Our buddy Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on Fox News last night, an occasion that typically guarantees some sort of embarrassing meltdown. True to form, when anchor Bret Baier pressed the DNC chair on why Senate Democrats haven't produced a budget in nearly 1,100 days, Wasserman Schultz informed Baier that Americans aren't "interested in" these types of "process" questions (the key bit starts at the two minute mark):
Baier does an admirable job of puncturing her dissembling, but I'd like to offer an even more comprehensive rebuttal:
(1) Even if Americans don't care about "process" questions (and their general revulsion at the backroom Obamacare dealings suggest that they sometimes do), the law cares about process. And the law requires both houses of Congress to introduce and pass budgets every year. Senate Democrats have shirked this obligation for three consecutive budget cycles.
(2) DWS says the "Romney-Ryan budget" -- see my post from yesterday -- "ends Medicare as we know it." For the umpteenth time, basic math ends Medicare as we know it. Just this week, the program's trustees put out a report confirming that Medicare's core fund will become insolvent in 2024. That's 12 years from today. If we do nothing. President Obama's non-solution is to set a government cap on Medicare spending, and enforce it through an unelected rationing panel of 15 government bureaucrats. (Although he's cynically backtracking on the first scheduled round of cuts, using a shameless maneuver to push the pain until after the upcoming election). The bipartisan Paul Ryan (R) -Ron Wyden (D) Medicare reform plan enshrined in the House-passed budget takes a patient-centered approach, premised on choice and competition. "Medicare as we know it" is changing. Period. The question is, how do we go about it. Republicans have a plan. Democrats openly admit they have no solutions to the long-term debt bomb they're refusing to defuse, but they're scrambling to assail the GOP alternative. Also, she keeps talking about the "pain" the Republican plan would inflict on Americans. You know what's painful? National insolvency. Just ask the Greeks choking on tear gas at their latest street riot.
(3) Wasserman Schultz holds up the president's budget as a serious alternative to the House-passed blueprint. Is she aware that Obama's last two budgets have been defeated 511-0 in Congress, a number that includes scores of Democrat 'no' votes? So in what possible sense is Obama's surreally awful budget a viable plan?
(4) As Breitbart's Joel Pollak pointed out on Twitter last night, DWS tries to have it both ways. When pressed on Senate Democrats' egregious and unlawful inaction, she says she's a member of the House and therefore doesn't represent Harry Reid. She's a House member, yes, but she's also the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman. She speaks for her entire party; that's literally (to borrow one of her favorite words) her job.
(5) Her fanciful "solution" to this budget mess is for both parties to "work together." Baier astutely notes that a conference committee -- in which disparate bills from each chamber are merged into one -- would serve that purpose, but the lack of a Democrat budget makes such a task impossible. DWS blithely ignores this point, and claims that the GOP simply refuses to work with President Obama. Aside from this not being true, Democrats were the ones who excluded Republicans from the Stimulus discussion and from the drafting process of their exceedingly unpopular healthcare monstrosity.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz is incapable of telling the truth because the truth reveals that her party to be an irresponsible failure. It's a tough job, I realize-- which renders me forever grateful that President Obama hand-selected such a capable and charming individual to apply lipstick to the Democrat policy pig.
UPDATE - This: