Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to pass a federal budget for three consecutive years or even bring a proposal to the floor as required by law.
In 2011, Reid announced that passing a budget would be “foolish” because of ongoing negotiations over other fiscal matters. Sen. Chuck Schumer declared that proposing budgets was “not the point” of the Senate.
Later in 2011, Nancy Pelosi claimed that when Democrats controlled the House in 2010, they didn’t pass a budget because Republicans would have filibustered it. Yet budgets require only a simple majority to pass.
Earlier this year Reid announced, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it.”
He was referring to the Budget Control Act of 2011, which raised the debt ceiling, established the failed Supercommittee, and set the country up for the fiscal cliff.
Reid’s other excuse for not passing a budget in 2012 was that there was an election in November.
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Now Sen. Patty Murray, who seeks to chair the Senate Budget Committee, hints that the Democratic Senate won’t pass a budget in 2013, either.
Thanks to Democratic intransigence, Congress isn’t even required to pass a balanced budget, just a budget. Is that so hard?
Meanwhile, Democrats’ inaction is forcing the country to white-knuckle it via an endless series of herky-jerky, over-before-the-ink-is-dry continuing resolutions and stopgap measures every couple of months.
The fiscal cliff has two parts: (1) Congress’s failure to address deficit reduction during last year’s debt ceiling showdown will trigger unpalatable, across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next ten years; and (2) the current wrangling over extending the Bush tax cuts past 2012.
The debt ceiling debacle was demonstrably the result of Democrats’ failure to pass a budget.
The Bush tax cuts are also Democrats’ fault, because a 2013 budget would have specified whether the cuts were to continue.
Democrats’ M.O. for prevailing on financial matters these days seems to be: irresponsibly and historically refuse to pass a budget for years; dismiss the very requirement as antiquated; lead us to an economy-rattling, bond-rating-threatening fiscal crisis; then scream that Republicans are kamikaze pilots who want to take the nation down with them.
Republicans plan long-term; Democrats thrive in crisis-filled environments, like the 2008 financial collapse, that let them charge in and claim we need more government.
Democrats traffic in panic; it’s their preferred currency. Getting everyone agitated at the eleventh hour gives them cover to toss out crazy ideas — like eliminating mortgage interest deductions — before the public can debate them.
When things move too quickly for people to pay attention, there’s room for cowardly Republicans like Sens. Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss to slip up and later justify themselves by whining to constituents, “I had to do it.”
And Democrats know this.
Democrats not only pushed the country to the edge of the fiscal cliff, they invented the fiscal cliff.
