Somewhat lost in this crazy budget debate is the fact that the Democrats had the chance to pass a budget for FY2011 last year – in fact, they had a responsibility to do so.
According to then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD),
It isn’t possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we’ve considered the bipartisan commission’s deficit-reduction plan, which is expected in December.
Oh, right…the bipartisan commission’s deficit-reduction plan…which was largely dismissed on both sides of the aisle when it did come out.
The Democrats have no spines – this is just a proven, scientific fact. They did not want to pass a budget before the midterm elections because they are cowards. If you recall, the Democrats pandered to the conservatives in the election last year. Many of them had no interest in attracting liberals. They knew that passing a bill without spending cuts would cause a big loss in political capital, and that’s why they didn’t do it.
We can talk about how the Republicans’ proposed budget would kill 70,000 children all over the world as a result of cuts to USAID, increase the amount of abortions performed in the US as a result of defunding Planned Parenthood, reduce the growth in GDP by 2% according to Goldman Sachs, etc., but the fact remains that we absolutely could have avoided this predicament if the Democrats of the 111th Congress had simply done their jobs.