Heidi Alexander: “I am a little amused by the suggestion the Senator from Iowa made and others made that somehow the Senate has been…”

“I am a little amused by the suggestion the Senator from Iowa made and others made that somehow the Senate has been paralyzed for the last couple of years. Most of the people I know are concerned about what the Senate did do, not what it did not do. It is hard to say you are paralyzed when you pass a $1 trillion stimulus bill, health care law, financial regulation law, et cetera, et cetera. As far as the claim that Republicans are holding things up goes, I have a few comments. We did not have a budget last year. Most households have to have budgets. The Senate ought to have one. Why didn't we have a budget? It wasn't the Republicans holding it up. As the Senator from Iowa said, under our rules, it only takes 51 votes to pass a budget. During the last couple of years, the Democrats had 59 or 60 votes. So the reason we did not have a budget is because the Democrats did not want to pass a budget, or at least that they did not pass a budget. It had nothing to do with the Senate being 'broken.'”