Senate budget resolution reveals dysfunction

From the political notebook: » Last week, the U.S. Senate adopted a budget resolution for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The pitch to get Republican senators to vote for it was this: It doesn’t matter what’s in it. We just have to pass something so we can enact tax reform without being subject to a filibuster by Democrats.

It’s worth reflecting just how screwed up and dysfunctional this is.

The budget resolution isn’t supposed to be meaningless. Congress is supposed to agree on one by April 15, more than five months before the new fiscal year begins. It is to guide and constrict the Appropriations Committees in developing specific funding bills for the following year.

The U.S. Constitution mentions the topics on which more than a simple majority in the Senate is to be required: approving treaties, impeachment convictions, constitutional amendments. Tax reform isn’t one of the topics.

Instead, we’ve got a budget resolution being approved after the budget year has already begun. Even though Democrats inveighed against it, everyone knows it is irrelevant, because what the federal government spends this year isn’t going to be decided by Appropriations Committee bills approved through the ordinary process. It will be some jerry-rigged continuing resolution cobbled together by Republican and Democratic leaders just before the next government shutdown deadline.

That’s already happened once.

It may happen again more than once before the end of the fiscal year is reached.

So, this particular budget resolution is an artifice whose only purpose is to enable Republicans to enact tax reform without Democratic votes. Under Senate rules, policy legislation supposedly to implement the budget resolution isn’t subject to the filibuster.

Here’s an idea. Why not abolish the filibuster rule so that a simple majority of the Senate can enact tax reform at any time, without going through a phony parliamentary procedure? That’s the way the founders intended it.

And how about passing a budget resolution five months before the fiscal year begins, rather than nearly a month after it has already started? One that would do what a budget resolution is actually intended to do: reflect a consensus among the Congress about how much and where to spend the next fiscal year as guidance and a constraint for the Appropriations Committees.

And, as long as we’re daydreaming, how about enacting actual appropriation bills for the next fiscal year before it begins, rather than lurching from last-minute improvisation to last-minute improvisation?

If Congress can’t manage to pass a real budget before the fiscal year begins, it richly deserves the disdain in which it is held by the American people.

» Attorney General Mark Brnovich may not know it, but the pass he gave the City of Phoenix for violating state laws perfectly summed up Greg Stanton’s tenure as mayor.

The provisions of Senate Bill 1070 that remain are actually the ones that were most controversial at the time of its passage.

Those provisions require local police departments to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials and, in the course of a stop for other purposes, to follow up on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence.

Phoenix rejected a citizens petition to declare itself a sanctuary city. But that put Stanton and the other progressives on the city council in a tough spot.

President Donald Trump had enflamed the debate about the role of local police departments in immigration enforcement anew.

They felt a political necessity to distinguish themselves from the callused meanies in the Legislature and the execrable Trump on the topic.

So, with great fanfare, they directed the Phoenix police department to adopt new, kinder and more welcoming policies on immigration enforcement, and then applauded themselves for their moral superiority.

John Kavanagh, a leading legislative meanie, filed a complaint with Brnovich alleging that Phoenix had violated what remains of SB 1070.

After looking into it, Brnovich decided that it was all hooey. Despite the preening rhetoric, the policy was still to adhere to the most controversial provisions of SB 1070.

Stanton did get a big transportation tax enacted as mayor. And after stumbling around early in his tenure, he did manage to cobble together a governing majority on the council under his leadership.

But for the most part, Stanton’s mayorship has consisted of progressive gestures without much meat to them.

He is now running for Congress, where he should fit in. After all, the empty gesture is the bread and butter of Congress.