On the heels of last week’s payroll tax deal, Washington pundits began asking whether the Party of No was dead. As is often the case, the professional pundits have it all wrong. The Party of No is alive and well.
This time around though, the partiers have a “D” next to their name. When President Obama unveiled his budget last week, his former Democratic Senate colleagues met it with a mix of silence and condemnation.
One of President Obama’s closest confidants, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), remained noticeably silent. The inside-Washington publication Roll Call observed that Senator Reid instead “referenced former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s bold push for a transnational highway system in the 1950s.”
As others have noted, Senator Reid lauded President Obama’s budget request last year, before voting against it. Not only did every single one of his Democratic colleagues vote against that budget (they claimed it was because the President was going to re-submit a budget with real solutions), they also voted against every single budget plan presented in the Senate. Perhaps most alarming, though, is that it has now been 1,027 days since Senate Democrats bothered with a budget of their own.
Despite what President Obama’s chief of staff Jack Lew might believe, passing a budget in the Senate is not all that difficult – you just need a simple majority. Nonetheless, Senator Reid confirmed that the Senate does “not need to bring a budget to the floor this year.”
To their credit, the cast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe tried to get some answers from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND)…except the chairman was a no-show. The banter between the cast said it all:
Joe Scarborough: TJ, do you have the wrong shot there?
TJ (producer): Umm…this is the right shot.
Joe: That’s the right shot?
Mika Brzezinski: Well, I don't see him.
Joe: He's not there.
TJ: Maybe he's running late, I don't know.
Mike Barnicle: Uhhh…he could be at Cardinal spring training.
Joe: I was looking for an answer to that question. Where's the budget?
Mika: Maybe he's looking for the budget.
TJ: Wait, there he is.
Mika: Excuse me, Senator.
Joe: Senator -- that's not him.
It went on, getting so bad that MSNBC dropped in some sounds of crickets chirping.