One word: Caboose!
Yesterday, the Senate Democrats’ blocking of the Budget continued to a special session. Democrats’ stopped talking about committee chairmanships and assignments and suddenly produced, after 9 weeks, a list of things they want added to the budget.
And the press is falling for it.
The Democrats’ proposal isn’t a serious one. First, they don’t provide any way to fund their $600 million increase in spending, but that’s not the key point.
There are two budgets. The one for the next biennium, and what is called the “caboose” bill. The caboose is the list of supplemental appropriations for the current budget. It balances out spending for the next few months due to fluctuations between anticipated revenues and actual revenues.
The Democrats killed the caboose bill, too.
If the Democrats were sincerely concerned about budget priorities for the next two years, why kill the caboose bill? Almost none of their “list of budget demands” are for the caboose bill. Their complaints almost universally talk about the budget for the next two years.
But they killed the caboose because this isn’t really about the budget for them. It’s about power. They had it. They lost it. They want it back.
They like to point back to 2004 when the budget wasn’t passed until months after session ended as well, but they don’t mention that even with the budget standoff of 2004 the caboose budget passed during the regular session.
The disagreement in 2004 was actually about the budget, so they didn’t hold the caboose bill hostage. It passed unanimously during the regular session, and the biennial budget passed two months later.
The Democrats should’ve passed the caboose bill as a sign of good faith and that their issues are truly budgetary and not the infantile whining of post-election hissy fits.
That they didn’t tells you that this is nothing more than a standoff for power.
