In what may have been a historic vote, forty Republicans voted today to sustain Senator Jeff Sessions’ point of order objecting to the Democrats’ violation of the Congressional Budget Act by passing an appropriation bill when there is no federal budget in place.
Jeff Sessions wants a very obvious and logical outcome. He wants the US Senate to do its fundamental duty and help plan for the wellbeing of America in future years. He wants the US Senate to do what it has failed to do in pathetic fashion for the past 800 days. He wants them to pass a budget for the Federal Government.
Senator Sessions has discovered what I believe is a fundamental weakness in the US Constitution, as it currently stands. The founding document permits Congress to appropriate and borrow monies in the absence of a current year budget. To successfully correct this flaw, Congress passed the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
Section 303 (c) of this legislation allows Senators to rise a point of order against the passage of appropriations acts absent a current year budget. Senator Sessions spoke on behalf of his move on July 13.
Once that point of order is raised, the legislation in question cannot move forward unless a majority of Senators vote to waive the requirement that taxpayer money should not be appropriated without a budget plan. This is what the law dictates. This is our responsibility as legislators. And this is the duty that the Democrat-led Senate has refused to fulfill for the last 805 days. Senate Democrats have failed to adopt a budget in more than two years and, this year, have refused to even produce a budget for public review.
He is forced to slam the brakes on in the Senate because Harry Reid runs the place. Senate Majority Leader Reid has made it clear what he thinks about intelligent financial planning.
“There’s no need to have a Democratic budget in my opinion,” Reid said in an interview Thursday. “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.”
So the US Senate is lead by a man who has decided to deliberately neglect his duty as a leader. He believes it would be foolish to engage in activities that are vital to intelligently managing the nation’s finances. Sharon Angle may not have been the sharpest screwdriver in the tool box. That’s probably why Harry Reid retains the job that he blatantly and directly believes it would be foolish for him to do in a competent manor. But at least Sharon Angle wouldn’t think that it was foolish to show up at her place of employment and perform to the baseline standards of her job description.
Senator Reid’s direct abnegation of his authority is analogous to how The Roman Senate threw in the towel and doomed the Roman Republic. Jeff Sessions is trying to make the US Senate function like a legitimate legislature. He is attempting to make our country meet the minimum, baseline standard that any serious commercial entity would have to meet before being able to borrow and spend freely in the world’s credit markets.
There’s about a dime’s worth of difference between the US and Greece right now. That difference consists of Jeff Sessions and 40 other Republican Senators. Greece wants to borrow and spend with no limitations or serious thought given to how they would pay it all back. Most Americans want to borrow and spend with no limitations or serious thought given to how they would pay it all back. Jeff Sessions has decided to play the stern, but necessary Father Role here and make these drunken teenagers on the binge produce an actual budget.
America needs Senator Sessions to succeed. You can see from Karl Denninger’s chart below, what we’re doing right now hasn’t worked worth a monkey’s butt-wipe for a long, long time.
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