House Republicans have refused to even hold a hearing on the president's budget proposal for the first time in 20 years, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have an alternative plan in mind.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ruled out the idea of cooperating with the president before they met at the White House last week, but after the meeting McConnell said they're "committed to trying to pass" their own budget.
That no longer seems to be the case. Speaker Ryan told House Republicans they may skip releasing their own budget this year.
Ryan told members at a closed-door conference meeting that they could skip the budget process altogether, even as he strongly signaled that it would be the wrong move.
“It would be a shame, but the sky won't fall if we don't do a budget,” he said, according to a person in the room. [...]
The remarks represent the first time that Ryan has suggested even the possibility of not putting out a budget, something Republicans have assailed Democrats for in the past.
Without a guide; without a budget blueprint, Paul Ryan's coveted appropriations process -- which he lovingly refers to as "regular order" -- cannot go forward.
This may all seem very familiar to you because we witnessed the same song and dance in 2015. Former Speaker John Boehner vowed to complete the entire appropriations process but he was forced to abandon that plan because House Republicans could not pass some of their own proposals.
Most notably, you may recall that a funding bill for the Department of the Interior could not pass because House Republicans didn't want to go on the record opposing the Confederate flag. The entire appropriations process was abandoned shortly thereafter to avoid talking about the flag.
As much as many people in the media would like you to believe, the dynamics that complicated John Boehner's life weren't jettisoned when he resigned from office.
It's not clear where this leaves legislation for funding recovery efforts in Flint, Michigan. Congressional Republicans previously said they wanted to examine the president's request for aid in context with the rest of the budget, but they have no budget.
Before he became the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan was the chairman of the Budget Committee.