Posted on 01/08/2013 5:09:57 AM PST by upchuck
Tuesday marks the 1,350th day since the Senate passed a budget. ... Americans deserve to know how the government plans to spend the trillions of taxpayer dollars it collects, along with dollars it borrows at the taxpayers' expense. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, who last allowed a budget through the Senate in April 2009, has ignored the law since then.
There's no mystery why. The budget passed by large Democratic majorities in the first months of the Obama administration had hugely elevated levels of spending in it. By not passing a new spending plan since, Reid has in effect made those levels the new budgetary baseline. Congress has kept the government going with continuing resolutions based on the last budget signed into law.
... the House has passed budgets as required. Senate Democrats have been highly critical of those budgets, designed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. But under Reid's leadership, Democrats have steadfastly refused to come up with a plan of their own.
The situation is deeply frustrating for many Republicans. Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has conducted a virtual crusade on the issue, loudly and consistently and unsuccessfully demanding that Reid obey the law and pass a budget. Now, with a fight over the debt ceiling approaching, Sessions wants to try something new.
"I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent," Sessions told me Monday in a phone conversation from his home in Alabama. "If the government wants to borrow money so it can spend more, then the government ought to tell the Congress and the American people how they will spend it."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Wouldn’t it be great to have a tough GOP? Just a thought.
It’s not a plan unless they are willing to let the government shut down to get what they want. Are they?
Close, Mr. Sessions.
Is the debt limit a more effective weapon to use than just refusing to pass the CRs that O demands?
With the CR if Reid rejects the House CR the government shuts down, obviously O blames Rs and finger pointing .game plays out
With the debt limit its unclear how it plays out. Treasury decides what to fund?
I have heard it suggested that he could cut off funding to industries in Red states like inspections of poultry, shutting those down.
Someone needs to ask Byron York if he’s Serious.I see nothing that the cowardly Republican’s are going to do to force Harry Ried into doing anything.
This has not been their history as of the last two year with John Boener leading the House.So I’d say its very unlikely.Not that I wouldn’t like to see Ried and the demrat s eat crow.I would and I’d enjoy it.
Especially since O demands Debt limit extensions well into the future.
I propsed an idea like this. Connect the debt limit with the actual spending bills.
I think budgets (spending) can be passed with 51 Senate votes so Os excuse on that doesnt not hold water.
The GOP will “force” the Republican Party to accede to whatever it is that Reid and the kenyan desire after a respectable period of whining. The Republicans are in a “please eat us last” scenario.
Yeah, because that constitutional requirement thingy hasn't compelled the vile POS to pass a budget in the last four years, has it Byron? Gee, I wonder if you and the rest of the communist-loving POS scumbags in the MSM would let Republicans get away with forgoing their responsibility to pass an annual budget? /s
Being extremely generous, Pubbies could be given a pass for allowing this to happen once. We’re coming up on the 4th attempt ! It is absurd to consider anything else but shutting down unless the Senate meets their legal obligations.
Sounds like what Boehner et al. should have done long ago.
Never let a crisis go to waste is their MO. Plain to see for anyone who bothers to look.
Obeyme purposely flirts with sedition, knowing he can get away with almost anything. His intent to destroy/weaken the nation is could be provable, and impeachable, imho.
Agreed, it would be great to see but hearing more than talk. 1st step would be going thru a markup on Sandy relief instead of accepting Harry Reid’s bill.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Stop talking and ACT. Do something. With the GOP, they are always going to take a stand and win the next battle after the Dems roll over them time and time again.
The GOP couldn’t even force a fart... Are you kidding me? Impotent, bloated GOP... Evidence? Boehner is still the captain of the stinking ship.
“...may...?
Harry Reid has no reason or motivation whatsoever to give ANYTHING to the GOP. Heck, the GOP has no reason to do anything conservative.
The first term was just practice, but now that we're serious in the second term, we're going to spend, spend, spend!!! We're going to borrow, borrow, borrow and print, print, print mo' money!
How's that for a budget? We're so good at budgeting, we're budgeting our great grandkids' money so they won't have any to worry about! Who's the greatest generation now?
Right now they are all on TV using the ‘tell the GOP not to default on our debt’ lines to get as much milage out of that as they can.
Technically they have a partial point, the House while they sometimes feel its at gunpoint, passes tax and spending bills that creates or at least adds to the deficit, but they also inherit tax and spending bills from past congresses which they cannot repeal by themselves that also adds to the deficit.
In the end like the other fights this will like the others end based on which side most voters support, even if that is not a reality many here wont accept,
Has Harry Reid ever been asked why he has never submitted a budget?
It seems like someone in the press would
ask Reid or Obama.
Boner will cave once again, that’s what he does.
“May”? “MAY”? They damn well BETTER.If its unconstitutional, why haven’t they filed charges??? This is just NUTS that it goes unaddressed.
Oh please, Byron. Republicans will do NOTHING which requires any semblance of courage or tenacity. They would MUCH prefer to knuckle under. That way the media will attack them in a “friendlier,” less destructive way!
“Out of sight, out of mind!” It’s the new motto of the GOP!
HA!
That should be easy enough to do and for the public to understand. The money will be spent to pay off the campaign contributors and other in kind supporters.
They passed 33 various repeal O care bills in the House last session but it didnt actually repeal it nor did it win the election for Rs. I think the Senate and WH have to go along with any bills to get into law.
The way to really repeal O care or already passed O care spending would have been to win the 2012 election, I listen to Levin from time to time (like a few minutes last night) and I think he completely misses what O knows and uses, this is a continuing battle to win over voters, in his case in swing states(and get them to vote obviously).
Given that they completely blew the election the other way to win is to get voters to be more mad at O than they are mad at Rs. Turn public opinion so much against O that most polls show that Rs are trusted more on issues than trusting him (as they were in 2010) and o will cave,.
forget it. We’ll get rolled again by the use of the media by the Dems about the Reps crazy enough to stop the government and ruin the credit of the country.
This is beginning to sound like “Groundhog Day”
The Reps have to learn to fight on new ground. The continuing resolution is one weapon. Another is sequester.
No, they could have, on multiple occasions, ZERO’d out those area of the budget, passed it, handed it to the Senate and then stood firm on fiscal cliff/ceiling debate and said “When the budget we passed 3+ years ago is law, we will then continue onto the next hurdle.”
Hell, they could have 0-baselined (HA, like that’ll ever happen) or even used the last valid budget #’s. Nope, they went along w/ the party, turned up their hands and mimed ‘what are going to do?!’.
They had ALL the power, Boehner and pals bent over and waived the white flag.
About as much chance as me being tall dark and handsome?
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