An Abdication of Responsibility

Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie:

What we’re actually witnessing — and have been for years now — is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government. Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn’t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.

To their credit, House Republicans have drafted, voted on, and passed a budget, but they are busy now trying to worm their way out of the very spending cuts — the sequestration deal — they insisted on as a condition for raising the debt limit last summer.

One of the most egregious failures of the president’s budget was that it, as in his previous budgets, offered no serious plan to stabilize the largest entitlement programs. Instead, the president and congressional Democrats lambasted Republicans for actually addressing the problem in their budget.

That's why we need a Tea Party.