President Obama has made it pretty clear he is going to run for re-election against the obstructionist Republicans in Congress. Or maybe even, the obstructionist Republican Congress. Of course, that last phrasing is a bit of a problem since the Democrats control the Senate. (Harry Reid is, after all {and unfortunately}, the Majority Leader.) But I don’t think it will interfere with the President’s campaign rhetoric.
What makes it interesting is that it is Harry Reid who has said the Senate will not be passing a budget this year. Senator Reid claims that passing a budget resolution is not necessary because the debt-limit increase passed last August did the job:
“[Senator] Reid and [Senator Charles] Schumer [D-NY] said the outline already exists and an overall spending level is agreed to for the fiscal 2013 bills. The [Senate Appropriations] committee will divide up $1.047 trillion in discretionary spending, with roughly half headed for the Defense Department.”
However, a real budget resolution is supposed to do a lot more than just set an overall spending limit on discretionary spending:
“A budget resolution is a broad budget framework that sets priorities for spending and taxes. It guides how much will be spent and where spending should be allocated among government programs such as national defense, transportation, welfare, Medicare, and so on. … It charts the budget course in a rational, coherent way for all the spending and tax bills that follow.
The BCA [Budget Control Act]* was never more than a poor substitute for a budget resolution – a rushed, eleventh-hour ‘solution’ to a manufactured debt ceiling crisis. Its cap on discretionary budget authority affects only about one-third of total spending, and it is riddled with deliberate loopholes that make the limit all but meaningless. Apart from that, the BCA contained a requirement for a ‘super committee’ to identify at least $1.2 trillion for additional deficit reduction. That process has failed, triggering a crude enforcement procedure that now threatens devastating cuts in defense spending and must be rewritten.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said that passing a budget resolution is important for the economy and that not having a budget is bad for growth. But Senator Reid disagrees; he doesn’t think a budget is necessary; it’s already been done. Of course, the real reason Senator Reid doesn’t want to pass a budget has nothing to do with whether the Budget Control Act is a sufficient substitute for a formal budget resolution or whether Chairman Bernanke thinks it a budget would be good for the economy. It’s because Senator Reid doesn’t want to force Democratic senators who are up for re-election to cast tough votes that might hurt their chances in November. In other words, it has nothing to do with what’s good for the country and everything to do with what’s good for re-electing Democrats.
And the President, at least based on what his press secretary has said, agrees with Senator Reid:
“I have no opinion — the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business.”
Now this is a President who has an opinion on all kinds of things. He fills out an NCAA bracket every March, he lectured the United States Supreme Court on how it should decide its cases on nationwide TV during a State of the Union address, and he will be campaigning this fall on all of the problems caused by the do-nothing Republicans in the Congress. But when it comes to whether the Democratic Senate should pass a budget resolution, something that Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke says would be a good thing for the economy, he doesn’t have an opinion.
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* The Budget Control Act was the official name of the bill passed in August of last year to raise the national debt ceiling.
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