By Rick Manning –
House Democrats plan to leave the country without a budget according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who stated, “It’s difficult to pass budgets in election years because they reflect what the [fiscal] status is.”
Now that’s courage, leadership and transparency.
It is stunning that the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives has publicly admitted that the entire budgeting process of the United States government is being turned on its head, because it is politically hard.
Remember, the Democrats hold 59% of the seats in the House with a 255 to 176 advantage over the Republicans, yet it is too hard to put a budget together?
For perspective, consider election year 2002 when Speaker Dennis Hastert enjoyed a slender 222 to 211 advantage, yet our nation was not left without a budget.
The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, has called this decision, “an unprecedented failure to govern.”
I call it unprecedented cowardice and dereliction of duty.
If you look closely at what Hoyer’s statement reveals, you learn that the real reason behind the Democrats failure to do their jobs is that they are afraid if the voters find out what the nation’s true fiscal status is, they will be very, very angry at election time.
The Hoyer solution? Don’t pass a budget and hope that no one notices that the national debt is approaching catastrophic levels.
The House of Representatives and Senate are still going to spend money, they just aren’t going to put a budget down leaving the ultimate budgeting to the appropriators in Congress who have received so much notoriety for their penchant for earmarks and unbridled spending.
However, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where spending is going in this last session of this Congress. It is going up – way, way up.
The graph at the right compiled by the Heritage Foundation shows that since the Democrats took the reins in 2007, the budget deficit has skyrocketed into heretofore unknown territories.
Yet, for purely political reasons, Pelosi and Hoyer have decided that rather than publicly pass a budget that they can be held accountable for, they would prefer to hide the overall totals from an angry American public in the hopes that they will not add fuel to the voter frustration that has led to the tea party movement.
Instead, by failing to perform their basic constitutional duties, Hoyer and his colleagues are trying to hide from the electorate the overall impact of their spending policies prior to what promises to be a strongly anti-incumbent election year, avoiding the tough choices that true leaders make for the good of the nation.
Like an armadillo rolling up into a ball when confronted by an enemy, Democratic leaders hope that when they emerge, the elections will be over and no one will have noticed that they failed to do their most basic duty. Hoyer and Pelosi make an interesting and instructive political calculation that the only way for them to hold onto power is to not do their jobs.
At a time when Americans are looking for leaders to move us through perhaps the most challenging time in our history, Steny and his crew are hoping no one notices that they are afraid to lead.
At a time when America needs courageous leaders more than ever, Hoyer rolls up in a ball and hides.
At a time when America demands transparency from their government, Hoyer doesn’t want the public to be able to figure out how taxpayer money is being spent.
In a little more than five months, the public will give the verdict of whether they want leaders or armadillos. It should be interesting.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government, and the former Public Affairs Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor.
