…or
not.
The
deadline has come and gone and we’re still here. The President and
the Senate has done everything it could to make sure it would happen,
claims by them and the media to the contrary.
One
fact lost in the Democrat-inspired and media-fueled confusion: The
vote is not about passing a budget. It is about passing yet another
in a long line of continuing resolutions to keep government funded.
There has been no budget passed by Congress, or at least by both
chambers of Congress, since April 2009 (and that one was a holdover
from the Bush Administration). With one exception, Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid has been the architect of Congress’ failure to do
so. (That one exception was when both the House and Senate
unanimously
voted down the only budget Obama has submitted because it was so
overblown, incomprehensible, and deficit-ridden.)
Every
budget passed by the House since late-2009 has been stonewalled by
Harry Reid. The Senate has not been allowed to vote on any of the
budgets passed by the House, even those passed by a Democrat majority
House, because Harry Reid would not bring them to the floor for a
vote. For Reid to now start pointing his finger at House Republicans
for this crisis is an act of hypocrisy that must have Tip O’Neill
spinning in his grave. (Yes, I know O’Neill was Speaker of the
House, but it still applies.)
Both
Congressional Democrats and the President keep insisting the House
must compromise, meaning they want the Republicans to capitulate and
vote for what the President demands. (As I have stated before,
Obama’s definition of compromise is “You Republicans should sit
down, shut up, and vote the way I tell you to vote!”) It has become
apparent that he is incapable of compromising, incapable of
negotiating anything even when it would benefit him and the country
to do so.
What
I find even more hypocritical is Reid’s rejection of the repeal of
the Medical Device Tax as a condition for the House passing the
continuing resolution, something Democrats in both the House and
Senate have said they want as well. Why not now? I can see a couple
of reasons for this.
First,
Reid and the Democrats don’t want a repeal of the tax to be seen as
a Republican idea (and victory). Second, he doesn’t want to be seen
as caving in to Republican demands even though they align with his
own party’s view on the Medical Device Tax.
Like
either of these reasons is a good one to prevent passage of a
continuing resolution that shouldn’t be necessary if Reid actually
did his job, followed the Constitution, and allowed the Senate to
vote on passage of the many budgets passed by the House.