Some useful analysis of the current state of budgetary politics by Ezra Klein:
Both sides face the same problem: Nothing they produce has any chance of passing. But to House Republicans, that's been a reason to go big on the annual budget resolution. Unshackled from the need to write legislation the Senate can pass and the president will sign, House Republicans have used their budgets to detail a dramatic, sweeping vision for how they would remake the federal government. For Senate Democrats, it's been just the opposite: Since nothing they produce will make it through the House, they've mostly ignored the annual budget resolution and saved their political capital for the inevitable end-of-year dealmaking.
Both approaches have had their weaknesses. House Republicans ended up going too far, signing onto unpopular Medicare reforms that they tried to walk back in this year's budget and proposing deep cuts that have given the president an easy target. But Senate Democrats have developed a reputation for cowardice on fiscal issues, and Republicans have delighted in noting that we have gone more than 1,000 days without the Senate passing a budget.
Remember that there is no need - constitutionally - for the national government to have a budget, so it invites gamesmanship.
