Wednesday, March 02, 2011

How The Democrats Could Have Avoided Caving In To The Republicans And Their Wild Attacks On The Poor

They could have passed a budget on time (or at all) last year.

There is no FY2011 budget for the United States, thanks to a deliberate dereliction of duty by the Pelosi / Reid legislature. All of the talk of a government shutdown that is going on now would have been avoided, had they executed their primary job - passing an annual budget. Now they're "caving in" to Republicans.
Senate Democrats conceded Tuesday that House Republicans won round one of the budget fight, but they are vowing a bigger battle later this month ...

(L)iberals worry that Democratic leaders will roll over and accept another deal on Republican terms in an attempt to bolster the reelection chances of vulnerable incumbents in red states.

They fear a reprise of last December when Obama and Republican leaders agreed to a tax-cut deal that was widely panned by the left.

By and large, GOP leaders want to keep negotiating short-term deals as part of a strategy to put pressure on Democrats and win concessions such as they did this week.
If they'd just passed a budget, they wouldn't be fighting to protect their favorite programs' funding in continuing resolutions now. Pathetic.

6 comments:

tim eisele said...

One thing I've noticed that both liberals and conservatives agree on, is that the Democratic politicians are mostly a bunch of invertebrates. The only difference is that the liberals are upset by this, while the conservatives are gleeful about it.

K T Cat said...

I used to think that, too, but the passage of Obamacare was such a monstrous takeover of a huge swath of the economy that it gave lie to the claim that they were cowards. Given the chance, they did something large and bold.

Instead, it seems that they are simply naive and childish. Their actions are predicated on wishful thinking and a basic failure to understand how the world really works. Giving everyone free health care is fun and good. Passing a budget is a lot of icky, hard work.

Jeff Burton said...

Isn't this amazing? The dems are terrified that the 'pubs will be able to cut 5% of this year's deficit, not the budget as a whole. Your previous post on crisis not registering is so right on.

K T Cat said...

Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, I noticed that they're all screaming about reductions from the enormously inflated baseline from the Obama/Pelosi/Reid budget of FY2010. My real point here is that the Dems could have avoided this whole problem had they just done their freakin' job.

Jeff Burton said...

Your point is a good one. Seems like neither side has the courage to take us off auto-pilot. 'Pubs won't cut enough and Dems won't raise taxes.

K T Cat said...

Peggy Noonan had a column earlier this week that said just that. It's like people have been screaming "Debt crisis!" for so long that the politicians don't believe it's real.