Debbie Dingell: “certainly the budget process could benefit from useful progressive reform. However, the bill we are considering is…”

“certainly the budget process could benefit from useful progressive reform. However, the bill we are considering is neither useful nor progressive. It can properly be described as deform. As long as the majority lacks the political courage to set realistic spending caps, we will continue to see the abuse of the budget process that we have become accustomed to under Republican control of the Congress. Where more than $34 billion, including the cost of the census, is declared an ``emergency.'' These ``emergencies'' are nothing but an absolute circumvention of the budget process and a parliamentary exercise to evade hard choices. Let history be our guide and let us examine how the budget process has operated under Republican control. I would observe that last year Congress failed to even adopt a budget resolution for the first time since the Budget Act was signed into law. Why, because the budget process was broken? Hardly. Because the Republican majority in Congress could not agree with itself on a budget resolution. Rather than negotiate a bipartisan document, the majority chose not to draft a budget at all. This unprecedented failure is not an indictment of the budget process but rather of the majority's incompetence.”