Blue Dogs Call on Congress to Put Forward a Budget

WASHINGTON – The co-chairs of a Blue Dog Coalition panel on fiscal responsibility and government reform blasted an assertion by a powerful committee chairman Monday that the House might just want to skip passing a divisive budget resolution this year.

“Failure to pass an annual budget is a failure of one of our most basic responsibilities,” said Reps. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, in a joint statement.

“We cannot begin to bring down our national debt or have serious conversations about our spending priorities if we can’t even pass a budget,” they said.

McAdams and Case were responding to comments House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth made Monday in The Hill, in which the Kentucky Democrat said “I wouldn’t bet on doing” a budget resolution in this presidential election year.

Last year, the House Democratic leadership refrained from bringing a budget resolution to the floor due to concerns that a small number of progressives could kill it by pushing for higher spending on domestic programs and dramatic cuts to Defense spending.

In August, Congress and the White House reached an agreement on legal spending caps for both 2020 and 2021.

Yarmuth told The Hill that having a deal on how much money will be spent for the coming year “argues against doing a budget resolution.”

“It’s more unlikely than likely, because with the top-line numbers already established, the appropriators are probably going to do something that’s pretty similar to what this year’s was,” he said.

But McAdams and Case said such thinking is exactly why the Blue Dog Coalition has endorsed and strongly supports the No Budget, No Pay Act.

“We firmly believe Congress should play by the same rules as every hard working American: Do your job and do it on time, or else you don’t get paid,” they said. “Congress should do its job and produce a bipartisan budget that invests in our future and puts our country on a fiscally-sustainable path.”