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President Obama will offer his FY 2013 budget tomorrow. Already, leaks indicate that it will call for more spending, higher taxes, and a $1.3 trillion deficit for the current year. We have now gone for three years without having a federal budget, because the Democratic Senate refuses to pass one. Obama’s proposed budget is more or less irrelevant, as Harry Reid won’t bring it to the floor of the Senate. Mitch McConnell says he will, and if he does, it likely will be voted down 97-0, like Obama’s last proposed budget, or something similar.
The Democrats can’t defend their fiscal fecklessness. Harry Reid says that he has no intention of passing a budget this year. After three years without a federal budget, in violation of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Democrats are desperate to rationalize their irresponsible conduct. This morning on two news shows, State of the Union and Meet the Press, Obama’s Chief of Staff Jack Lew lied–I use the word advisedly–by trying to blame the Senate’s three-year failure to pass a budget on Republican filibusters:
CROWLEY: I want to read for our viewers something that Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, who said, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done, we don’t need to do it.”
LEW: He’s not saying that they shouldn’t pass a budget. But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.
It is inconceivable that Obama’s former Director of the Office of Management and Budget does not know that by law, a budget resolution cannot be filibustered. It passes the Senate with 51 votes:
The budget resolution is a “concurrent” congressional resolution, not an ordinary bill, and therefore does not go to the President for his signature or veto. It also requires only a majority vote to pass, and its consideration is one of the few actions that cannot be filibustered in the Senate.
The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their irresponsibility on the federal budget. The fact that they are reduced to lying to the American people shows how indefensible their conduct has become.
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