Passive in the Senate (NY Times)

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29sun1.html?ref=opinion

<snip>
Republican leaders in the Senate have spent weeks gleefully deriding the Democrats who run the chamber for not producing a budget proposal in more than two years. It is a classic tactic, designed to deflect attention from their party’s toxic plan to privatize Medicare. The truth, though, is that the Republicans also have a point.

<snip>
The 112th Senate has become a body that largely reacts to outrageous things that Republicans do or say. Rather than coming up with original ideas and sensible policies to counter to the extreme ones pouring out of the House, it simply votes down House bills, or refuses to take them up. Democratic senators, fearful of last year’s Republican tide, may think that a play-it-safe strategy will save their jobs in next year’s election, but the country could pay a high price for their timidity.

<snip>
But there will be no vote on a budget by the Democratic majority of the Senate, the traditional method for stating the majority’s priorities in black and white dollar signs. That’s because the Budget Committee has not agreed on one. And that’s because a good plan by the committee chairman, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, was deferred by Senate leaders, who feared that the plan’s tax increase on millionaires would make Democratic senators ripe targets for Tea Party attacks.

<snip>
But if Democrats are ever going to regain the momentum in the national conversation, they have to stand for something. Standing pat gives Republicans huge openings to move the debate to the right.

.........more

[Jim Lane]

1. K&R. This doesn't seem like a difficult point to understand, so why don't the Dems get it? (n/t)

[individual rights]

2. I thought the Senate was supposed to be "passive" if one side has less than 60.