Via RCP and Twitchy, how embarrassing is it when a news anchor on any channel has to explain the conference committee process to a member of Congress? DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) appeared on Fox News last night with Bret Baier, who asked the simple question: why haven’t Senate Democrats passed a budget? Wasserman Schultz wanted to gripe about the House-passed Paul Ryan budget, but when Baier asked why the Senate hadn’t passed a budget resolution in 1,092 days, Wasserman Schultz scolded him for talking about “process.” She did try to argue at one point that Democrats have proposed a budget — the White House budget from Barack Obama — but Baier forced her to change direction when he asked why the Senate hadn’t bothered to vote on it.
This is a pretty simple “process.” Each chamber passes a version of the budget, and it goes into conference committee. That’s simpler in the Senate than most other legislation, since filibusters cannot be used on budgets; a simple majority is all that’s needed to pass it. In order to get a budget into conference committee, though, both chambers have to actually pass a budget in the first place, and it’s been three years and counting since the Senate bothered to comply with the law and produce an annual budget resolution.
This is a failure of leadership. And last night, the Democrats’ leader failed miserably to defend a three-year-plus record of cowardice on budgeting.
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