Kent Conrad: “There are lots of good ideas coming out on this idea to extend the concept that our Republican friends have come up with…”

“There are lots of good ideas coming out on this idea to extend the concept that our Republican friends have come up with to go to 13 months in a year in order to solve our budget problems. The last time we made a major change in the calendar, it was made by the Pope. I am not sure what that says about those putting forward this proposal, other than I can't wait to see what they come up with next. I don't think this is the solution to the fiscal problems of America; 13 months is not the answer. Going back to the headline, it really is kind of stunning: 'GOP Seeks to Ease Crunch with 13-month Fiscal Year.' One person who has commented on this in this morning's paper is Robert Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group. He says they are degrading themselves and we degrade the budget process by resorting to these budget gimmicks. The only disagreement I have with that is, this goes way beyond gimmick when all of a sudden we are going to take a 12-month year and make it 13 months to address the budget problems of the country. I think our Republican friends have gone off in the weeds. I hope they reconsider. This is a mistake. If we start going in the direction of adding months, where is this going to stop? We have 12 months. Thirteen months? Fourteen months? Are we going to be able to solve all the problems of the country if we start to engage in fiction? That is not the direction we ought to take.”