Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Constitutional Disillusion Of Continuing Resolutions

     The normal and regular budget process used by the federal government is a hammering out of the details that both houses of Congress can pass, and the president can sign. For the last four years the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have intentionally short-circuited the federal budget by not passing one at all. This has given them the opportunity to create unnecessary crisis by having to pass what is called a "Continuing Resolution" every eight months or so. The continuing resolution is a fail safe instituted to fund essential functions of government when a situation arises whereby a budget is not passed before the fiscal deadline to do so. But President Obama and the Democrat Senate have been using the continuing resolution process to avoid their Constitutional duty to pass a budget at all and keep the country in a state of continual crisis.
     The continuing resolution process allows the President to get additional spending through a sort of back door budget. The added spending is folded into the continuing resolution and is never given the proper evaluation it would if it had to pass through a normal budgetary debate. So President Obama can bully Republicants into passing additional spending by using his bully pulpit to convince the American people that Republicants want to shut down the federal government and starve little children and senior citizens. The Republicants, not having an effective PR machine of their own, always cave and pass the continuing resolution, allowing President Obama to continue his governing by crisis.
     President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate ignore their Constitutional duty to pass a budget, which by the way the Republicant-controlled House has done every year since control of that body passed to the Republicants after the 2010 mid-term elections. The reason the President and the Democrat Senate are able to trample on the Constitution is because the Republicants are afraid to vote against the continuing resolutions. Their fear is rooted in the budget battle of 1995 when President Clinton and the the Republicant-controlled House came to a budgetary impasse and the government shut down for 28 days. The shutdown was used by Democrats to demonize Republicants, and today's Republicants think it is why they lost the 1996 Presidential election. But the government shutdown was a success for Republicants and the American people because it forced Bill Clinton into a balanced budget, and Republicants lost in 1996 because of their candidate, Bob Dole.  
     The Republicants should have never allowed President Obama the ability to run the government without a budget for the last four years. Granted, the first two years of his administration the President had super majorities in both houses. But since the Republicants have had control of the House Of Representatives they should have forced a shutdown in order to push the President into agreeing to a budget. But I fear that the scared little rabbits that run the Republicant party use their misinterpretation of the  1995 shutdown outcome to cloud their judgement about how to proceed towards fiscal sanity today. And every day that they do, is another day that President Obama and the Democrat Senate further dissolve the Constitution.

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