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Comment by BasicFacts | Hacker News Reader

Paul Ryan was and is the head of the House Budget committee, which under his leadership proposed a detailed budget that was passed in the US House of Representatives but failed in the Senate for both of the last two years. Romney said he supported the Ryan budget. Remarkably, no Democratic Senator has proposed or voted in favor of any budget whatsoever for the last 3.5 years.

So this "fact-check" seems to invert the truth--the Democrats have given no details about their plans, while the Republicans have been very specific about theirs, whether or not you agree with them.

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A federal budget does not include how you're going to raise the money to pay for it. The thing that Romney was vague about was which tax loopholes he was going to close to pay for his budget. No Democratic senator proposed a budget in the last 3.5 years because their President did that for them, as is customary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process).Also, only the House has "the power of the purse", i.e. the right to propose spending bills. And of course Democratic senators voted on budgets during the last 3.5 years. All spending bills have to pass the Senate. Here is the Senate roll call for one of the FY 2012 appropriations bills, which passed the Senate on Nov 1, 2011: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c... . Note that most Democrats voted "yea", and most Republicans voted "nay". Also, the article in question was not a "fact-check". It was article about fact-checking.

What I was referring to was the fact that no Democratic Senator has voted for or proposed a Budget Resolution for the past 3.5 years, which as your Wikipedia article reference says, is the normal procedure for establishing a budget after the House passes its Budget Resolution. The House and Senate budget resolutions are then normally reconciled through a negotiation process that has not happened because the Senate hasn't passed any such Budget Resolution.

So since September 2010, to keep the government functioning, Congress has passed a series of seven continuing resolutions. In their frustration at the unwillingness of the Democratic Senators to propose a budget resolution, the Republicans even brought President Obama's proposal up for a vote this last year, but it went down 0-99 in a rare show of bipartisanship. Admittedly a stunt, but the point is that Democrats are refusing to negotiate by ordinary procedures.

The Budget Process is clearly broken, and it's a serious problem for the economy and country. The non-partisan "No Labels" organization has echoed Independent former Senator Joe Lieberman in calling for a serious reform of the budget process.

Also, the blog article in question prominently attacked Rep. Ryan, and said the Romney-Ryan campaign did not have a budget plan. At least part of it was a typical partisan hit piece implying "facts" existed where they didn't.

That's a fascinating point that I hadn't looked at before. Although it doesn't completely let Romney off the hook for avoiding details, as he both embraced and distanced himself from the Ryan budget.

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