When was the last time the Senate cast a unanimous vote on an issue of any substance? The only unamimous votes in the Senate’s 112th session have been to confirm judges or on honorary resolutions, and on a few amendments, and one bill to make it illegal to publish or copy images taken by the TSA from backscatter scanners. There has not been a single unanimous negative vote in the Senate this session — until now. Yesterday, the Senate rejected by a 0-97 vote the budget proposed by Barack Obama:
The Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to reject a $3.7 trillion budget plan that President Obama sent to Capitol Hill in February.
Ninety-seven senators voted against a motion to take it up.
Democratic aides said ahead of the vote that the Democratic caucus would not support the plan because it has been supplanted by the deficit-reduction plan Obama outlined at a speech at George Washington University in April.
Really? Oh, good. So when will Senate Democrats put that plan up for a vote? Right … never. As Harry Reid said this week, Democrats don’t want to provide leadership and do the jobs to which they were elected — they just want to tell everyone else how to do their jobs.
At least Republicans bothered to propose a budget for a floor vote. Paul Ryan’s budget got 40 more votes than Obama’s. Democrats want to wait for Obama’s FY2012 plan, but thus far, no details have been forthcoming from either the White House or from Senate Democrats who run the upper chamber. It’s been almost 760 days since the Senate passed a normal budget; how much longer should we all wait?
As for the Democratic rejection of the first (and thus far only) Obama budget proposal for FY2012, Mitch McConnell notes that these same Democrats thought pretty highly of it in February. They had plenty of time to pass it when Obama first introduced it; why did they do nothing? Why are they still doing nothing? For a party that worked hard to barely retain control over the Senate, Democrats seem completely disinterested in meeting their responsibilities. Who knew that Democrats would go on strike merely because the rabble had the temerity to strip them of control of one chamber of Congress?
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