99-0: Senate votes down Obama’s budget unanimously — again; Update: Zero Dem votes for four GOP budgets

posted at 5:23 pm on May 16, 2012 by Allahpundit

Another day, another congressional shutout of O’s latest unserious gimmick. That makes three in the past year. The Senate torpedoed his last budget 97-0 in May 2011, then the House dropped a goose egg on him in March with a robust 414-0 tally. Now this.

610-0:

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up…

The White House has held its proposal out as a “balanced approach” to beginning to rein in deficits. It calls for tax increases to begin to offset higher spending, and would begin to level off debt as a percentage of the economy by 2022. It would produce $6.4 trillion in new deficits over that time.

There’s no better testament to how politically toxic that $6.4 trillion figure is than the fact that Senate Democrats would rather hand the GOP yet another day of “Obama shutout!” headlines than sign on to this travesty out of party loyalty. Said Mitch McConnell of Reid’s refusal to offer his own budget, “They’re so unserious they won’t even vote for a budget that was written by a president of their own party. It doesn’t get more irresponsible than that.” Indeed — but follow that last link and you’ll find that it’s Jay Carney, of all people, who’s complaining about “gimmicks.”

The good news, though? According to Tom Coburn, O’s finally ready to tackle this problem in a forthright manner. Case in point was today’s “hoagie summit”:

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) attended the meeting. Mr. Carney said of the meeting: “The tone was genial, the discussion was productive, the sandwiches were delicious.”

Mr. Obama bought sandwiches from Taylor Gourmet in Washington, D.C., where he met with small-business owners ahead of his lunch with the congressional leaders. (The president ordered a 12-inch Spruce Street hoagie, which has roast turkey, prosciutto, roasted red peppers and sharp provolone, but it remains a mystery what he ordered for the congressional leaders. The total was $62.79. A spokesman for Mr. Boehner said the speaker “was very pleased with the sandwiches.”)…

Mr. Boehner asked the president whether he wanted to extend the nation’s debt ceiling, or borrowing limit, without spending cuts and the president said “yes,” according to a Boehner aide. The speaker told the president “as long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”

So there’s the state of “seriousness” on May 16: The guy who proposed new spending so massive that not a single federal legislator from his own party will endorse it refuses to accept any further cuts as a condition to raising the debt ceiling. When asked why, presumably he’ll say we can’t afford cuts at a moment when the eurozone’s teetering and threatening to drag its American trading partner down with it. In that case, when? The eurozone’s likely to be teetering for a good long while unless it crashes in the near term. Over to you, Tom Coburn.

Via Breitbart.com, here’s Bernie Sanders transmitting from a magical dimension in which Democrats have passed some sort of budget within the past three years.

Update: Can’t find the rolls right now but the word on Twitter is that Democrats voted unanimously against Paul Ryan’s, Rand Paul’s, Mike Lee’s and Pat Toomey’s budget proposals too. On the most momentous domestic issue of our time — fiscal sustainability — they’ve checked out.

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Comment pages: 1 2

Been to many TEA party rallies, have you? Or are you merely engaging in rectal speak?

As usual…

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2013 at 1:46 PM

As I just posted HotairLib has their whole head up their six o clock.

hamradio on May 24, 2013 at 2:43 PM

Who wrote the speech? Or are you just praising the messenger?

mixplix on May 24, 2013 at 2:57 PM

MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

Connect the dots: journolist meeting by invitation only at the White House on, what Tuesday?, “big”speech by Obama on Thursday, lame stream media fawning over speech on Friday. Who would have seen that coming, huh?

parke on May 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They are just trying to massage it so that they don’t offend the Muslims, international Libtards and their own sensibilities anymore than necessary.

A few Muslim terrorists here and there are quite expendable to this Administration despite their sympathies for them. These drone attacks also do much deflect any potential criticism that the Administration is weak in dealing with such matters.

Dr. ZhivBlago on May 24, 2013 at 2:59 PM

MSNBC is nothing but a left wing propaganda machine serving their master, Obama.

rplat on May 24, 2013 at 3:07 PM

Nobel Peace Prize that he totally earned a mere nine months into his presidency? Yeah, that one.

I believe that he was officially nominated 10 days after he was sworn in. Wow! The WON really worked long hours that week and a half to earn that POS medal. During those ten days he ordered NO DRONE STRIKES to keep his peaceful record clean.

fred5678 on May 24, 2013 at 3:22 PM

Obama: Don’t worry about that Ben Ghazi guy. I killed Bin Laden, and Bush didn’t!

And Obummer still wants to close Gitmo? Good luck with that–not even Upchuck Schumer was willing to hold trials in New York!

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:24 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They just changed the definition of terrorist. They used to be jihadis from the Middle East–now they’re Minutemen in Arizona and Tea Partiers in Ohio.

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:29 PM

…bromides about what we’re told are President Foreign Policy’s miraculous yet still oddly unmaterialized abilities to move us drastically closer to world peace.

Erika, sometimes your writing shows signs of rivaling even the Master of Snark himself, Allahpundit. Good work!

KS Rex on May 24, 2013 at 3:45 PM

I love how crazy Al invoked the Nobel Peace Prize in praise of a speech that spoke about dropping bombs on people’s head. Maybe it was the “fewer” bombs than before that raised this to historic levels.

Do they even know or care that they are morons.

marnes on May 24, 2013 at 3:46 PM

His speech made less sense than Bluto’s Animal House Speech and was far less entertaining. Nothing less than base rallying time. Never thought I would say this, but Code Pink was the best part.

DDay on May 24, 2013 at 4:01 PM

Sperling posted this at the Examiner on May 23 about this “historic speech of Obysmal’s:

During his foreign policy speech Thursday afternoon, President Obama warned that domestic terrorism would increase in the modern age of the Internet.

“[T]his threat is not new,” Obama said. “But technology and the Internet increase its frequency and lethality.”

Obama warned Americans that materials on the Internet could influence people to commit terrorist acts.

“Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit themselves to a violent agenda and learn how to kill without leaving their home,” he said.

To combat domestic terrorism, Obama reminded Americans that it was important to reach out to Muslim communities.

“The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community — which has consistently rejected terrorism — to identify signs of radicalization and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence,” he said. “And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family.”

You see, we are just not working hard enough to “work with the Muslim American community” who are a “fundamental part of the American family.” Watch out, too, because Obysmal is again trying to limit the impact of the Internet.

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:22 PM

That Chris Hayes is a bit of a twink, isn’t he?

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM

Obama apparently gave two speeches yesterday and I watched the other one.

myiq2xu on May 24, 2013 at 5:03 PM

Didn’t take you that long to inject the man’s race into this didn’t it? And you wonder why blacks will never accept you tea billies hate the man simply because he’s a black man occupying the “people’s” house.

HotAirLib on May 24, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Nah. I’d detest the little pissant s.o.b. if he was white…or Asian…or any one of the myriad of made-up racial divisions.

Solaratov on May 24, 2013 at 11:00 PM

Comment pages: 1 2