The budget process

I believe that before we understand what happened in our latest crises, and can discover who did what to whom, we need to understand the rules of this rather complicated game.

The Constitution

Section 7:All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills

This means, that the House must propose, the Senate can Amend, and then the modifications can be hammered out in reconciliation.  The President, as usual, can sign, refuse to sign, or veto bills which are placed on his desk in this fashion.

What is important to see is that the President is not the source of the budget, but its implementer. He has 2/3 of the power of the Congress to sop a law, 0% to actually create a budget.

As usual, this basic differenced has been fudged by the mere size of the budget's complexity.  Since President Harding, we have had a budget process law, an executive department (OMB) which has the responsibility to create a budget based on current expenditures as projected to be carried out in a "next year" which begins on September 1st.

The budget Process

We also have a "process" which begins in the March time frame so that the appropriate 12 congressional committees (both House and Senate) can review the Presidents submission and come up with a budget that everyone can live with.

Wikipedia has a good US Budget Process description on which my comments are partially based.

This budget process has been ignored since the President lost control of both houses of congress when Teddy Kennedy died and was replaced by Scott Brown on January 10.  Instead of passing concurrent resolution of both houses on the components of the budget, the Senate has insisted on passing a single  Omnibus budget bill which bypasses agreements on each component of the budget and replace them with a single must pass omnibus budget bill.

Reason for the change

I believe the change occurred to protect Obama Care.
Since Obama Care was passed on a completely partisan fashion, the Democrats cannot allow all portions of the budget, except that including Obama Care, to be passed through the normal budget process. To do so, would leave an open government fully funded except for that budget component (I believe Health and human services).  This would place the Republicans in a much stronger position since, while very important, this is not the same as closing the government.

As a result of this methodology, the President was able to posture, with the aid of his press, as an adult who will not give in to a group of extortionists who threaten to blow up the administration if they do not have their way with Obama care. But it was he, and his party, that held the entire government hostage to protect Obama care.

If anyone can provide facts to disprove my assertion, I'd be very interested in hearing them.  Right now, I am angry that the government lies and misleads the people, instead of having their best interests in mind.

What I don't want, is to hear diatribes for or against Obama Care, here I'd like to find out if I am wrong, and can see the President and his party in a more appreciative way.
Leon