Budget? We Don’t Need No Stinking Budget
It’s been 1,000-plus days since the Democrat-controlled Senate last passed a budget, which it’s legally mandated to do … every year. It’s been, um, nearly three – and still no budget.
Don’t expect one anytime soon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already publicly and proudly flipped off the notion of following the law and producing a budget. And The One is in no hurry to push the issue. The White House’s official opinion on the matter is that they have no opinion.
Marvel at the exchange from earlier this week between ABC’s Jake Tapper and Oval Office spin-flunky Jay Carney:
TAPPER: President Obama is going to be introducing his outline for a budget. Fed Chair Bernanke has said the lack of a budget having been passed by the Senate has had an adverse affect on growth because it’s created uncertainty. Harry Reid has said that he doesn’t think there’s a need to introduce a budget this year. Who do you — who does the president think is right, Harry Reid or Ben Bernanke?
CARNEY: Well, I think the president, as you noted, will be presenting his budget. That budget, it’s important to remember – and you all covered it — has spending caps set based on the Budget Control Act that was signed into law by this president last August. That spending — those spending — that spending — those spending levels represent significant cuts agreed to by Democrats and Republicans and by this president.
And his budget will reflect the need for that — will reflect those cuts, but also reflect the priorities that he thinks are very important, and, I think, the priorities that — to wrap in part of your question here — that Senator Reid believes are important as well, as do many members of the Senate and the House.
TAPPER: So therefore, the Senate should pass a budget as well.
CARNEY: I don’t have a –
TAPPER: I’m asking.
CARNEY: Well, I don’t have an opinion to express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this issue. 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.
TAPPER: So the — I’m not actually asking your opinion, but the White House’s opinion, because it’s the White House’s –
CARNEY: Well, I mean, I don’t have a –
TAPPER: The White House has no opinion about whether or not the Senate should pass a budget? The president’s going to introduce one. The Fed chair says not having one is bad for growth. But the White House has no opinion about whether –
CARNEY: I have no opinion — the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business…
I get that Carney’s just doing his job, but he could at least offer a more persuasive dodge than the flat-bogus assertion that amorphous spending caps with no specifics, hacked out behind closed doors as part of a political theater debt deal, comes anywhere close to producing an actual budget.
The truth of the matter is it’s politically inconvenient for Democrats to offer specifics on spending priorities, entitlement reform, debt or tax policy, and they’re not about to let something as trifling as following their legally mandated responsibility force a play.
They’ve been getting away with it for going on three years; why change now.
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