We pick up the story with the family anxiously sitting around the table. Their debt is high, finances are tight, and tough decisions about how to make more money and cut expenses must be considered. But in an effort to avoid making hard choices or disappointing anyone, they decide they can just muddle through without a budget. The viewers all know this is a recipe for financial disaster. Well that is unless the viewers happen to be in Congress, because while the country’s fiscal challenges are immense, lawmakers are contemplating not making a budget for next year.

Each year the Budget Committees in the House and Senate hammer out a budget resolution – which serves as a blueprint for the next year’s spending, and charts the course for future years. It also can be used to issue instructions for committees to find savings or plan for expenditures in the coming year – like budgeting for a new roof on the family house. The budget resolution is just an agreement between the House and Senate – it never goes to the President, it never becomes law. But it aligns the two chambers as they write the various spending bills so when they finalize them (always at the eleventh hour) they are singing off the same budgetary sheet of music.

The budget resolution also signals priorities. Where does the Congress plan to invest, where are they going to trim, and how are they going to pay for it all – or not, in the case of deficit spending. If you don’t do a budget resolution then the apparent priority is not telling the public where you stand. And House leadership has been pretty straightforward about that.

In a distressing trend, while Congress has only failed to adopt a budget resolution four times since the system was created in 1974, every instance has been in the last dozen years, and every time it has been a mid-term election year.

The Senate is doing their part. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad (D-ND) made more aggressive cuts than the President is seeking and got the bill through committee on a near party line vote – Sen. Feingold (D-WI) wanted to see even deeper cuts and voted with the Republicans.

In the House, Budget Committee Chairman Spratt (D-SC) is trying to balance competing wings of his party. The conservative Blue Dog Democrats want to see greater cuts in non-national security spending and the Progressives and the Congressional Black Caucus don’t want to see even as deep of cuts in non-defense spending as the President proposed. From our perspective, cuts need to happen – and there is no reason that defense should be spared.

To be fair, the budget is a pretty easy issue for the minority party to demagogue about. And avoiding hard decisions may seem like the right political move for a majority party sailing into political headwinds. But there’s something House Democratic leadership should consider. The last time the budget resolution wasn’t adopted, it reflected a break down in order and an end to a political era. The Democrats should remember it well – it was 2006 and they were swept into power.

But even more important than electoral consequences, the majority has to be concerned about effective governance and moving the country in the right direction. This is especially important considering, under even optimistic scenarios, we are looking at staggering high deficits for the next decade. Not enacting a budget is an abdication of responsibility.