Would an actual budget have solved this?

zork

zork

2,500+ Posts
Maybe not.
This whole continuing of the continuing resolutions is very risky behavior in my opinion but could it have been majorly averted with a budget? It would force both sides to govern though so that will likely never happen again anyway. So we have evolved to a federal budget process for better or worse that happens on a whim, not a schedule.

Maybe this continuing resolution thing is just evolving to even more risky behavior as we start to only fund essential programs and/or the essential employees even in the needed programs. Or maybe it should evolve that way whether it is intended to or not?

Let us learn from this shut down and cut off or significantly reduce the hours of the non-essential workers. That is what happens in the private sector all the time. A great start would be to reduce all non-essential federal workers down to 28 hours a week.(removing their full time benefits of course)

When 17.5 Trillion dollars in federal debt turns into 25 Trillion in a few years maybe they will take it seriously?

Let this current situation evolve into a major cost cutting situation. The proof is we are doing fine for the most part and could easily cut an actual 5-10 percent off the top over the next year if the House does it right. Maybe talk of that would bring the Dems to the table at least?

Who needs a yearly budget anyway.
 
The dems have avoided putting a budget on paper like the plague. They do not want citizens seeing what kind of crap is eating our tax money.
 
The Senate passed a 2014 budget in March. That you guys do not know this does not surprise me one bit.
 
What was the vote on it Paso? Do you have a link to that, I'd like to read the context of it. Was it a vote on a marked up House version where budgets typically originate? Likely it was DOA.
 
An actual budget would have avoided a shutdown, but we're too screwed with political bad faith to do that. The President is supposed to propose a budget, which he did (albeit a few months late). The House is supposed to pass a budget. It did. The Senate is supposed to pass a budget. It did. Both houses are supposed to pass appropriations bills to actually implement the budget on a department-by-department basis. They blew it.

What should have happened is the House and Senate should have gone to conference and worked out a compromise budget. The Senate invited the House to conference, and it refused. Why? I think there are two reasons for it.

First, the Senate bill had tax increases in it (and of course, it spent money like drunken sailors, which you'd expect from a bra-burning Bolshevik like Patty Murray). Any compromise budget would have at least some tax increases in it, albeit at reduced levels from the Senate plan. After agreeing to a tax increase earlier in the year, no GOP member was going to be safe from a primary challenge if he voted to agree to another tax increase.

Second, as much as conservatives bellyached about the tax hike enacted earlier this year, the GOP totally hustled the White House and the Democrats in Congress on the fiscal cliff. Why? Because they got 90 percent of the tax cuts extended even though they had just gotten their asses kicked in the 2012 elections, and of course, the Democrats expected the GOP to bend on the spending side in return for making most of the Bush tax cuts permanent and to avoid the defense cuts. They didn't. They took whatever they could get on the tax cuts and then just blew off the spending side. It really was brilliant legislative maneuvering and strategy, and the Democrats ****** up by allowing the spending side of sequestration to be delayed and therefore de-linking it from the tax side.

So in light of that, why would the GOP go to conference on the budget? They could only go down at that point. So instead, they decided to wait, roll the unpopular Obamacare into an already contentious budget situation, and use the leverage they had.

Personally, I think the whole game is a crock. The House should have gone to conference months ago on the budget, and the Senate should be going to conference now on the CR.

Of course, one way to fix this problem - get rid of mandatory spending. First, it's unconstitutional. No money is supposed to be spent, except by appropriation. Second, if you didn't have mandatory spending, it would be a MUCH bigger political gamble to have a shutdown, because Social Security and Medicare benefits would be suspended. That means old people would get pissed off, and when they get pissed off politicians fold like a cheap lawn chair, which means deals get cut.
 
A passable budget requires negotiation and compromise. Your spouting serious drivel if you think divisive politics are new to the last 5 years. We have a serious failure of the administration to bring both parties together for almost anything. He (Obama) is actually making it worse. Nobody is an innocent soul in this mess but I thought it was the job of the president to act as a leader.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Weekly Prediction Contest

* Predict HORNS-AGGIES *
Sat, Nov 30 • 6:30 PM on ABC

Recent Threads

Prediction Results Threads

2024 Schedules

Back
Top