For the last 1,000 days, the United States government has operated without a budget and Congressman Paul Broun, M.D. (R-GA) wants to make the continuation of the situation painful and unprofitable for Congress.
Those 1,000 days include the first two years of the Obama administration when he enjoyed, for all intents and purposes, a rubber-stamp Congress, in which both the House and the Senate had Democrat majorities. During those first two years, it is very likely that Obama could have proposed most any budget and it would have passed. However, both he and Congress failed to do so.
As a result, Broun has proposed his Budget or Bust Legislation with H.R. 3883, a bill which would “remove the President from the budgetary process and force Congress to pass a budget or go unpaid.” The text of the bill is simple and takes up about one page. Simply stated, it eliminates the requirement of the president to submit a budget to Congress, and places the responsibility for that squarely upon the shoulders of that legislative body. If the Congress does not pass a budget by April first of any given year, their salaries will be placed in escrow until they do pass a budget.
A statement released by Broun’s office states: “Producing a budget is one of Congress’s most basic and most important responsibilities. I firmly believe that if Members of Congress fail to fulfill our duties to the American people, we shouldn’t be getting paid. My Budget or Bust Act forces the House and Senate to finally pass a budget, or else our salaries will be held as collateral until Congress can get its job done.
“Additionally, my bill returns the power of the purse to its rightful owner, which our Founding Fathers determined to be Congress, not the President. The Budget or Bust Act repeals a requirement created in 1921 for the President to submit an annual budget – an act that both Houses of Congress have used as a crutch.
“It is completely unacceptable that the last time the Senate passed a budget was more than 1,000 days ago. Perhaps if we put Member’s paychecks on the line – we could get some work done in Washington.”
Thus far, the Budget or Bust Bill has five cosponsors, all Republicans. They are: Steve Chabot (OH), Bill Flores (TX), Andy Harris (MD), Steve Southerland (FL), and Joe Wilson (SC). Broun hopes to get more Congressmen to sign on as cosponsors and take this bill all the way through Congress to the president’s desk.
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Comments
#1 Just another bogus, meaningless posture
You can always tell a writer's or speaker's political orientation by the focus-group-tested words they use. "both the House and the Senate had Democrat majorities." It's spelled "Democratic" everywhere but in right-wing world.
The reason the Senate failed to produce a budget, or much of any legislation at all, in spite of the majority, is that the majority no longer rules in the Senate. The Republican playbook for carrying out the Senate Minority Leader's main goal in Government has been to gum up the workings of government so badly that nothing will get done, and then blame the Democrats for getting nothing done. It's nothing more than Republican treason, let's call it what it is.
#2 Um, not to be a troll or
Um, not to be a troll or anything but take a look and read it again. The writer was correct in that there were DEMOCRAT majorities, referring to the the seats held by members of the Democratic Party also known in short as DEMOCRATS. Democratic would be used as an adjective, not a noun.
I won't comment on the sheer hypocrisy of how you started on pointing out how easy it was to tell a writer/speaker's political orientation and then followed through in the second paragraph.