Senator Chris Coons Calls Out Republicans for Not Getting to a Budget Deal

Recall that the Senate passed its budget in March, and the House passed its budget before that — meaning that if we’re finally following the “regular order” of budgeting, there should be a Senate and House Reconciliation Committee so that these two bodies can come to some agreement on a budget. That budget — a policy document only, it appropriates no money — is supposed to guide the appropriation process. Except that the GOP doesn’t want to work on a budget until we are much closer to the debt ceiling problem. We were supposed to have faced the debt ceiling in march or April, but the Treasury figured out a way to postpone that until Fall. So the GOP is stuck with a pretty bad timeline — blowing up the economy over the debt ceiling just before they start campaigning is very bad juju. And they have NO negotiating position unless the debt ceiling is imminent they think. So Senator Coons took to the Senate floor today to call to get back to the regular order of the budget process and to stop the effects of the sequester:

(If you’d prefer the text of Senator Coons’ comments, you can see them here.) Frankly, I think that tougher language is needed, but this is good. And more Democrats need to be doing this. In front of cameras for all of the pundit shows. The GOP had a field day with the bullshit claim of no budget for years, and now that there is one, they can’t bring themselves to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Josh Marshall at TPM notes:

What’s left after you strip away all that obfuscation is that Republicans don’t want to go to conference unconditionally because they’re concerned their position won’t hold politically and they’ll ultimately be forced to swallow a compromise that includes tax increases — unless the whole process gets swallowed by another debt limit fight.

That’s mainly because the Republicans’ position in budget negotiations is as brittle as it is uncompromising and they don’t want to expose it to the wages of politics. They don’t want to repeat a losing election year debate about taxes and social spending in an open legislative context.

The rules open the House floor to a flood of privileged measures when budget negotiators gridlock, and, as Paul Ryan rightly noted at the Pete Peterson fiscal summit yesterday, that means Democrats will try to shorten their leashes, by, for instance, proposing to make entitlement cuts off limits. (Bernie Sanders showed how it’s done in the Senate already.) That means if Republicans truly want those entitlement cuts, they’ll have to whip votes and own them. It also means their commitment to sequestration over higher taxes on rich people will be tested.

It is well worth it to remind people that we don’t have a budget, we’re heading into the worst of the sequester cuts and the GOP won’t get to a budget because they need to play games with the debt ceiling.