Washington Times:
Congress gave itself a three-week reprieve on a government shutdown, then spent the first 10 days on vacation. Now, lawmakers return with the shutdown deadline once again looming, and a deal seemingly as far away as ever.
The House has spent more than 70 hours debating spending this year, and has produced a bill. The Senate has spent less than five hours officially debating spending, and has rejected the House bill, but has yet to produce an alternative of its own.
With another shutdown deadline looming — this time on April 8 — the negotiations have yielded little.
...
Democrats prefer to negotiate a final deal behind closed doors and have all lawmakers jump together, rather than have an open process and write a bill on the Senate floor.
Mr. Boehner, after initially agreeing to negotiations with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Democrats, now argues that Senate Democrats must put forward a plan of their own to match up to the bill the House passed after days of debate and voting.
A Washington Times analysis shows that the House has indeed done far more work on spending than the Senate.
So far this year the House has spent 72 hours and 42 minutes officially debating spending bills, and held 107 votes that covered amendments from both Democrats and Republicans, including rules for debate and final passage of two stopgap spending bills and a measure known as H.R. 1, the GOP’s chief spending-cuts proposal.
The Senate, meanwhile, has spent just four hours and 21 minutes officially debating spending bills, and has held just four votes. Two of those were on stopgap spending bills, while the other two were held to reject both the House bill and a White House-backed alternative.
...
Schumer and the Democrats are not really serious about reaching a compromise. If they were, they would have offered some alternative beyond the status quo. The public is still on the side of even larger cuts. This could be a real problem for Democrats at the ballot box.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Comments
Post a Comment