GOP may use debt ceiling to force Harry Reid to pass budget
There are no specific proposals yet, but under this scenario Republicans would insist on a debt ceiling agreement that includes (among other things) a requirement that Congress pass a budget by a specific date. If that doesn’t happen, there would be some sort of enforcement mechanism, perhaps an arrangement whereby the debt ceiling was lowered, or one in which Congress would have to muster a supermajority to raise it again…
House GOP sources favor the idea — it has “great merit and appeal,” said one — but they stress it is still in the early discussion stage. On the other hand, Speaker John Boehner seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Sessions in a recent conversation with the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore, who wrote that Boehner “will insist that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats pass a budget — something they haven’t done in nearly four years — before proceeding.”…
As Sessions sees it, Reid’s budget gambit is the result of a long-term plan. “It’s not a failure of leadership,” Sessions said. “This is part of the president’s political tactics. There’s no doubt in my mind that the White House and the Senate leadership calculated that the lumps they would take for not producing a budget were preferable to actually exposing their financial plan for the future.”
Blowback
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They’d better
They need to be TV everyday with the senate hasn’t passed a budget in 4 years thus why we are in thus state to begin with
cmsinaz on January 8, 2013 at 8:07 AM
Ha ! They’d have to grow something first.
stenwin77 on January 8, 2013 at 8:08 AM
What a sad, sad headline for the republic.
HitNRun on January 8, 2013 at 8:10 AM
Well, I should hope they do. If we have to put up with this moron in the White House and the retard in the Senate, we need to at least make sure they follow the law.
Night Owl on January 8, 2013 at 8:12 AM
The GOP couldn’t convince a Girl Scout to sell a cookie much less “force” the libs to come up with a budget.
Besides, the socialist dems ignore the Constitution on a daily basis, do you really think a written budget is going to keep them in line?
Panther on January 8, 2013 at 8:18 AM
Why didn’t Boehner and McConnell just STOP all business in Congress two years ago?
All this “talk tough” – and do NOTHING. These idiots (the GOP) could have shut down all Congressional business long ago until Reid passed a budget.
NOW – they want to use a budget as a bludgeon to make them look like tough guys?
Please.
HondaV65 on January 8, 2013 at 8:21 AM
Of course it won’t. It’s just a ploy to try to get some traction in the blame game. It’s pitiful, but this is how the Obama Campaign has chosen to “govern”. This country has a grim future.
forest on January 8, 2013 at 8:23 AM
I *like* it. This is the way it’s supposed to work. No budget = no spending.
Mohonri on January 8, 2013 at 8:27 AM
That would be a good start.
tommy71 on January 8, 2013 at 8:40 AM
No, they won’t.
They should, but they won’t.
Good Lt on January 8, 2013 at 9:03 AM
We should eliminate baseline budgeting and have 5% across the board budget cuts from actual budgets each year that Congress fails to produce a budget. As a matter of fact, the provisions of the fiscal cliff would have made a lot more sense if they had called for 5% across the board cuts from actual budgets.
obladioblada on January 8, 2013 at 9:54 AM
I have been saying we should do this for a long time.
munseym on January 8, 2013 at 10:11 AM
Allowing this country to operate without a budget for the last 4+ years is inexcusable, and the GOP is equally complicit for the mess we’re in.
No budget.
No deal.
This won’t end until Congress and the American people are forced to come to grips with the dire predicament we’re facing. Not passing budget only allows this charade to continue.
Hill60 on January 8, 2013 at 10:18 AM
By not passing a new spending plan since, Reid has in effect made those levels the new budgetary baseline. Congress has kept the government going with continuing resolutions based on the last budget signed into law.
Fleuries on January 8, 2013 at 10:25 AM
HitnRun, Honda, and Forest, well said. While the Dems have long since become a (dark) unwitting self-parody with respect to integrity, intelligence, responsibility, and any substantive connection to American history, institutions, or values, the GOP has now become a dark unwitting self-parody WRT serious political behavior.
But let’s not get starry-eyed and childishly optimistic. Even if the current course results in a kinetic disaster (as opposed to gradual rot), the electorate has shown no ability to respond intelligently, and the guard-rail institutions (basically, rule of law and shame) have simply vanished. Look at the “response” to the 2008 “crisis” (hell, look at the response to Enron) – not a shred of anything remotely related to the actual causes and problems. Just more dysfunctional, unintelligent, damaging, unconstitutional finger painting by an infantile political class, which comforted an ignorant and envy-crazed populace (I include here large numbers of “conservative”-voting voters).
So as if to torture the aware and worthy, America’s great institutional and cultural inertia for freedom and rule of law vs. men will utterly fail to protect the country in the longer term, while in the shorter term masking the decay for most.
IceCold on January 8, 2013 at 10:58 AM
Exactly. They should start making speeches and going on the Sunday shows NOW.
PattyJ on January 8, 2013 at 11:24 AM