"No" Worries

Republicans let Obama goad them into releasing a budget. Maybe they shouldn't have.
By Christopher Beam
Slate.com

Watching congressional Republicans elaborately introduce their second alternative budget—this time with numbers—it was hard not to see them as victims of a cruel prank.

Opposition parties typically present an alternative—sometimes more than one—to the administration's budget. But it's by no means required. And for good reason: If the party doesn't control Congress, the budget stands little chance, anyway, making it more important as a rhetorical device than as a fiscal blueprint. And when the process is rhetorical, the minority generally does better when forcing the majority to defend its position rather than explaining its own. (Besides, the president's own party can often be counted on to create headaches for the administration.) All this explains why, especially when it comes to a budget, the opposition usually takes a pointillist approach, targeting one provision at a time.

This seemed to be the preference of most Republicans this year. "Traditionally, the party in the minority has offered a series of amendments to try to improve the majority's budget, and that's the tack we have taken this year," said Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire on Tuesday. Sen. John Kyl of Arizona agreed: "They won the election, so they get to draft the budget."

Yet somehow Obama managed to goad the opposition into producing its own full-blown alternative. First it was the DNC, labeling the GOP the "party of 'no.' " Obama joined in at his press conference last Tuesday: "[T]here's an interesting reason why some of these critics haven't put out their own budget. … And the reason is because they know that, in fact, the biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge health care costs that we've got out here that we're going to have to tackle."

(More here.)