It's far less than an actual budget.
It's a "budget agreement." Whatever that is.
But it's not something that the Senate should be proud of.
You know the "fiscal cliff"? The Budget Control Act is the fiscal cliff. It sets the debt ceiling, it mandates sequestration and allows for the tax increases. You don't like the fiscal cliff that the House set up? Well, then you don't like the text of the fiscal cliff legislation, the BCA that the (D) in the Senate are taking credit for. Welcome to the alternate universe in which crap is deemed frankincense because, well, we can't have anything called "crap."
A budget resolution sets the framework for a budget, so everybody knows the rough outlines--income, expenses, debt. The BCA was more than that.
The budget includes authorization, category by category, for spending, as well as limits what can be spent. Once passed, that's it. The BCA is not a budget, and the word games used in citing (R) and media to say it is relies fundamentally on people's not knowing what a budget is. You should feel insulted. They just called you a low-information reader and because you trusted them you let yourself be snookered.
The actual budget acts were passed months after the BCA, in 12/2011. Nobody passes "a budget" anymore, it's far too complicated for mere politicians to handle. But for a couple of years the Congress didn't even pass funding authorization acts. When you see "continuing resolutions" you know you don't have a budget. The last CR of 2011 expired 12/23/11, and it was the 5th for that year. The BCA didn't remove the need for the CR--and if it were a budget, it would have.
Now, passing a budget was a big campaign promise by (D) (and, I'd guess, (R)) in 2010 and 2008, so it makes sense that the Senate would grasp at straws to say they kept their promise. Until late 2011, they didn't. Meaning they blew it for a few years and decided to use this piece of crap as their fig leaf for a few more months. Sorry. Grownups have to be able to handle the truth.
Continuing resolutions started happening again at the end of the 2012 f/y, in 9/12. We don't have a budget now and the Senate apparently has to resort to bragging about how wonderful the BCA is, even as the government's running under yet another CR.
This isn't anything new. This has been standard operating procedure for a lot of years. *'s last few months were under a continuing resolution. The main part of the * 2009 budget that we give * credit for (not TARP, not the stimulus) wasn't passed until weeks after Obama was inaugurated. * said he'd veto it because it increased spending too much. Obama wanted to move on and signed it. We blame * for that increased spending. That's how politics works. Anyway, even before 2008 there were a lot of CRs--that's how passing a budget could be a big campaign promise that year. Heck, now we can't even get a normal budget resolution passed.
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