President Obama has “no opinion” on whether the Democrat-controlled Senate should pass a budget for the first time in three years, his spokesman indicated today.
“I don’t have an opinion to express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this issue,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said when asked if the Senate “should pass a budget,” during today’s press briefing. “I have no opinion; the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business,” he added, when pressed.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday that the lack of a budget creates “uncertainty” which is “negative for growth.”
Carney argued that the budget has effectively been set. “The fact is, because of the negotiations over the debt ceiling that resulted in the Budget Control Act, we have an unusual situation here in that the top lines for the budget going forward have already been set and agreed to by Republicans and Democrats alike,” he told reporters.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made an analagous argument when she said that the 2009 stimulus was the equivalent of a budget. “The House passed the Recovery package, which was a form of budget,” she told Jon Stewart in November.
