Obama's Budget Gets Nuked in the Senate

When your name is Barack Obama it’s always tight, except when it isn’t, and it wasn’t in the Senate today.

President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.

Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

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.

For those keeping score at home, Obama’s budget has lost by a tight vote of 513-0 in both houses of Congress. It seemed impossible that Obama’s budget performance could get worse from the 97-0 shellacking his first budget took in the Senate in 2009, but this president is adept at setting new standards.