Behind a Senate With No Budget

Both Democrats and Republicans don’t like to talk about the national debt, let alone mandatory spending--no matter what they do, somebody ends up upset. However, the Budget Control Act, is not equal to having a budget.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) returns to his office after reaching a deal on the federal budget in April 2011. Leaders barely averted a government shutdown last spring. Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

For nearly three years, the U.S. Senate has gone without a budget. Some experts say passing a formal annual budget is not necessary. But, some conservatives are using the absence of a budget as ammunition for criticizing the Democrat-controlled Senate.

In a post on the Heritage Foundation’s conservative blog, the Foundry, Mike Brownfield calls the failure to pass a budget “an egregious dereliction of duty on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D–Nev.) watch.”