The Budget Process
A lot of fingers are being pointed in both parties right now over the budget impasse in the Congress. It's only natural. But it would be nice if both parties admitted they are part of the problem.
Yes, all of this battling right now is being done on a budget that should have been finished last year - but Democrats simply avoided that basic task of governing and punted the entire budget into 2011, when Republicans were due to take over the House.
The Senate never even debated a regular spending bill in 2010, though Democrats did try to jam through a last minute Omnibus Budget bill that was unveiled in late December - remember that one? Chock full of home state earmarks from both parties?
It didn't work, and so, the entire budget was laid over into 2011 as Republicans in the Congress have been noting on an almost hourly basis in recent weeks.
Unfortunately, just four years ago, we had the exact opposite. It was Republicans who were scared to death before the 2006 elections, as they approved only the Defense and Homeland Security budgets before Democrats took back the Congress in the November elections.
And instead of finishing the budget in late 2006, it was punted into 2007, leaving Democrats to finish the job.
In other words, neither party has clean hands when it comes to getting their work done.
In 2008, Democrats also booted work on all of the spending bills into the next year, as the Senate did not approve one appropriations bill that election year.
Just sit back for a minute and consider the record of Congress in recent election years:
- In 2010, not one regular budget bill was approved by Congress and not a single one was debated in the Senate
- In 2008, not one regular budget bill was approved by Congress and not a single one was debated in the Senate
- In 2006, only two regular budget bills were approved by Congress
- In 2004, four of the 12 regular budget bills were approved by Congress; the rest were jammed into a big Omnibus before Christmas
- In 2002, two of the regular budget bills were approved by Congress; the rest were jammed into a big Omnibus the next February You have to go back to 2000 to find an election year when over half of the spending bills in Congress were approved in a timely fashion. Both parties have run the show during this time. Both parties have not run the Congressional Railroad on time. So it should not shock anyone that we stand on the edge of a government shutdown today.
