Call to Regular Order

[Geee]

National Review:

Well, at least we’re starting to get the procedure right. Washington has rediscovered the beauty of the boring: It’s called “regular order,” using the normal, routine, constitutional process to arrive at, for example, a budget.

Normal had disappeared during the Obama years. Republicans duly submitted annual budgets, which the president then used for target practice, most famously demagoguing Paul Ryan’s 2011 budget as un-American. Meanwhile, the Democratic-controlled Senate simply stopped producing budgets for four years. And the ones the White House put out were so preposterous that, for example, the 2011 version was rejected by the Senate 97–0.

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What little progress that was made came by way of crisis backroom deals orchestrated by Gangs of This or That. One gave us a sequester that everyone purports to deplore. Another gave us the naked tax hike of the “fiscal cliff.” And none produced a written record of actual, written offers that could serve as the basis for serious, open negotiations.