposed to streamline and rationalize the federal budgeting process. The 1974 bill requires an annual budget resolution agreed to by the budget committees of the Senate and the House as an outline of congressional spending priorities for the coming year. But it’s not hard to figure out why there won’t be such a resolution this year: Democrats want voters to know as little as possible before the November elections about their plans to continue spending, taxing and borrowing at historic levels.

There are other ways to ascertain their spending intentions, of course. Earlier this year, for example, Congress increased the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, thus giving the federal government a higher credit limit. The increased limit lets Congress spend and borrow beyond even the current budget deficit, which is now headed for an all-time high of $1.56 trillion. Going further into the red is inconsistent with President Obama’s professed desire to reduce the federal deficit. But when he appointed members of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, he and Congress agreed that the commission’s report would not be due until December — also conveniently after the midterm elections.