The U.S. House of Representatives is run by and full of howling morons. I can’t stand it. The following is now an annual event that will probably never be killed until the Democrats retake control or there is a Republican president:
The House on Wednesday handily rejected a GOP budget alternative based on President Obama’s 2015 spending blueprint.
It was defeated 2-413, following a pattern seen in recent years in House votes to overwhelmingly reject Obama’s budget proposals. Today’s vote is just slightly better than the unanimous vote against Obama’s budget in 2012…
…Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) offered a budget alternative based on Obama’s budget plan as a substitute amendment to the House GOP budget. Mulvaney made this move as a way to force Democrats to go on the record about the president’s spending plans.
But Democrats have refused to play along, and have derided these GOP-sponsored options as a political tactic. Earlier in the day, House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) urged fellow Democrats in a “Dear Colleague” letter to vote against the Mulvaney amendment, calling it a “political stunt.”
…
“I thought we didn’t even want to take up thousand-plus page bills. And yet now, supposedly, we’re going to debate and vote on something that is over 2,000 pages,” Van Hollen said.
An Obama administration official agreed with House Democrats that the GOP substitute was not an accurate reflection of Obama’s budget plan.“The Administration would welcome votes on the actual provisions of President’s Budget,” said Office of Management and Budget spokesman Steve Posner. “That is not what this amendment represents, and a vote for or against this amendment is not a vote for or against the President’s policies.”
They’re spending the whole week debating budgets that will never become the guideline for the fiscal year’s spending. The Republican Study Group has a budget. The House Democratic Caucus has a budget. The Black Congressional Caucus has a budget. The Progressive Caucus has a budget.
The only one with a prayer of being enacted is Paul Ryan’s budget, and that is in doubt. In any case, it won’t matter because the Senate isn’t even bothering to pass a budget this year. Congress has already agreed to the discretionary spending number for fiscal year 2015. That was part of the Murray-Ryan budget agreement last December. So, all the Senate has to decide is how to divvy that spending up among their different appropriations subcommittees. Obviously, the House will have different ideas about how to spend the $1.014 trillion. And then they’ll have a big fight and threaten to shut the government down, and some omnibus bill will get rammed home at the last minute that has little to do with the work all the members of Congress put into the budget.
We ought to be a laughing stock for letting the Republicans control any lever of power in Washington DC.
Check that. I guess we are a laughing stock.