Subject: Republican Budget Desperation
From: Dem Leader Press Office <[email-masked]>
To: Undisclosed recipients:;
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 19:12:54 +0000

Weeks after blowing past the statutory deadline to enact a budget, Republicans in Congress are lashing out.

There’s no plan in sight for the GOP – and Republican Leaders are so vexed by this budget debacle that their only idea is to scrap the Budget Committee altogether.

Senator Mike Enzi, Chairman, Senate Budget Committee<http://www.budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/hearing-schedule?ID=06A2A784-1BCE-48E2-951A-01B9A9106B13>: “…I have volunteered to eliminate the Budget Committee if it’s irrelevant”

Republicans are trying everything they can to get themselves off the hook from passing a budget.  But eliminating the Budget Committee won’t get rid of the problem at the heart of the Republican budget mess: GOP Leaders proposed the most devastating “Road to Ruin” budget in history, and even that wasn’t extreme enough to satisfy the radical forces that have seized control of the Republican Congress.

Stan Collender – a budget expert and witness at the very same hearing where Chairman Enzi proposed axing the Budget Committee – took Republicans to task<https://mninews.marketnews.com/content/us-senate-budget-chief-receives-scolding-budget-expert> for their attempts to distract the American people from the GOP’s outright failure to pass a budget:

"I can't start my testimony with the standard line of commending the committee for holding this hearing," Collender began.

"How is it possible that the Senate Budget Committee that earlier this year flatly refused to invite the director of the Office of Management and Budget to testify and in so doing helped render the Obama 2017 budget irrelevant, is now holding a hearing to discuss, in part, whether the president's budget is irrelevant and should be changed?" Collender said.

"How is it possible that the same Senate Budget Committee that so far has refused to develop and vote on a budget resolution for the coming year is now holding a hearing to fix the budget process it refuses to follow?," he continued.

Twisting the knife further, Collender said the Senate Budget Committee hearing was supplanting Leo Rosten's explanation of the word "chutzpah" with a new definition.

Collender said that Rosten defined chutzpah as when a man who is convicted of murdering his parents then begs for mercy from the court because he's an orphan.

"Today this committee is the fiscal policy equivalent of that man. After first preventing the budget process from being implemented, it is now demanding that the process be changed so the committee can implement it," he said.

Republicans in Congress: instead of throwing a tantrum over process, do your job for the American people.  Republicans should join with Democrats to craft a budget that invests in the future and protects the security of hard-working American families.