This Is A Bad Joke, Right?

This story in yesterday's Hill is a bad dream.

House Democrats passed a budget document Thursday that sets discretionary spending at levels below those proposed by President Barack Obama but doesn’t address how Congress should cut deficits.

The “budget enforcement resolution” Democrats are substituting for a traditional budget resolution sets discretionary spending for 2011 at $1.12 trillion, about $7 billion less than Obama’s proposal and $3 billion less than a Senate Democratic plan. It also sets a goal of cutting deficits to the point where revenues equal all spending except for interest payments on the debt.

But unlike traditional budget resolutions, this year’s version doesn’t detail how Congress should reach that goal, leaving those tough decisions to Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission.

Wait, what?  Bipartisan fiscal commission?  Are you serious?  These guys are now in charge of the budget?

“While this resolution does not project the budget out over five years, it does look to the future by assuring that the House will have an opportunity to vote this year on longer-term budget proposals made by the president’s Fiscal Commission and approved by the Senate,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.).

The budget measure passed on a 215-210 vote as part of a rule setting debate on a supplemental spending bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. All Republicans plus 38 Democrats from both ends of their caucus voted against the bill. Liberals had concerns about the war while centrist Democrats raised concerns about domestic and disaster aid spending that House leaders plan to attach to the bill.

The enforcement resolution is being used instead of a full-fledged budget resolution because rank-and-file Democrats did not want to vote for a budget resolution that would show large deficits, particularly in an election year marked by worries about the nation’s fiscal solvency.

The measure calls for a budget by 2015 that would be balanced except for debt interest payments. This mirrors a goal already set out by Obama.

The budget document, however, doesn’t say what policies Congress should enact to reach that out-year goal, something past budget resolutions have done. Instead, it relies on the White House fiscal commission, a bipartisan panel looking at tax, spending and entitlement policies, to come up with a plan to reach their target by 2015.

This is a bad joke, right?  Balance our deficit in five years?  My god.  The tax increases and spending cuts to achieve that would be phenomenal.  And they will annihilate our recovery.  We're talking cutting trillions of dollars per year out of the budget for the next five years.

So much for stimulus.  Yeah, we're headed straight into the can.