Editor’s note: This is in response to the letter “GOP obstructionism is a ploy to smear Dems,” published in Thursday’s Daily Lobo. In the letter, Caedmon Holland argues that Republicans are “trying to shift the blame for their failures to Democrats.”
Editor,
I found it hilarious to read Caedmon Holland’s opinion on the Democratic-controlled Senate’s inability to produce a budget since 2009. Holland is unaware of how the Senate’s budget process works.
The House passes its own budget; the Senate passes its own. Then they put the two together, forge a compromise and send it to the White House.
The problem is the Senate hasn’t produced its own budget since 2009. It has little to do with Republicans because Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, hasn’t even brought the measure to the floor. He has tried to protect his party by not making the Democrats go on the record with a vote for unwanted and/or bad policy. It’s because the Democrats have no backbone to address the fiscal problems our nation faces. The only budget the Democrats brought to the floor was President Obama’s two years ago, which was voted down 97-0.
The Democrats are just as big a failure as their predecessors, the Republicans, were during the Bush years. Nobody is going to tackle the big economic issues we face. We will go bankrupt if our government officials don’t start to tackle the drivers of our immense debt, which are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.
Jeff Barkley
UNM staff and student
