Are they playing chicken or egg? Or just playing chicken?

How did we get here?

The spring special session was called so that we could find more revenue. But that failed because the Republicans all said we we didn't need more revenue. They said we had a "spending problem" that just needed to be fixed with responsible budgeting.

So we went to the regular session where the House very responsibly passed a horror budget that closes hospitals and throws people off of Medicaid.  But when the Governor announced that the horror budget would do horrible things, they all said this was premature. The implication was either 1) Somebody would find us some more revenue. 2) Their horror budget would not be the budget because the Senate would fix it.  But it couldn't be 1) because, responsible budgeting, remember?

So the Senate passed a "pretend" budget that  puts money back into health care by, basically, removing it from everything else which, of course, nobody thought was a viable solution in the first place. Hence, the "pretend."

Both the horror and pretend versions of the budget being bullshit, the Governor has decided to veto them. This way we can start again in the summer special session by going and getting the revenue first this time because, it turns out, that's how this is supposed to work.

Edwards, a Democrat, had avoided saying publicly in recent days whether he would veto the budget, which called for deep cuts to state agencies but protected funding for health care.

"It's obvious now, I think to everyone, there simply isn't enough revenue forecasted for next fiscal year to fashion a reasonable budget," Edwards said.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha is it "obvious to everyone" now or is this the dumbest chicken or egg game yet played?  Seems like if it were that obvious, we would have figured this out in the spring... or last year.. or the year before that.  But here we are in late May and the fiscal cliff is still there. It can only be that way because it's what the Republicans wanted all along. They've been playing chicken with the budget for three years, there's no reason to believe they're gonna give that up next week.   Maybe that isn't obvious to everyone, though.