It has been 800 days since the Senate has passed a budget. And Democrats on the Budget Committee have yet to publicly release their proposal for the next fiscal year, missing their statutory deadline by months.
After months of hints and media reports of a proposal waiting behind the scenes, so far the only people who have seen the budget are members of the Democratic caucus. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad first announced a proposal was ready to be marked up on April 13.
On May 3, Conrad, from North Dakota, showed the proposal to his Democrat colleagues, telling Republicans to expect a mark-up within the next week. Days later, however, Conrad postponed the mark-up while Democrats squabbled over the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases.
Then for weeks, the Democrat proposal fell by the wayside as Washington became consumed with talks over raising the debt limit. But on Wednesday of this week, Conrad released a new budget proposal to his Democratic colleagues that called for a one-to-one ratio of spending cuts and tax increases.
“I feel very good about it. It’s, to me, a very responsible, rational package,” Conrad told reporters after the proposal was finalized.
But now, GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the Budget Committee is asking one question: Where is it? (Senators call on Reid to unveil Democrat budget)
“So you ask to be the majority party; you ask to be the majority leader,” Sessions told The Daily Caller in an interview. “Presumably one understands that that carries responsibility.”
The job of producing a budget, however, may be overshadowed by the fact that many Democrats in the Senate are facing re-election in 2012, and want to avoid a tough budget vote. Sessions even believes that Conrad would have presented a proposal months ago, but Senate leadership stopped him in his tracks.
Senate Democrats were grumbling just last month over frustration at not being able to present and defend a budget proposal. But Majority Leader Harry Reid stayed firm, putting the breaks on any budget proposal.
“It’s not a pleasant place to be in, no doubt,” said Sessions. “But what are we paid to do here?”
The Senate gave up the July 4th recess in order to work on the budget. But as Sessions and some of his Republican colleagues noted in a letter to Reid on Thursday, no work was actually done on the budget.
“You can only conclude that this has been their strategy,” Sessions told TheDC, “to lull the American people and Congress into the belief that a budget might be coming forward when the was never a plan.” (Spending cuts not enough for some senators)
The proposal Conrad showed the Democratic caucus, with its one-to-one ratio of tax increases and spending cuts, seeks to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over ten years. Two trillion dollars of that comes from tax increases on the wealthy. And according to The Hill, the proposal is making a few centrist Democrats nervous.
Sessions said the tax increase-spending cuts combo would be “dead on arrival.”
“It would be rejected out of hand,” he added.
But for Sessions, the problem with the the provisions of the Democrats’ proposal goes even deeper.
“It’s the debt, stupid,” said Sessions. “This is already pulling down growth. And one percent of growth, according to the White House, would add a million jobs.”
“We need to go beyond the fact that debt is a threat to our children and grandchildren,” Sessions told TheDC. “Debt is hurting us right now!”