Herman Cain is my front runner... What about you?

Now Pelosi is out of the picture. But Reid is still at it. The Republican-controlled House has passed a budget, but Reid will not produce a Democratic spending proposal. And if Reid doesn’t want to pass a budget, then a budget won’t be passed; the majority leader controls what is and what is not considered in the Senate.

“There’s no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion,” Reid told the Los Angeles Times last week. “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.” Instead, Reid wants to wait to see if the deficit-reduction meetings led by Vice President Biden bear any fruit. Before that, Reid wanted to wait for the Gang of Six — now nearly defunct — to come up with something.

Sessions was appalled when he read Reid’s words. “It was a fundamental statement that they’re playing politics,” Sessions said. “They don’t think it’s politically smart to produce a budget. They’d rather produce nothing and attack Paul Ryan and the Republicans and think they’re going to gain politically by avoiding their fundamental statutory responsibility. It’s pretty breathtaking to me.”

Reid isn’t alone. The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad, is also happy to not produce a budget. Last week, he told reporters that he planned to “defer” work on a 2012 budget indefinitely.

It drives Republicans crazy that Democrats could so brazenly abandon such a basic responsibility. On Monday morning, all 47 GOP senators signed a letter to Reid in hopes of shaming the majority leader into action.

“Last year, Congress failed to pass a budget, failed to pass any of the twelve annual appropriations bills, and failed the nation by recklessly funding the government on a series of short-term spending bills,” the letter said. “The Senate cannot make the same mistake again.”

Oh, yes it can. At Reid’s instigation, the Senate will engage this week in a meaningless faux debate over the budget. Reid wants the Senate to vote on the House-passed GOP/Ryan budget, so that Reid and fellow Democrats can accuse Republicans of voting to kill Medicare. In return, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will likely force a vote on President Obama’s proposed budget from a few months ago that did virtually nothing to reduce the deficit, so Republicans can accuse Democrats of ignoring the fiscal crisis.

All that will take place instead of the Senate having a substantive debate and coming up with a compromise budget that can actually pass."