Why didn't we already have a budget?

[Pterodactyl]

Here's what I don't get: Why did we have to have a budget showdown and have to compromise with Republicans when we could have had a budget made to OUR liking back before the current congress was sworn in back in January? We had BOTH houses of the congress AND the presidency. I mean we could have done it last summer for goodness sakes! Or any time up to January. What's up with that?

[Drale]

1. I don't believe that the lame duck session

can pass a budget, but I could be wrong on that.

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. Democrats decided in the late spring...

...that rather than have to campaign in the context of hundreds of negative ads built from hundreds of GOP cockamamie poison pill amendments to the budget, they would instead run out the clock via a series of continuing resolutions.

It looks bad in retrospect, but may have been tactically sound at the time.

In the lame duck, you'd have had not enough time, given the filibuster in the senate, to move an actual budget through the pipe.

[Pterodactyl]

3. If that was the case, it ended up costing billions.

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Calculated risk....

...the turnover in the House wasn't a sure thing back in March or April of 2010....

[Pab Sungenis]

5. Two words:

Blue Dogs. We couldn't unite our conference for anything.

[Pterodactyl]

6. So the blue dogs were opposed to a budget?