The “grand bargain” may be proving elusive to Republicans and Democrats right now, but there’s no shortage of proposals in Washington. There are currently no fewer than six budgets circulating on Capitol Hill.
In addition to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget, there is the Senate Democrats’ budget, the House Democrats’ budget, the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget, the Congressional Black Caucus budget and the Republican Study Committee budget.
President Obama is also due to release his budget in early April.
“In terms of the Ryan budget, it took a public drubbing in the election,” Democratic strategist and ’92 Clinton-Gore campaign manager James Carville said Tuesday on NOW with Alex Wagner. “Have we already forgotten about November? Republicans ran on the Ryan budget. If they want to keep revisiting that, that’s their choice.
“I’ve been around politics for a long time and I’ve been through a lot of defeats and seen the other side go through defeats, but I have never seen a reaction to a defeat like these Republicans right now,” Carville said. “It’s really amazing. You have some pointing out that they had a disastrous election and we have to change everything, and then you have the Ryan budget which is like, ‘We never had an election so let’s get just get rid of Obamacare and go with the same thing we lost the election on.’”
The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman added that Democrats are only too happy to see the Republicans dusting off the latest version of the Ryan budget. “Democrats are saying, ‘Look, you want to run on the Ryan budget again? We’ve got some House races we want to show you coming up in 2014,” he said.
Most of the budgets are expected to be voted on in the House of Representatives Wednesday. Only the Ryan budget is expect to pass, albeit on a party-line vote.
Matthew Alexander