“Man bites dog” is news, runs an old adage, but “Dog bites man” is not.  Yet “Democrats pass 1^st budget since ‘09” still made headlines over the weekend and it is hard to tell into which category it fits.

It should go without saying that in a two century-old republic the government passing a budget should not be news.  Doing so should be the first duty of a financially responsible legislature; living within it should be the second.   But this is the first time in the current administra­tion that the United States Senate – the self-styled “world’s greatest deliberative body” – has taken the first step, and it will likely never take the second.

For the bad news about this “budget” is everywhere else:  it passed with a bare 50-49 majority at 4:38 a.m. on a Saturday morning in March, with no Republicans in favor and five Democrats defecting; it will never be reconciled with the considerably different budget that a Republican House passed earlier this month; and even if enacted it would authorize higher taxes and a record $3.7 trillion in spending.

Yet even in a nation staggering under record debts and deficits, Senators somehow found the money to pay for carry-out in pizza (for the Democrats) and barbecue (for the Republicans) for their all-night session and to hire cars to drive them home.

So man bites dog, or dog bites man, and the era of irresponsible spending and continuing resolutions continues.  One wonders:  how long?

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