Freshman Senator Mike Lee of Utah took to the floor of the senate yesterday to audition for the time-slot soon to be vacated by Glenn Beck after his inevitably singular term in congress expires.
The only thing missing is the word "caliphate."
Freshman Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said on the Senate floor Thursday that President Barack Obama might have been planning for the government to shut down all along.
"When the president had both Houses under the control of his party, why did he opt not to pass a budget for fiscal year 2011?" Lee asked.
"It was either irresponsible on one hand or deliberate and malicious on the other with intention to bring about a sequence of events that would culminate inevitably in a government shutdown," he continued. [...]
"We have to be willing to cast blame where blame is due," Lee, who helped found the Tea Party Caucus, said. "The blame here cannot and, as long as I’m standing, will not be placed at the feet of the Republican Party or tea party. We do not want a shutdown. If we have one, it will be because the president of the United States and members of the other party in this august body have refused to put forward a palatable, defensible budget."
Yes. It's the president's fault for not providing a budget that places new restrictions on abortion, defunds healthcare services for women, shoots Big Bird with a fiscal-shotgun, ends the tyranny of Click and Clack, and repeals his own healthcare reform initiative. And I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen either.
Maybe he's right. Maybe there is a lack of leadership on the left side of the aisle, if by leadership you're referring to leading the country off the edge of a cliff.
The previously Democratic controlled House of Representatives actually did pass a budget, but it was filibustered in the senate by Republicans because the Democratic budget did not include a continuation of the Bush Tax Cuts. This filibuster continued until December, when President Obama cut a deal to extend all tax cuts in exchange for extending unemployment benefits after those benefits were taken hostage.
Of course Freshman Senator Mike Lee wouldn't know that, would he? Either he doesn't know or he's simply a lying liar. You may also chose the third option - all of the above.