Monday, October 07, 2013

Whose budget—guest blogger Nancy Junker

The US House and US Senate are suppose to pass a budget bill. The Senate, under Harry Reid, has not done so since Obama took office. Why is this? I can only imagine that it is because with the spending levels they want, and the economy in the tank producing lower tax revenue, it would be sooooo out of balance. The progressives do not want the voters hearing about this.

Bills may be initiated in either chamber, but spending bills originate in the House. We have not had a budget in 5 years, so it is difficult to put any spending bills in perspective. Just rack them up!

Bills that originate in one chamber and are passed go to the other chamber. That chamber either takes it up as is, or creates its own bill on the same subject. When this bill passes, a conference committee consisting of members of both chambers meet to negotiate the differences. A compromise version then goes to both chambers for a vote. Almost every bill that the House has passed in the last 5 years has been dead on arrival at the Senate. They simply do not take it up. Harry Reid demands that the House send him a bill that only contains items that he agrees with. There are no votes on the Senate floor. There are no conference committees to negotiate differences. It is his way or nothing.

This is what is being done with the CR and the Debt Ceiling. The Democrats are not willing to negotiate at all. They know full well that if and when the Republicans cave, there will be no bargaining chips left for them in the budgeting process.

But why have we been funding the federal government with CR’s for the last 5 years anyway? Remember the good ole days when we had appropriation bills for each department of the government? There would always be a scurry near year end to get them all done. Many would end up being combined in the haste. When the Republicans had control, the Democrats would berate them for not getting the business of the government done in a timely fashion. Now the Democratic Senate won’t consider an appropriation bill from the House is it is not in total agreement with it and we don’t have conference committees to negotiate differences, we just pass continuing resolutions to keep spending levels the same with I would assume the automatic percentage increases that are always included in the”baseline” budgeting process. And that baseline has increased enormously over the last 5 years. Remember all the stimulus money that was added?

This is no way to run the government.

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