A budget? Never mind

This week’s Senate theater on the federal budget played out as expected – but it nevertheless should be highly instructive.

Majority Democrats rejected four different GOP budget plans on Wednesday, including the controversial spending outline proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and already passed by the House.

Meanwhile, not one Senate Democrat would even embrace President Obama’s budget blueprint, which went down 99-0.

Which is the party of intransigence, here? Democrats excoriate Republican fiscal policy, then run for the hills rather than go on the record in support of their own president’s financial road map. What exactly do Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his lieutenants propose?

Who knows? The Democrat-controlled Senate hasn’t passed a budget since 2009!

Instead, The Associated Press reports, they’ve opted to do nothing rather than hold “weeklong floor debates that would have exposed party members to dozens of politically difficult votes or put themselves on record in favor of tax hikes or huge deficits.”

This is leadership?

“It is very hard to overstate how urgent the fiscal crisis that we face really is when you are going the fourth consecutive year with a budget deficit of over $1 trillion,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, a freshman Republican from Pennsylvania. “There is one party that is seriously addressing these problems.”

Indeed. Criticize the Republican budget plans as timid, harsh or mean-spirited. Fine. But the fact remains that the GOP has at least put forward fiscal proposals for voters to judge and evaluate.

It’s to the country’s detriment that Senate Democrats lack the courage to do the same. The question becomes: Will voters reward such cowardice come November?