Donald Lambro:
SenateDemocrats were expected to bring up the House Republicans’ 2012 budget plan for a vote this week, but not their own plan, which remains under lock and key.
It’s not because the Democrats want to be magnanimous and give the GOP plan full consideration as the basis for negotiations on a bipartisan compromise. No, they intend to demagogue it to death, focusing almost entirely on its provision to slowly replace Medicare with a government-subsidized health care voucher plan for seniors - a privatization idea Democrats think will prove fatal to dozens of vulnerable Republicans in next year’s elections.
But there are other reasons why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not be offering the Democrats‘ own budget proposal. They don’t have one - or, at least, one they want to reveal to the public. That’s locked away in Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad’s safe at a time when President Obama’s administration is running a $1.6 trillion budget deficit, the third in a string of trillion-dollar deficits that will add more than $10 trillion to an already monstrous $14.3 trillion national debt over this decade.
Next to the lackluster economy and a persistently high 9 percent unemployment rate, runaway spending and debt remain among the voters’ greatest concerns. But the Democrats‘ strategy right now is not to grab the deficit by the horns and wrestle it into submission. It is to play political games with the issue and with the American people, to help the Democrats win back control of the House and rebuild their dwindling forces in the Senate.
And don’t expect to see the Democrats‘ secret budget anytime soon, if there is one. Indeed, Mr. Reid has told reporters, “There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion. It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.”
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Yes if they actually revealed their budget they could lose even bigger next year. They did not reveal one in 2010 and that did not work out so well for them either. The fact is they can't tell voters what they really think, because it is so indefensible. The rest of the media is unlikely to call them on this scam even though Republican senators have been asking them on a daily basis where their budget is.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
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