Has Harry Reid gone mad?! Senate to vote on a budget this week!

What’s that you say?! The Senate is going to vote on a budget? Are you sure???

Yup. It’s true. After 1,112 days of not passing a budget, Senate Democrats have agreed to vote on several competing plans to stop the debt, balance the budget, and avert the coming Debt Collapse.

Lawk-a-mercy! 

To be exact, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Majority Leader, has scheduled votes on 4 budget plans this week.

All of them written by Republicans.

Um. Wait. Did you say Republicans?

Yes. It seems the Democrats, who hold the majority and run the Senate, cannot agree on a budget among themselves. So they’re putting up GOP budgets to vote on. Of course, this is a political gesture. They transparently hope to vote the Republican budgets down — so they can use them in political advertisements in the fall. 

Meanwhile …

  • The nation is $16 trillion in debt.
  • We’re adding more than $1 trillion in new debt every year.
  • The government borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.
  • We’ve racked up more than $100 trillion in unfunded future obligations.

And yet all these people can do is schedule political votes so they can run against what they’re against, without bothering to tell us what they’re for?

To be fair, there is one Democratic budget that will be voted on: President Obama’s. The Republicans will insist on this. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will offer the President’s budget for a vote. Last year, it was rejected unanimously.

Come to think of it, one has to admire the excellence of a budget that can garner literally no support, not even from it’s author’s most fervent political friends.

Okay. The Senate plans to begin voting on Wednesday, May 16. They’ll take up the following 5 proposals:

  1. S. Con. Res. 41, President Obama’s budget
  2. H. Con. Res. 112, the House-Passed (Paul Ryan) budget
  3. S. Con. Res. 37, Sen. Pat Toomey’s budget
  4. S. Con. Res. 42, Sen. Rand Paul’s budget
  5. S. Con. Res. 44, Sen. Mike Lee’s budget

Each of the 4 Republican budgets begin to get spending under control. The President’s budget keeps spending on auto-pilot. Don’t expect a single Senate Democrat to vote “yes” on any of these budgets. 

Here’s a handy one-page cheat sheet we’ve created to help you compare and understand the competing proposals.

Wouldn’t it be great if one of the (responsible) budgets actually passed? (I’m partial to Rand Paul’s “tea party” budget, myself.)

This week’s budget voting may be a political stunt. But who cares. Let’s push these “leaders” of ours to do their job and actually pass a budget!

Three of the plans are most worthy of support. Please call your state’s two Senators and tell them to support what we’re calling the “tea party” Senators’ budget proposals:

This is important. It’s about whether we get our fiscal house in order or go the way of Greece.

Will you take a moment to help?

TAKE ACTION: Sign the petition in support of the tea party Senators’ budgets

OR

TAKE ACTION: Tell your Senators to vote YES on the Toomey, Lee, and Paul budgets

Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks’ Legislative Counsel and VP Health Care Policy