Jack Lew Lies And He Knows It

This morning on Meet The Press, the new White House Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, was asked by David Gregory about the failure of the Congress to pass a budget for over three years. Lew's response was quick: it is the fault of the Republicans in the House and their extreme demands. Since this was NBC, Lew was not challenged on his assertion. David Gregory just poointed out that the Democrats control the Senate and let Lew again blame the House Republicans for the failure to pass a budget. Unbelievable!

Here are the actual facts:

1) By law, Congress is required to pass a budget every year.
2) The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by lopsided majorities in 2010, but they did not even vote on a budget since they did not want to take a public stand on spending in an election year. At the time, HOuse Republicans could not have stopped anything no matter how hard they tried.
3) Last year, the new Republican majority in the House passed a budget by February. This got sent to the Senate for consideration.
4) Last year, the Senate only voted on the budget proposal sent to it by the president. Obama's budget was rejected 97 to 0. That's right, every Democrat in the Senate voted against the budget proposed by Obama.
5) Last year, Harry Reid, the Democrat who is senate Majority Leader would not allow any other budget votes to be taken in the Senate. There were no problems getting 50 or 60 votes for any budget measure, since none were even considered.
6) Last year, nothing that the House Republicans put in their budget resolution caused any problems in the Senate since the Senate did not even bother to consider the House resolution.

So what you have is the facts. Lew knows that the Democrats in the Senate blocked all attempts to consider a budget. Lew knows that nothing that was done by the House made any difference. Lew knows that in 2010, the House Republicans could not have blocked passage of a budget no matter what they did. But Lew has to continue to tell the big lie.

UPDATE: We need to add yet another lie told by Lew. He made the point that the senate could not pass a budget since the Republicans could filibuster it. Lew said 60 votes were needed. This is not true. Any budget vote in the senate needs only 50 votes and cannot be filibustered. Lew who was Budget Director before being Chief of Staff surely knows this. Nevertheless, in order to follow the talking points from the campaign, Lew spewed the Obama lie. He should be ashamed of himself rather than pleased.