#93 - Democrats--The Real Party of 'No'

[This article was originally published as the editorial in the June 13th issue of Human Events newspaper.]

Ah, what a life being a Democratic member of Congress these days. Forget about that thing called, er, governing, as the country is aboard a bullet train racing toward financial ruin. Nope. That would take what is often referred to as “leadership.” Instead Democrats in the nation’s capital have chosen the path of embracing the lowest common denominator with perversely crafted scare tactics: lying incessantly to voters that Republicans conspire to destroy Medicare and wheelbarrow seniors into a lake (literally), as one TV ad argued.

And what makes these rote talking points even sicker is that the liberals in Congress have failed to produce a plan of their own. Let’s walk through the steps, shall we. It is now more than two years since Senate Democrats passed a budget. Two years! In fact, if you’re keeping count, the last time Harry Reid actually did his duty as majority leader and adopted a budget was back on April 29, 2009, which is more than 760 days ago. Nothing since. And then there’s President Obama’s budget, which was defeated 97 to 0 in the Senate. Not one single senator voted for the President’s budget—not even avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders, because the proposal was considered “stale.”

Even the hyper-liberal New York Times cannot stomach the Democratic inaction. “What exactly are the Democrats proposing as their alternative to get the budget back into long-term balance?” the Times editorialized recently. “Rather than coming up with original ideas and sensible policies to counter the extreme ones pouring out of the House, it simply votes down House bills, or refuses to take them up.” The nonsense about the House bills aside, the Times’ editorial board is spot-on: Democrats have glided through Congress bereft of ideas, yet they are heavy on attacks. And in large part, so far, the Democrats are getting away with this strategy.

Hey, remember when all we heard on television was how the GOP was the party of “No?” What now? At best, the Democratic Party has “No” plan for dealing with Medicare and skyrocketing deficits. At worst, the default plan of ObamaCare is to raid the already-insolvent Medicare “trust fund” to pay for an entirely new entitlement program. Heck, even Bill Clinton agrees that something needs to be done about Medicare, going as far as to call out the Democrats for their demagoguery. “I think the Democrats are going to have to be willing to give up, maybe, some short-term political gain by whipping up fears on some of these things, if it’s a reasonable Social Security proposal, a reasonable Medicare proposal,” he said in an interview. “We’ve got to deal with these things. You cannot have health care devour the economy.”

To recap, the New York Times and Bill Clinton, demigods to modern-day liberals, are both unloading on Democrats for sitting on their derrieres when it comes to this nation’s debt. For Obama’s part, he’s happy to just give speeches and try to scare the life out of seniors. His budget, the one that was unanimously rejected by the Senate, didn’t deal with entitlement spending. So he gave a speech, redoubling his efforts to tackle backbreaking entitlement costs. From that speech, the White House offered up a press release, devoid of any specific numbers or policy proposals. Nothing since.

As one House Republican official told Human Events, “It’s not a matter of him agreeing with Rep. Ryan, but the President is a leader, and leaders need to act, not simply talk, and he has not done that yet.”

[bold emphases mine]