If not now, when?

As federal budgets go, todays was a bit of yawn. Which, in some senses, is just what a federal budget should be.

However, it is a bit disappointing for Stephen Harper to say,

“We're not going to force an election right away,” he told CTV Newsnet immediately after leaving the House of Commons.

“There's still lots of things they haven't done here ... but they're moving in the right direction.”
globe and mail

What he has done is give the Grits a free ride on the budget. It would have been much smarter to have had ammendments prepared which would have forced the Liberals to actually discuss issues like tax cuts.

One which would have been particularily interesting would have been an ammendment to dump the Green funds in favour of a direct tax cut. Another would be to eliminate the 60 million increase in the CBC'sfunding, another would nuke the 1.5 billion for "Arts and Culture".

these ammendments would, perhaps, go down to defeat. But they would ensure that the CPC positions were front and center in the budget debate. they would also ensure that the Grits were kept of balance with the necessity of having members show up in order to avoid defeat on budget particulars.

Harper's position lets the Liberals off the hook.Which is dumb.