GOP House/Senate Pass Non-Sensical Joke Budget

(This caricature of the GOP elephant is by DonkeyHotey.)

The Republicans in the House and the Senate have passed budget proposal for 2016. While the budgets differ a little, neither of them is a serious effort at reaching a budget agreement. Both of them cut huge sums from all domestic programs (going far past what the sequester did), while adding billions to the already bloated defense budget. And neither of them has a snowball's chance in the Mojave Desert in mid-summer of passing and becoming law.

The president has already said he would veto this kind of ridiculous budget -- a budget that puts GOP ideology above the needs of the American people. Before these budget proposals were even passed, the White House had already released the following statement:

Budgets are about priorities. This evening the House Republicans made clear that once again their priority is to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires and return our economy to the same top-down economics that has failed the American people before. House Republicans voted in favor of locking in draconian sequestration cuts to investments in the middle class like education, job training, and manufacturing. House Republicans also failed to responsibly fund our national security, opting instead for budget gimmicks.

The Republican priorities stand in stark contrast to the President’s plan to reverse sequestration and bring middle-class economics into the 21st Century. Through critical investments needed to accelerate and sustain economic growth in the long run, including in research, education, training, and infrastructure, the President’s Budget shows what we can do if we invest in America’s future and commit to an economy that rewards hard work, generates rising incomes, and allows everyone to share in the prosperity of a growing America.

The President has been clear that he will not accept a budget that locks in sequestration or one that increases funding for our national security without providing matching increases in funding for our economic security. The Administration will continue to abide by these principles moving forward.

The Republicans knew this, and they passed the budget proposals anyway. Then, just to make sure their budgets could not become law, they added a couple of other things. The Senate added deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and the House decided to privatize the Medicare program (and turn Medicaid into just block grants to the states. And both the House and Senate vote to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) -- taking health insurance away from more than 16 million Americans.

They know the president will veto these budgets, and they didn't care. They didn't care because these were not serious budget proposals. They were political theater -- aimed at pleasing their base. They were just playing politics.

The question now is when they are going to get busy on a real budget proposal -- one that can be agreed to by both Congress and the president. Are they going to get it done by September, or will they force another government shutdown before finally doing it? Will they really want to shutdown the government just as the 2016 campaign gets going? It doesn't make sense -- but then making sense is not a strong suit among this current crop of GOP officials.