GOP doesn’t seem to want a budget

John Marchese, Henderson

Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013 | 2:03 a.m.

The Senate and House budget committees are again having “conversations” and, hopefully, doing their jobs. I’m still perplexed as to why House Republicans never accepted one of the 18 requests this year from the Democratic Senate to hold a joint budget committee conference.

The Senate and House committees are supposedly discussing the same issues. Democrats want to close tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations to replace part of the sequester cuts, which will take $91 billion out of government funding next year. Republicans want to keep those perks and cut federal benefits programs.

Which programs do Republicans want to cut? Social Security? Medicare? Welfare?

I know Republicans have a plan — keep doing nothing and keep the current spending levels in place, even if it means bigger cuts to military spending. The right-wing spin to this will be that Democrats support defense cuts because Republicans won’t agree to more tax revenue, omitting that Democrats wanted the new revenue to come from corporate welfare tax breaks. Republicans always talk a good game, but that’s all they do.