Biden has been simply a JOKE when it comes to leading the Democrat charge on the budget....he's been out of town...out of country...locking up media people in closets so they can't talk to folks at fundraisers and totally ignoring the will of the American People to cut spending....Obama's just as bad...instead of getting engaged he's his old absentee self going to Rio on spring break with the kids and hosting music functions at the White House.....It's obvious that Obama, Biden and this Administration didn't get the message from last November's midterms....And now they cry when the new CR deadline is up and demand another....the Republicans need to stick their guns and demand the $61 Billion reduction in spending...they; need to show the American People that there's been little to NO action from the administration and if the Democrats do not want to go along with it LET THEM shut down the government....the American People want both parties to work together, but it's been obvious for WEEKS that the democrats are not taking this seriously and frankly probably don't give a damn....
On budget, Joe Biden plays waiting game
By MATT NEGRIN | 3/28/11 3:57 PM EDT
President Barack Obama said in early March that Vice President Joe Biden would help seal an overdue budget deal with Republicans. Instead of playing a major role in the negotiations, however, Biden has been monitoring the debate from a distance — and waiting for the call to send him in as the closer.
Republicans are complaining that Biden has been virtually invisible since an initial March 4 meeting to start negotiations on reaching a budget deal, and several GOP offices confirmed to POLITICO that he hasn’t met with lawmakers since then. Some of them say that Biden’s absence confirms lingering suspicions that the White House isn’t serious about negotiating over the budget, even though a government shutdown on April 8 is at stake.
Others in the GOP have mocked Biden for leaving for Russia, Finland and Moldova just after joining the budget talks in early March. And last week, Biden showed up at the New York Yankees’ spring training camp while stumping for Sen. Bill Nelson’s reelection in Florida.
Instead of working on the budget, “he’s playing baseball,” chided Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. Buck later said Boehner’s office isn’t making any “official complaints” about Biden’s role, and that the talks can move forward without the vice president – as long as the vice president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are “of the same mind.”
But in the last few days, Biden seems to have been moving at a quicker pace.
The White House responded to the narrative of Biden being detached by quickly announcing that he had called Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from Moscow. And the White House told POLITICO that Biden called Boehner and Reid last Thursday.
“The White House has been in daily communication with budget negotiators – and discussions have been ongoing at many levels,” Elizabeth Alexander, a Biden spokeswoman, said in a statement Thursday. Alexander wouldn’t elaborate, but she later added that Biden talked extensively about the budget with Republicans during a St. Patrick’s Day lunch on Capitol Hill and afterward.
Democrats also note Biden has called members of Congress every day, has reviewed budget proposals that have surfaced between the two sides and is waiting for staff-level meetings to conclude before he brings the leaders of the debate together to finish the deal. A Democrat familiar with the process told POLITICO that since Obama designated Biden as the budget point man on March 2, the vice president has been weighing in if things aren’t “on track.”
An Obama administration aide said that after 64 senators urged Obama in a letter to more aggressively address spending cuts, Biden called the two senators circulating the letter: Mike Johanns, a Republican, and Michael Bennet, a Democrat. Biden gets daily updates on the talks from Jack Lew, the administration’s budget director as well as senior economic adviser Gene Sperling and top White House advisers Pete Rouse, Rob Nabors and Phil Schiliro, the aide said.
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In addition, Lew and Nabors have been sitting down with their counterparts in the Capitol, the Democrat said.
Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate before becoming vice president, has worked late-inning heroics before during congressional negotiations. He helped orchestrate the deal in the lame-duck session of Congress that extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and a year ago he helped persuade moderate Democrats who wanted to create a deficit commission to vote for raising the national debt limit.
A former White House official recalled Biden’s flair for intervening in the Democrats’ own political spat over the debt limit, noting that he hosted Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker at the time, and Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, at his residence at least twice to broker a deal.
“If there is a needle to be threaded, he’s pretty good at doing it,” the ex-official said — but added, “this is much harder this time.”
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