Senate Dems Get Ready To Spring A Stealth Budget

Congress is required, by law, to pass a budget resolution by April 15 every year. Last year, for the first time in the history of the modern budget process, both the House and Senate failed to even vote on a budget. This year, however, the House Budget Committee, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., developed a budget draft, posted it online for public comment and analysis before committee markup, then secured House passage after a wide-open debate that permitted multiple amendments to be offered from the House floor. The Ryan budget, for fiscal 2012, was approved by the full House by the required deadline, and the country has benefited greatly from this open, honest debate.

Things are a bit different in the Senate. The April 15 deadline came and went again this year without any public budget documents from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. It has now been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate last passed a budget. That momentous event took place on April 3, 2009, for fiscal 2010. The problem now is not that Senate Democrats do not have a budget proposal for 2012; Conrad spent a full day explaining it to the Democratic caucus last week. The snag is that many of Conrad's Democratic colleagues hate it. They reportedly think it cuts too much spending and doesn't raise taxes enough. And now Conrad is telling the budget panel's ranking Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that Republicans will have to vote on a committee markup of the document just minutes after he releases it to the public either Monday or Tuesday. Call it the Democratic stealth budget.


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