Please take note of this. Democratic Senators are a funny bunch, sometimes. Point out that they’re mandated, Constitutionally, to pass a budget every year? They yawn. Remind them that it’s rank hypocrisy to lecture people on fiscal responsibility when they won’t show any? You get a shrug in response. Observe that shenanigans like Senate Democrats not doing a budget since 2009 is one major reason why people hate Congress more than Nickleback? They’ll just chuckle and smirk.
But threaten not to pay them, and… well. Suddenly it’s Civics Week at the Senate.
The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat said Sunday that the upper chamber will pass a budget this year, something House Republican leaders have insisted as they’ve agreed to hold a vote on a short-term increase in the nation’s borrowing limit.
[snip]
House Republicans last week proposed a vote on raising the debt ceiling for three months to give both chambers time to pass a budget for the next fiscal year. Under the proposal, if either chamber fails to adopt a budget by April 15, then that chamber’s members would then have their paychecks withheld.
I’ve omitted Schumer’s face-saving threat to raise taxes; the senior Senator from New York does not exactly have quite as much ability to dictate legislation as he thinks that he does, and the Democrats will be busy madly scrambling just to keep the next budget deficit at something near the trillion dollars per year that they’ve been cruising on since 2009. Watching THAT suddenly go away will be worth the price of admission, right there: there’s a lot of Democratic cronies and interest groups raking in that money.
I really wish that we didn’t have to threaten Democratic Senators with docking their pay to make them act like, well, United States Senators. But apparently we do.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: While I’m sure that the “We were always going to pass a budget this year!” claim will fly with provincial hicks in Santa Cruz and the Upper West Side, I would suggest to Democrats that other parts of the country are more likely to see through that excuse. Fair warning.
I suspect they have a plan to slip something onerous through this measure… Especially if they don’t gut the filibuster. (but I still fully expect them to do that)
I wonder if a court when faced with ruling whether withholding congressional pay is constitutional or not would look and say ‘well, this unconstitutional thing can only happen if this other unconstitutional thing happens (Senate not passing budget), so we’re just going to wash our hands of it, it’s Congress’s problem’.