History in the making: Dems refuse to present a budget

By Rick Moran

As we all know, Barack Obama likes to make history. It pleases him immensely that he's the first African American president. He nearly swooned at the podium when he announced the "historic" passage of national health insurance reform. And his sweeping "FinReg" bill brought out that word again - history - as it was also the first time that a president made such an announcement as a rat scurried in front of his teleprompter.

There's "history" - and then there's history. From an IDB editorial:

I wonder what he thinks of his Democratic colleagues who, for the first time in history, refusing to present a budget for consideration by Congress?

By some estimates, we need to find $107 trillion over the next 75 years to fund all our promises. In the next 10 years alone, deficits will exceed $10 trillion - lifting annual debt payments by 300% to more than $900 billion a year.

Given such a grim outlook, Congress should be in crisis mode, right? Wrong. In fact, our representatives have never been more frivolous, playing on like the band in the ballroom of the Titanic, sawing on their instruments as the ocean pours in.

Despite their overwhelming majority in Congress, Democrats can't even come up with a budget. And as they dither, the fiscal picture gets worse.

Last year's shortfall of $1.4 trillion, we were told, would shrink as trillions of dollars in stimulus and bailout spending kicked in. Sorry. This year's gap will likely be even bigger.

Clearly, the only way to stop the slide is to slash spending. Yet the Hill quotes Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., as saying the chances of a budget being passed at all this year are "fading."

Not passing a budget would be, as the Hill notes, "unprecedented." So why is such a scenario even possible? Democrats don't want to pass anything that would recognize what a mess they've made of our nation's finances since they regained power in 2006.

Any budget they pass will have to tell the awful truth - that their spending has locked in deficits and debt as far as the eye can see. So they do nothing, whiling away the hours with measures such as House Resolution 1297, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., in support of "American Craft Beer Week."

We are in deep, deep trouble and the Democrats are playing a child's game of "Pretend." They are pretending that all is well and that not introducing a budget is normal. Meanwhile, the deficit is skyrocketing, the stim bill is a failure, and whatever continuing resolutions the Democrats will pass to keep the government going over the next 5 months will no doubt add to the deficit.

Would someone please give these children some adult supervision?

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky