Democrats control the House of Representatives. That majority carries with it a responsibility to govern. That basic responsibility consists, most importantly, of deciding how much and for what the US government will spend its money. Today, the Democrats in the House admitted that they can't do even that basic task. The proposed budget for 2019 spending got pulled from the floor by Speaker Nancy Pelosi because the Dems couldn't agree on what it should contain.
This is really bad stuff. Here's why:
The budget in question is not binding. It is the outline of what the House wants, as of now, to spend during the year. That takes a bit of pressure off of what gets passed. More important, though, there is not yet a Senate budget; the House goes first. That means that we are not yet at the point where the House Dems can blame the Senate Republicans for the House's failure to agree on spending. What this means is that the only ones who need to agree on the budget at this point are the Democrats in the House, and that is exactly what they cannot do.
During the Obama administration, Democrats blocked passage of budgets as a matter of course. They chose, instead, to pass continuing resolutions which simply repeated the prior year's spending with a built in 7% increase. It was easier for them to avoid having to make hard choices and to just let things continue without any change. It was only when the Republicans took control of both houses that the budget procedure was brought back (as it had been since the start of our nation.) Now, about a third of a year after the Democrats regained control of the House, the refusal to even pass a budget is back.
The funny thing for the Democrats is that they can't avoid the budget this year without paying a major price, and maybe many of them are too busy running to denounce the President to bother to understand their predicament. A few years ago, the budget measure called sequestration was ended. Sequestration set a maximum for both domestic and military spending (absent an emergency). In the first year of the Trump administration, the new president wanted to reset the spending priorities of the federal government. The Democrats battled against any changes, but there finally was an agreement. Military spending was hiked, but so was domestic spending (by roughly the same amount). The Democrats insisted at the time, however, that the lifting of the sequestration limits be temporary. As a result, those sequestration limits are set to come back into play later this year. If there is no new budget and passage of spending bills, domestic spending will get cut by roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars. Military spending will also be slashed in a very major way. This means that the Democrats are faced with a choice: they can do nothing and watch federal spending (which is mother's milk to them) get cut by something approaching half a trillion dollars, or they can come together and negotiate a full level of spending measures with the Republicans and the President. In other words, the Dems either have to actually do their jobs (oh the horror!) or they can avoid that and face the blame for extremely massive cuts in government spending.
While it's possible that many of the Democrat members of the House don't realize what they are facing because of the way they, themselves, insisted that sequestration be handled, it is also a sure thing that many in the leadership understand this problem fully. They surely must be telling the other Democrat members what they are facing. Even so, the Democrats, by themselves, still could not agree on the first and, by far easiest step in this process: passing a budget.
After years of watching the Democrats flail around on Capitol Hill unable to do anything since they passed Obamacare nine years ago, I figured that there might be a rocky start for the Dems in their control of the House. To be honest, though, I never expected this level of total disfunction. I guess that if you put a big group of no-nothing leftists together with a leadership of quasi senile old folks who mostly reminisce about the good old days, it is a big recipe for disaster.
This is really bad stuff. Here's why:
The budget in question is not binding. It is the outline of what the House wants, as of now, to spend during the year. That takes a bit of pressure off of what gets passed. More important, though, there is not yet a Senate budget; the House goes first. That means that we are not yet at the point where the House Dems can blame the Senate Republicans for the House's failure to agree on spending. What this means is that the only ones who need to agree on the budget at this point are the Democrats in the House, and that is exactly what they cannot do.
During the Obama administration, Democrats blocked passage of budgets as a matter of course. They chose, instead, to pass continuing resolutions which simply repeated the prior year's spending with a built in 7% increase. It was easier for them to avoid having to make hard choices and to just let things continue without any change. It was only when the Republicans took control of both houses that the budget procedure was brought back (as it had been since the start of our nation.) Now, about a third of a year after the Democrats regained control of the House, the refusal to even pass a budget is back.
The funny thing for the Democrats is that they can't avoid the budget this year without paying a major price, and maybe many of them are too busy running to denounce the President to bother to understand their predicament. A few years ago, the budget measure called sequestration was ended. Sequestration set a maximum for both domestic and military spending (absent an emergency). In the first year of the Trump administration, the new president wanted to reset the spending priorities of the federal government. The Democrats battled against any changes, but there finally was an agreement. Military spending was hiked, but so was domestic spending (by roughly the same amount). The Democrats insisted at the time, however, that the lifting of the sequestration limits be temporary. As a result, those sequestration limits are set to come back into play later this year. If there is no new budget and passage of spending bills, domestic spending will get cut by roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars. Military spending will also be slashed in a very major way. This means that the Democrats are faced with a choice: they can do nothing and watch federal spending (which is mother's milk to them) get cut by something approaching half a trillion dollars, or they can come together and negotiate a full level of spending measures with the Republicans and the President. In other words, the Dems either have to actually do their jobs (oh the horror!) or they can avoid that and face the blame for extremely massive cuts in government spending.
While it's possible that many of the Democrat members of the House don't realize what they are facing because of the way they, themselves, insisted that sequestration be handled, it is also a sure thing that many in the leadership understand this problem fully. They surely must be telling the other Democrat members what they are facing. Even so, the Democrats, by themselves, still could not agree on the first and, by far easiest step in this process: passing a budget.
After years of watching the Democrats flail around on Capitol Hill unable to do anything since they passed Obamacare nine years ago, I figured that there might be a rocky start for the Dems in their control of the House. To be honest, though, I never expected this level of total disfunction. I guess that if you put a big group of no-nothing leftists together with a leadership of quasi senile old folks who mostly reminisce about the good old days, it is a big recipe for disaster.
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