WDay TV reports:

The bichon frisé was a fixture on Capitol Hill, since its adoption in 2008. Conrad picked up Dakota from a rescue shelter when the dog was 10 years old.

Dakota was popular in Washington, dubbed the 101st senator by some.

Conrad told the Grand Forks Herald that Dakota was a “fighter” who brought a sense of calm to the Senate.

“He went to work with me every day,” Conrad said. “People just took to him. To have an animal in that setting, it warmed people up. It made them feel more at home.”

“In some of our (budget) negotiations, colleagues would call and ask if I could bring Dakota,” Conrad said. “He calmed everyone down.”

“Would you tell the White House the same, that they’ve got to maybe make the first move to get the speaker and everybody else around the table?” Andrea Mitchell asked the Senator of an off-site meeting in a Tuesday interview.

“I have recommended to the White House at some point going to Camp David or some other location so you get away from the dueling press conferences,” Conrad said in his response, “because at some point that can create its own dynamic and reduce the chances of getting an agreement.”

The outgoing chairman of the Senate Budget Committee also noted that Republicans have put forward an entitlement plan to begin negotiations.

“I think the White House did a very wise thing in terms of laying out what they thought was important to an agreement on the revenue side of the equation,” Conrad said. “And to say to Republicans, ‘You want entitlement savings, tell us what they are.’ They’ve done that. So now you’ve got the two positions outlined. That puts us in a position to reach a final agreement.”

President Barack Obama did not appear to be taking the suggestion into account during an interview Tuesday.

“I do not think the issue right now has to do with sitting in a room,” Obama said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman.

The president said party leaders “will not be able to get a deal” unless Republicans submit to increased tax rates on high earners.

The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 stipulates that Congress must approve a budget resolution by April 15 of each year. In the Senate, only 51 votes are needed to pass a budget, as budgets are one of the few pieces of legislation invulnerable to a filibuster. Democrats currently control 53 seats.

Democratic lawmakers have offered myriad excuses for their refusal to offer a budget, none of which hold up to scrutiny, critics say.

Most recently, Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) has suggested it would be politically unfeasible to present a budget during a presidential election year.

“If one is interested in really getting a result, the time is not yet right,” he told reporters earlier this month. “I don’t rule out being able to act more quickly. But I think the greater likelihood is it won’t come until the election.”

Few doubt that campaign politics are a motivating factor in the Democrats’ decision. More than 20 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in November, and many Republicans suspect that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) axed Conrad’s intention to propose a budget, hold a formal “mark-up” hearing, and attempt to pass it out of committee in order to spare vulnerable members from casting politically difficult votes on tax hikes, energy policy, health care, and government waste.

But, as National Review’s Rich Lowry has pointed out, Senate Democrats have failed to propose a budget in “every kind of year there is in Washington,” whether during a presidential election (2012), off year (2011), or midterm election (2010).

“By this standard,” Lowry wrote, “the Senate will have an annual excuse not to pass a budget resolution for the rest of time.”

Democrats also contend that the post-election “lame duck” session – the last chance for the current Congress to pass legislation before new members are sworn in – presents an ideal opportunity for a comprehensive budget deal to ward off what leading experts have described as “the most predictable economic crisis in history.”

“I believe people of good faith working together—I think it’s going to be after the election—are going to have an opportunity because all the tax cuts are about to expire,” Conrad said on Fox News.

Congress must act before year’s end to address a number of key policy issues, such as the expiration of the so-called “Bush tax cuts” and the scheduled implementation of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that would disproportionately affect the defense budget. Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner and others have described this as a “fiscal cliff” that will spur lawmakers to compromise.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, dismissed the idea of a “lame duck” budget deal. “I think the chances of anything happening in the lame duck are zero,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. This is especially true, he argued, in the event that Republicans hold the House and regain control of the Senate, as many election analysts are projecting.

“If Republicans hold the House and win the Senate—even if they don’t win the presidency—why in the world would they negotiate?” Norquist said. “Whichever party does better in the election is going to want to wait until after the lame duck.”

Democrats made a similar argument last year following the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. Many predicted that the so-called “super committee” established in the deal would reach an agreement because if it did not the aforementioned $1.2 trillion spending would go into effect. The committee failed.

The 2011 debt ceiling deal—known as the Budget Control Act (BCA)—is often invoked by Senate Democrats to explain their decision not to offer a budget this year.

“It is important to remember that we already have a budget for this year and next,” Conrad said in a statement. “The Budget Control Act provided us with spending limits and enforcement measures for 2012 and 2013. It is the law of the land.”

Reid implored the Senate’s chief rule-keeper to determine that the BCA precluded the Senate from voting on any other budget resolutions, such as those proposed by President Obama and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

Reid’s contention was rejected.

While it is true that bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress ultimately supported the BCA, every leading Democrat, including Reid, Obama, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), initially opposed attaching any spending cuts to the president’s request for a $2.4 trillion increase to the federal borrowing limit.

In an effort to duck responsibility for not passing a budget, Norquist said, Democrats are seeking cover behind a law they fought every step of the way.

Furthermore, though Democrats criticized House Republicans for passing a budget that would spend slightly less than the maximum amount allowed under the BCA, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a postal service reform bill that increased spending by $34 billion above the BCA spending cap.

“What’s interesting about Democrats not doing a budget for three years is that they don’t believe their plans for the future on spending and taxes are popular,” Norquist said. “If they believed their plan was coherent and would generate popular support, they would rush to put it out in front of everybody.”

Conrad has proposed a “long-term plan”—not a budget, he insists—in the form of the 2010 Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission report, a series of recommendations presented in non-legislative language.

Obama authorized the report by executive order but has not endorsed it. Senate Democrats are no more eager to embrace it.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) said she “[doesn’t] agree with everything” in Bowles-Simpson, but praised its “balanced approach,” referring to its sizable tax increases. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) expressed “deep concerns” with the report.

In addition to neglecting to pass a budget in three years, Senate Democrats have yet to cast a single affirmative vote on any budget resolution. When Obama’s budget came to a vote last year, every single Democrat voted against it. They have also savaged the proposals offered in Ryan’s House budgets.

“Obama has been attempting to run against a do-nothing Congress,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) told the Washington Free Beacon. “What we have is a do-nothing Harry Reid Senate. House Republicans have fulfilled their responsibility and put forward a serious proposal. Senate Democrats have done virtually nothing.”

“They simply don’t want to be held accountable,” Johnson added. “Either they don’t have a plan, or they are totally unwilling tell the American people what their plan is.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said he thought the latter statement was true.

“I actually think they do have a plan,” he told the Free Beacon. “Their goal is to increase spending and increase taxes. But that plan will be rejected by the American people.”

Even left-wing political commentator Chris Matthews has suggested this was the case. “Would Democrats deal with debt if they had complete control of the government?” he asked on his MSNBC show “Hardball.” “I wonder if the public would put up with the tax level they might impose, don’t you?”

Analysts at the Senate Budget Committee have calculated that the Bowles-Simpson report, as proposed by Conrad, contains no spending cuts as compared to current law, and would raise taxes by $600 billion more than Obama has proposed.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated last week that Obama’s budget would have a detrimental effect on long-term economic growth and would add an additional $3.5 trillion to the federal budget deficit, as compared to current law.

Neither plan proposes to meaningfully reform the federal entitlement programs that are the leading drivers of the debt and deficit.

“It’s not as if I have to say their plan is no stinking good,” Norquist said. “They think that. That’s why they’re hiding it.”

In the meantime, the longer the country goes without a credible solution to the coming fiscal crisis, the more debt the federal government continues to accumulate.

The national debt was $11.2 trillion when the Senate Democrats last passed a budget. Today, three years later, it is $15.6 trillion and counting.

When host Bret Baier noted that while Democrats have loudly criticized the budget authored by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), “there is not a Democratic budget on the table.”

“There certainly is,” Wasserman Shultz responded. “President Obama proposed a budget.”

Baier countered that the president’s budget is not being voted on.

“That’s right, because House Republicans voted it down,” Wasserman Shultz said.

Baier then pointed out that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had not introduced the president’s budget–or any other budget–in the Senate for a vote.

What Wasserman Schultz neglected to mention, however, was that House Democrats joined Republicans in unanimously rejecting Obama’s by a vote of 414 to 0. Wasserman Schultz was among those voting no.

Last year, the Democratic-led Senate unanimously defeated the president’s budget 97 to 0. Reid and Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) have refused to pass a Democratic budget in almost three years.

Democrats, who control 53 seats in the Senate, need only 51 votes to pass a budget. But Wasserman Schultz could not explain why Reid has refused to offer one in more than 1,000 days.

“We’ve got two budgets, two different directions that we could go Nov. 6, and leading up to Nov. 6,” Wasserman Shultz said, citing Ryan’s budget and Obama’s budget. “We have two blueprint, two blueprints that show the different directions that this country could go.”

One of those “blueprints” (Ryan’s) has received more than 500 votes in Congress. The other (Obama’s) has received exactly zero.

Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that Obama’s budget would have a detrimental effect on long-term economic growth and would add an additional $3.5 trillion to the federal budget deficit, as compared to current law.

Former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign has downplayed her previous praise for Obamacare and even the president himself, telling USA Today that she would be “an independent voice.”

But her past comments paint a picture of an enthusiastic Obama supporter.

A video taken at the 2008 Democratic National Convention shows Heitkamp, who served as North Dakota’s attorney general from 1993-2001, telling a liberal activist that Obama is “going to be amazing.”

“I think we’re on our way to a better United States in the next eight years,” she said to Democratic National Committeeman Chad Nodland.

Nodland pulled the video from Youtube after the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought it to public attention.

Nodland, a North Dakota attorney, is now trying to charge the NRSC money for his copyrighted work, according to the Daily Caller.

Heitkamp says she had nothing to do with its removal.

Heitkamp’s praise for Obama was equally passionate in 2010, even as his push for health care reform alienated independent voters. She urged Democrats to hold the line, gushing over Obama, the late Ted Kennedy, and the bravery of Obamacare supporters.

“We have to continue to defend our very, very, very courageous congressional delegation,” she said. “This is a legacy vote, this a vote they will look back on and their children will look back on and they will say, my red-state-Democrat grandpa or great-grandpa voted for that bill because it made sense.”

Heitkamp later claimed that she has a long list of complaints about Obamacare—though she was unable to identify a single item, according to Politico.

She has tempered her opinion about Obama on the campaign trail, dodging questions at a townhall meeting about whether she would vote for the president in 2012, before finally giving an unenthusiastic “sure.”

Heitkamp is running to replace retiring Democrat Kent Conrad in the Senate. John McCain beat Obama by nearly 10 points in the state in 2008.

Only it was not a real markup.

Senators were barred from offering amendments and did not cast any votes. Conrad did not even introduce a real budget, but rather the official recommendations proposed by the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission in 2010.

In all likelihood, he suggested, lawmakers would not be able come to an agreement until after the November election. “It may be that all sides find it difficult to move off their fixed position before a national election,” he said.

Conrad claimed “strong bipartisan support” for the recommendations. However, the U.S. House of Representatives recently rejected a measure based on the Bowles-Simpson report by the overwhelming margin of 382-38.

Conrad stunned observers Tuesday when he announced that he would not follow through on his expressed intentions to offer, mark up, and pass a Democratic budget resolution.

Senior Republican aides told the Washington Free Beacon that Conrad’s staff had “promised” them that a traditional markup—complete with votes and amendments—would take place and that the chairman would attempt to pass a budget out of committee.

If the committee did ultimately pass a budget resolution, Senate Rules would allow any Senator to place it on the calendar for a vote and allow lawmakers to offer multiple amendments subject to simple majority votes.

Many suspect that Conrad’s plan was derailed at the last minute by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and other Senate Democrats, who did not wish to cast political difficult votes on health care, energy, taxes, and government waste just months before the 2012 election.

More than 20 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in November. Republicans need to pick up four seats to gain the majority.

“Something clearly changed,” said one GOP aide. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Harry Reid shut it down.”

“The Democratic conference murdered this idea,” said another.

GOP members of the committee echoed this sentiment throughout the hearing, heaping praise on Conrad, who they said had been a tireless advocate for a comprehensive solution to the nation’s debt crisis.

“Chairman Conrad, I am sorry that your conference has prevented you from conducting a genuine Budget Committee mark-up,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the top Republican on the committee. “I know you have fought within your party to fulfill the duties of this committee, but your leadership in the Senate has been explicit in saying they will not pass a budget.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) concurred, telling Conrad: “Clearly your heart is in the right place.”

“The chairman is not the problem,” Graham added. “The chairman is trying to be the solution.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) told Conrad he sympathized. “You understand our country faces a looming financial crisis,” he said. “Yet Harry Reid has shown no interest in letting the Senate complete one of its most fundamental duties.”

Perhaps the most revealing remarks came from Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), who served with Conrad on the Bowles-Simpson commission and has since spent “hundreds and hundreds” of hours working closely with the budget chairman to develop a bipartisan deficit-reduction package.

“I looked forward a long time to this day,” he told Conrad. “I’m discouraged that … although the proposal is being put forward, we are not going to be able to seriously act upon it.”

Crapo lamented Conrad’s decision not to allow amendments—effectively delaying a final vote indefinitely—and asked him to reconsider. There are a number of significant fiscal reforms, Crapo argued, that the committee could pass immediately.

“We can make significant progress if we can simply have the opportunity in this committee,” he said.

Conrad nodded in agreement.

The four-term North Dakota Democrat announced his retirement last year. Since then, he has gone to great lengths to draw attention to the looming debt crisis that awaits the country if politicians in Washington fail to offer a solution.

“History is going to judge whether we have the courage, character, and the vision to stand up for America’s future,” Conrad said last year. “Those who take a walk, those who turn away, those who don’t have the gumption to stand up, are going to be judged very, very harshly.”

Instead of going through the traditional markup process in the committee, Conrad said he would introduce the 2010 report drafted by the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, and then indefinitely delay a vote in order to allow time for “negotiations.”

In all likelihood, Conrad told reporters on Capitol Hill, lawmakers would not come to an agreement until after the November election.

Conrad said his intention was to offer “a blueprint to build a bipartisan agreement.” A traditional budget, authored and supported by Democrats, he added, was “probably not going to help.”

Senate Democrats have yet to offer a formal budget resolution in nearly three years, in violation of federal law.

The move came as a surprise to many, as reports over the last couple of weeks had indicated that Conrad would mark up an original budget resolution and attempt to pass it through his committee.

One GOP aide told the Washington Free Beacon that Republicans on the budget committee were completely caught off guard by Conrad’s announcement, as the

chairman’s staff had been coordinating with staffers in preparation for a full markup session complete with multiple votes on amendments.

The aide suspected that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had “pulled the plug” on a traditional markup in an effort to shield Democratic members, a number of whom are facing tough reelection fights in 2012, from casting a series of politically difficult votes on issues such as health care, energy, taxes, and government waste.

“Something clearly changed,” said the aide. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Harry Reid shut it down.”

Reid has made no secret of the fact that he does not think Democrats should offer a budget. Doing so, he has said, would be “foolish.”

Reports have indicated that some Democratic members were reluctant to cast votes on a budget resolution that was likely to include significant tax increases and reforms to entitlement programs.

The Bowles-Simpson report contains both, though in less specific terms than a traditional budget resolution. Conrad’s announcement means his Democratic colleagues will no longer be compelled to cast any votes.

Conrad said the plan was a good starting point because it enjoys “strong bipartisan support, both in Congress and across the nation.”

The claim is dubious given that the House of Representatives recently rejected a plan modeled after Bowles-Simpson by the overwhelming margin of 382-38.

Conrad said the House vote was a “very instructive” indication that lawmakers are unlikely to come to a bipartisan agreement until shortly after the 2012 election, when a “lame duck” Congress must address two major policy issues—the expiration of the so-called Bush tax cuts and the scheduled implementation of an automatic $1.2 trillion spending cut that would disproportionately affect the defense budget.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the top Republican on the budget committee, was not pleased.

“Chairman Conrad’s stunning announcement, forced on him by his party, is a defining moment in 2012 and a national embarrassment for a Senate majority that is unable to meet the great challenge of our time,” he said in a statement.

Conrad’s decision to delay action until after the election is hardly consistent with his rhetoric over the past several years. A self-professed fiscal hawk, he has sought to portray himself as a tireless advocate for a meaningful solution to the debt crisis.

“History is going to judge whether we have the courage, character, and the vision to stand up for America’s future,” Conrad said last year. “Those who take a walk, those who turn away, those who don’t have the gumption to stand up, are going to be judged very, very harshly.”