Why can't Republicans enforce law against Harry Reid?

◼ Many of the responses I’ve gotten to my article on the Republican plan to use the debt ceiling as leverage to force Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pass a budget have been along these lines: If it is against the law for Congress not to pass a budget (and it is), and if Harry Reid is violating that law (and he is), then why can’t something be done about it? Why can’t Reid be charged with something? Or perhaps a lawsuit be brought? - Byron York/Washington Examiner

The answer is the law requiring Congress to pass an annual budget, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism. Lawmakers are required by law to pass a budget each year by April 15, but there’s no provision to punish them, or even slightly inconvenience them, if they don’t. In Reid’s case, the Senate last passed a budget in April 2009, 1,351 days ago as of Wednesday.

“The law doesn’t have teeth,” says a Senate aide involved in the fight. “Sen. Sessions and others have proposed process reforms to give the budget law teeth (one reform would make it harder to pass spending bills without a budget), but the debt ceiling is the strongest leverage we have on this. This is the opportunity.”

...There’s no way to know precisely how the debt ceiling fight will play out, other than to say in the end the debt ceiling will ultimately be raised. But surely one result should be a strengthening of the requirement that Congress pass a budget. It would seem unnecessary — after all, it is a core constitutional responsibility of lawmakers — but Harry Reid has made a new, stronger law a real priority.