Romney Responds to Obama’s Three Year Budget Fail: “Extraordinary, Unfortunate” (radio interview)

Obama got a big ‘F’ smackdown on his budget plan – again. Fail.

On Wednesday, U.S. senators voted 99-0 to resoundingly defeat the president’s offering. In March, the House rejected his plan 414-0. That equals not a single vote of support.

Trounced:

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up.

“A stunning development for the president of the United States in his fourth year in office,” Mr. Sessions said of the unanimous opposition.

Amazingly, not one Senate Democrat has voted in favor of any budget for three years and they have not offered a plan of their own. Imagine that. For three years in a row, the federal government has operated WITHOUT A BUDGET.

On Hugh Hewitt’s national radio program last night, guest-hosts Guy Benson (Townhall) and Mary Katharine Ham (Townhall alum ) interviewed Governor Mitt Romney. Romney responded to Obama’s budget being bounced to the curb:

Guy Benson: Okay, Governor, last night, something extraordinary happened in the United States Senate. President Obama’s budget for the second consecutive year was defeated unanimously. This time around, it was 99-0. I’m curious what you think the implications of that vote are, and whether you see it as an indictment of this president’s leadership?

Mitt Romney: There’s no question in my view, Guy, but this is a underscoring of the president’s failure to lead. This is, after all, a body which is held by Democrats. If he wanted to see a budget passed, he should have worked with them. If they wanted to make adjustments, to make it more palatable, he should have found ways to make those adjustments. We’ve now gone on for three years without a federal budget? This is absolutely extraordinary. There’s not a business in this country that could operate the way the federal government is operating. And the fact that we have a president who is so inexperienced as a leader that he doesn’t know how to lead his own party, let alone reach across the aisle and work with Republicans, is a very unfortunate and potentially damaging element to our nation and to our economy. It’s something which I really think may well be unprecedented to have the president’s budget defeated in both the House and the Senate by unanimous votes. It’s very amazing.

GB: Right, right. It was 513-0 this year in those two bodies combined. You mentioned this failure over the last three years to have a federal budget, and this in an era of $16 trillion dollars of the national debt and growing. I know your campaign’s been spending a lot of time focusing on deficits and debt. So I really have to know, as you watch Europe, because the Euro Zone again is experiencing significant tremors this week. Greece appears to be teetering on the brink. I know the easy conservative talking point is to frame all of that, and the implosion of the European welfare state, as a cautionary tale for us here. But setting that aside, if you were president today, what would you be doing, what would you be watching over there, and how is it possible, if at all, for a president to help shield the U.S. economy from a potential damaging series of shock waves coming across the Atlantic Ocean?

MR: Well, when there is turbulence in industrial and financial markets, the best thing you can do is make America the place that people want to come both with their capital, with their innovations, with their business expansions. And so this is an opportunity for America to show that we have taken action that Europe did not take, that we have reformed our entitlements to make them solvent long term, that we are dealing with our budget crises, that we’re taking action to make America an attractive place for businesses and for job creators. This means that people will be looking to make investments elsewhere, and we want them to look towards us, not looking towards Asia, as in some cases they will be concerned about Europe. So the best thing we can do to help ourselves is to make America a more attractive place for enterprise. And unfortunately, what the president has done is make us less attractive as a place for enterprise, and he’s also failed to be willing to even address seriously either our entitlement crisis or our budget crisis. And so we will, if Europe goes through pains here, we’re going to suffer pains as well, in part because of the failure of this president to improve the attractiveness of America as a place for growth and investment and job creators.

In the 15 minute plum interview with Romney, the wide-ranging conversation not only included Obama’s failed budget, but included Jeremiah Wright, the Euro debt crisis, Biden’s hits on Bain Capitol, Obama’s personal assassination campaign strategy, and how Romney is approaching the task of selecting a vice president:

Excellent interview! Read the entire transcript here.

(emphasis added to text)

› Jayde Wyatt