On Monday, the Ranking Republican of the Senate Budget Committee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and the Chairman of the House Budget Committee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a joint statement blasting Democrats for their budgetary inaction and contrasting it with Republican efforts:

Senate Democrats abandoned their official duty to prioritize Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars and tackle our nation’s most pressing economic challenges—dealing a painful blow to fiscal progress that may be felt for some time.  This contrasts sharply with the record of the House Republicans. Last spring, the new House Majority publicly produced a budget plan before the nation, brought it forward in committee, and passed it on the floor. The budget’s principled solutions honestly confront our nation’s most difficult challenges, putting the budget on a path to balance and the country on a path to prosperity.

To mark the inauspicious 1,000-day anniversary, the Heritage Foundation released a series of budget facts and urged the Senate to meet its Constitution requirements for fiscal stewardship:

• The last time the Senate passed a budget was on April 29, 2009.
• Since that date, the federal government has spent $9.4 trillion, adding $4.1 trillion in debt [annual interest payments on the debt now exceed $200 billion].
• As of January 20, the outstanding public debt stands at $15,240,174,635,409.
• Interest payments on the debt are now more than $200 billion per year.
• President Obama proposed a FY2012 budget last year, and the Senate voted it down 97–0. (And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.)
• The Senate rejected House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) budget by 57–40 in May 2011, with no Democrats voting for it.
• In FY2011, Washington spent $3.6 trillion. Compare that to the last time the budget was balanced in 2001, when Washington spent $1.8 trillion ($2.1 trillion when you adjust for inflation).
• Entitlement spending will more than double by 2050. That includes spending on Medicare, Medicaid and the Obamacare subsidy program, and Social Security. Total spending on federal health care programs will triple.
• By 2050, the national debt is set to hit 344 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
• Taxes paid per household have risen dramatically, hitting $18,400 in 2010 (compared with $11,295 in 1965). If the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire and more middle-class Americans are required to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), taxes will reach unprecedented levels.
• Federal spending per household is skyrocketing. Since 1965, spending per household has grown by nearly 162 percent, from $11,431 in 1965 to $29,401 in 2010. From 2010 to 2021, it is projected to rise to $35,773, a 22 percent increase.

Sen. Harry Reid explained the Senate’s budgetary inaction by saying that it would be “foolish” to pass a budget.

Other Democrats, like Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Nancy Pelosi ,have argued that there’s no point in passing a budget that Republicans would filibuster.  There’s only one problem with that argument: the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 made budgets entirely immune to filibusters and states that budgets may be passed with a simple majority.

Sen. Sessions and Rep. Ryan, both of whom have taken the lead in highlighting the Democrats’ budgetary mismanagement, challenged President Obama to use his State of the Union address to hold Democrats accountable for their inability to pass a budget:

The president and his party’s leaders have yet to detail a credible budget plan to prevent the fiscal crisis that awaits us should we continue down the current path to debt, doubt, and decline. Such a crisis would threaten the economic security, health security, and retirement security of every American. If the president wishes to begin a genuine dialogue with the American people in tomorrow’s State of the Union address, then he must hold his own party accountable for its dogged refusal to produce a plan to prevent this crisis and lift this cloud of uncertainty from the economy. The president must also deliver what he has so far refused: serious reforms to change our debt course and prevent fiscal disaster.

We remain disappointed in the Senate Democrats’ decision to give up on an essential responsibility of governing, and we sincerely hope 2012 will not mark the third consecutive year that Senate Democrats skip the budget process altogether. Nor will it be credible or acceptable for them to present a phony budget plan that pretends to make changes but in reality merely keeps spending on its current trajectory. Real reforms, real spending control, and a real change in the status quo are the minimum obligations of elected leaders in these times of uncertainty and distress. Where the president and his party have failed to confront the greatest challenges of our time, Republicans in the House and Senate will continue to work for solutions to ensure that government can keep its promises, take less from hardworking families and businesses, and create the conditions for economic growth and prosperity.

The dismal 1,000-day anniversary sets up a potential narrative for Republican Senate candidates to run against President Obama’s “Do-Nothing Democratic Senate.”

Many key journalists in the tech industry have already pointed out that SOPA and PIPA were, until the industry and American consumers got a hold of the bills, a “sure thing” set to pass without much, if any opposition from members of Congress. The indefinite delay, prompted by massive outrage and widespread protests last week, prompted a total reconsideration of the bill, with Marco Rubio and Congressional Republicans leading a firestorm of criticism and a mass exodus from the bill. Its worth noting, however, that one of the bill’s key sponsors, Democratic Senator Harry Reid, was quick to note that we haven’t seen the last of the bills.

“We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio,” he said in a statement posted by Games Industry (requires free account sign up.)

He went on to encourage other key senators to look into the proposed amendments to the bills, rehashing SOPA to make it more likely to pass if pushed through again.

Its worth noting that the bill’s backers – the MPAA, RIAA and a host of union thugs – are known for their persistence, whether its prosecuting unwitting grandmothers for Internet music “theft” or protesting Wisconsin governors who are trying to rescue their state’s financial well-being, and Americans should not expect them to back down any time soon. And with the amount of money and the future of Democratic party rule at stake in this next election, the MPAA’s, RIAA’s and unions’ deep pockets and ability to write huge campaign checks probably won’t be put at risk for something as silly as the rights of the American people.

And, in fact, if rumors are to believed – and in DC they often are – the SOPA and PIPA comeback might come sooner rather than later. Washington whispers say that the bills will likely come up under different names – not surprising – and that the bigwigs behind the SOPA and PIPA efforts have already hired DC communications powerhouse Hillary Rosen to lead the resurrection effort.

So, like a zombie rising up from its grave to wreak havoc over the American heartland in a low-budget Hollywood Halloween money-maker, SOPA and PIPA look to be rising again to attack your freedoms. Be vigilant.

Here’s Sen. Reid’s exchange with reporter David Gregory:

SEN. REID: Well, I think the tea party’s dying out as the economy’s getting better slowly.

MR. GREGORY: You do think that?

SEN. REID: Oh, sure, no question about it. And, and, and you–and, and you…

MR. GREGORY: Well, we just talked about their, their muscular impact on the process.

SEN. REID: Well, but that’s during the past year. I would hope that the two Republican leaders have learned what took place in the previous year. And, you know, what we have to focus on this year is rebuilding the economy. We have to, and the only way to do that is to create jobs and that’s why the agenda that I’m moving forward on, I hope with some cooperation from the Republicans this time, is to do something about creating jobs. Our surface transportation bill, it’ll save a million jobs, create a lot more jobs, Federal Aviation Administration, that’s more than 200,000 jobs. We’re having a very important piece of legislation, important to this network right here, IP, and that’s of course dealing with informational–with, with making sure that we have intellectual property that’s protected and we need to do that. And that–that’s also job saving. So that’s what we need to work on, things that create jobs and protect the American economy.

In the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party was widely credited with having helped propel Republicans to win an historic 63 House seats, six Senate seats, gain six governorships, and gain an unprecedented 680 seats in state legislatures.

For many conservatives, fewer laws passing–and the spending that often comes with them– may seem like a reason to cheer. But as the Washington Times points out, because so many entitlement programs operate on autopilot spending increases, government spending grows automatically even when bills aren’t passed.

The new report appears to have sparked a new round of the Washington blame game:

Spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, did not respond to questions about the lack of action.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart did offer a brief statement that Democrats’ 2012 agenda appears to be the same as in 2011.

“Legislation that will be pushed will be what polls well, rather than what could feasibly be passed into law,” he said.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Reid blamed Republicans in the House for pushing what he said were the wrong issues.

“We’ve spent months on things that used to happen just matter-of-factly,” he said. “I would hope that they understand that everything doesn’t have to be a fight. Legislation is the art of working together, building consensus, compromise.”

“Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory countered that the House is passing legislation, including a budget, which Senate Democrats haven’t accomplished for two years.

Mr. Reid again blamed Republicans, who he said were using the Senate’s minority-friendly rules to defy him.

“The Senate works on consensus. And we haven’t been able to get that because the Republicans, I repeat for the third time, I want to make sure everyone understands this: obstructionism on steroids,” he said.

Look for President Barack Obama to use the study to frame a Truman-esque “do nothing Congress” campaign strategy come November. Look for Republicans to frame Mr. Obama’s lack of legislative accomplishments as the results of a “do nothing President.”

CBS News’s Sharyl Attkisson, the reporter who originally broke the Solyndra story, notes that 11 other failed clean energy companies besides Solyndra received approval for $6.5 billion in taxpayer monies.  Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, Eastern Energy, and Solyndra have all gone bankrupt.   Others, such as Nevada Geothermal Power, a company that was personally touted by Sen. Harry Reid, is facing serious financial problems and warned of “multiple potential defaults” in its new SEC filings.  Still, despite the fact that the company had already been struggling to “pay the bills,” Ms. Attkinson reports that Nevada Geothermal Power received $98.5 million in Department of Energy loan guarantees.

The CBS report also cites First Solar, a company that Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer reported on extensively in his bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, as having been approved for billions in government loans.  In 2011, First Solar won the inauspicious title as having been the biggest S&P loser in 2011.  Moreover, First Solar has strong ties to Mr. Obama’s top fundraisers.  As Mr. Schweizer reported for Breitbart News, Obama bundler Bruce Heyman was with Goldman Sachs which, along with billionaire Ted Turner, are among the largest investors in First Solar.  So far, Mr. Heyman has already raised $366,884 for Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.  And Schweizer’s says in 2008, Mr. Turner’s companies donated more than $1 million in campaign contributions to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign.  Whether these political contributions helped First Solar land its whopping $4.7 billion in loan guarantees, the appearance at least of cronyism is certainly strong.

According to CBS News, the Department of Energy also knew that Beacon Power, a “green energy storage company,” was an all-but doomed investment that had received an embarrassing “CCC-plus” rating from Standard and Poor, making it little more than a “junk bond.” Economist Peter Morici told CBS that investments with that kind of rating have roughly a 70 percent chance of failing over the long term.  Still, despite knowing how poor an investment Beacon Power was, the Obama Administration dumped $43 million of taxpayer dollars into it.

Mr. Morici told CBS that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu lies at the heart of the problem:

Tasking a Nobel Prize mathematician [Chu] to make investments for the U.S. government is like asking the manager of the New York Yankees to be the general in charge of America’s troops in Afghanistan. It’s that absurd.

Unmentioned in the report was the fact that the men Mr. Obama put in charge of deciding which companies would receive the Department of Energy’s loans and grants were not scientists at all; rather, they were instead Mr. Obama’s top fundraisers, such as Steve Spinner who was on the Obama campaign’s National Finance Committee and was a bundler himself.

Perhaps that explains why the Department of Energy refused CBS News’s interview request.

The Washington Post’s Jena McGregor brings the bad news.

The revolving door at the White House is swinging again, and this time, Chief of Staff William Daley is on his way out. Many seemed to be taken off guard: Obama says it wasn’t easy news to hear. Others said official Washington was surprised by the news.

They shouldn’t have been. It seems painfully obvious that Daley was wrong in the role….

His departure calls into question Obama’s judgment when picking one of the key posts for his administration. While addressing the relationship with the business community and Republicans may have been an important task in late 2010, it wasn’t necessarily the right one for the president’s chief of staff. That post is, in effect, the White House’s chief operating officer—the person responsible for being the president’s most senior adviser and the person in charge of all West Wing administrative and operational matters.

Daley, considered of the moderate, Clinton-wing of the Democrat Party, was heralded as the right man for the job by Obama and the Democrats when he brought him in. Or, perhaps he felt he needed him to curry favor with Wall Street to raise cash for his coming re-election campaign. Whatever the reason, Daley never caught on and, for his job of governing America, Obama simply picked the wrong man. He couldn’t even get along with Harry Reid, let alone Republicans.

Critics of the appointment worry that it means Obama will favor business over consumers in the days ahead.

“Daley would act as a stovepipe for the interests of Wall Street, as if bankers didn’t have enough influence already,” says Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group. The appointment “would plant an official emissary from Wall Street into one of the most important jobs in Washington.”

“It would be nice if one of these appointments didn’t have a Wall Street connection,” says Roger Hickey of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future.

Daley’s background makes it clear that he’s squarely in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. His appointment comes as the White House works to respond to voters who turned scores of Democrats out of Congress last fall and gave control of the House to Republicans.

One can read more about his replacement, Jack Lew, here. Unlike the moderate Daley, Lew cut his political teeth supporting McCarthy as a kid and is from the more liberal wing of the party. However, that didn’t prevent him from functioning as COO of a hedge fund that bet on the housing market collapse. As Obama’s revolving door for staff keeps swinging, perhaps he’ll get it right, eventually.

Lew grew up in New York City. As a 12-year-old, he campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election. “It was also my introduction to seeing that you could make a difference in people’s lives through politics,” he told the New York Times in 1999.

Lew’s faculty adviser at Carleton College was Paul Wellstone, an outspoken liberal who eventually represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate until dying in a 2002 plane crash. Lew graduated from Harvard and earned a law degree from Georgetown.

He worked as an aide to Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) from 1974 to 1975. He then was a senior policy adviser to House Speaker Thomas (Tip) P. O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) from 1979 to 1987. “I grew up in many ways on the Hill in Mr. O’Neill’s office,” Lew told the Times.

Lew worked at Citigroup from 2006 to 2009. The Huffington Post reported that in 2008, he served as chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments, investing in a hedge fund that bet on the housing market to collapse….

With Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives, the body where – by the mandate of the US Constitution – all legislation relating to revenue is to begin, many on the Right and in the Center believed that the reckless and spendthrift fiscal actions of the 111th Congress would be constrained if not reversed. With a sizable number of new members identifying with the oft demonized TEA Party, there was high hope for a glimmer of fiscal sanity to emerge from the halls of Congress. And while the TEA Party members of Congress are to be congratulated for doing exactly what their constituents sent them to Washington to do, in the end, they were thwarted by establishment, inside the beltway Republicans and the despotic obstructionism foisted upon them by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, (to be fair, Reid was aided by a less than reform-minded Republican leadership in the senate, led by Mitch McConnell, R-KY).

The Budget
In absolute defiance of the fact that it is law that Congress must pass an annual budget for the federal government, Senate Democrats – once again, led by the indignant political disgrace that is Harry Reid – refused to abide by said law in passing, reconciling and advancing to the President an annual budget. It has been over 900 days – almost three years – since the last budget has been presented to the President for his signature or veto.

Of this, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, wrote:

“As required by law, House Republicans presented a budget in committee, brought it to the floor, and passed it earlier this spring. It was an honest, detailed, concrete plan to put our budget on the path to balance and our economy on the path to prosperity. But Senate Democrats, during this time of national crisis, failed even to present a budget plan – in open defiance of the law and the public they serve. Senate Majority Leader Reid said it would be ‘foolish’ to have a budget…This is the second consecutive year Senate Democrats have disregarded the legally mandated budget process.”

They went on to call Reid’s obstructionist tactics “a national disgrace,” and they couldn’t be more correct.

Debt & Deficit
On this date back in 2008, as we were approaching the catastrophe that would be the “historic election” of someone who was, arguably, the most ill-prepared person in the history of our nation to the presidency of the United States, the US National Debt stood at approximately $10.7 trillion. Our federal budget deficit was at almost $500 billion and our Gross Debt to GDP Ratio was at 75.361 percent. We weren’t in the greatest financial shape and the horizon had some ominous clouds heading our way in the form of a mortgage meltdown that led to a significant recession, which led to a financial markets crisis, all of which put the world – the entire world – on the brink of financial calamity.

Today, three years later, President Obama and his financial gurus – otherwise known as the Manson Family of financial ineptitude – tell us we are “on the mend,” we have “turned the corner,” – even as unemployment remains around 9 percent on average, but that there is “a lot more work to do” and that we should allow him four more years to complete his work toward righting the ship of state – or, as the aware see all too well, his “transformation of the United States of America.” But what have his efforts achieved?

As it stands today, the US National Debt is $15.1trillion. Our federal budget deficit is $1.3 trillion and our Gross Debt to GDP Ratio is 100.480 percent. An even more relevant number – in light of all the “fixing” that Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have been doing – is the US Unfunded Liabilities, you know, the total the government is committed to paying out for all those nanny state entitlements, including Medicare, Social Security, Prescription Drug Benefits and, now, Obamacare. The Unfunded Liabilities held by the US federal government is a stunning $117.011 trillion. I’m going to write the full number out so you can see it, accurate to extent that the lower numbers are rolling so incredibly fast I can only be relevant to the billions digits: $117,011,381,000,000 and climbing.

On Tuesday it was announced that President Obama will ask for a third increase of the debt ceiling limit this year, raising that limit to $16.394 trillion.

Boards, Agencies & Departments
With the seating of the 112th Congress, we all held the hope that some of the more activist federal boards, agencies and departments would at least have their funding scrutinized and perhaps adjusted so that the Progressive activists and special interest cronies seated to their leadership would be restrained from ruling roughshod over the American private sector through President Obama’s favorite tool: legislation via regulation. But that financial leash failed to appear.

The Boeing Corporation felt the sting of the National Labor Relations Board when it fell victim to a labor union friendly lawsuit, filed by the NLRB, which sought to interfere with the construction of a new plant in South Carolina; a plant that promises to create thousands of new jobs. The lawsuit was later dropped only because Boeing, in juxtaposition to what was a sound financial business decision to move to a right-to-work State (South Carolina) from a State that rolled over to union largess (Washington), acquiesced to keeping the Washington plant open.

Striking fear and promoting uncertainty in the American business community – you know, the sector that actually creates jobs – the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to “expand” its authority and reach, transforming the EPA into what its administrator, Lisa Jackson, says will be an agency that is more “anticipatory” in its approach to environmental issues, broadening “its focus” – or regulatory reach – to include both social and economic as well as environmental “pillars.”

The vehicle for this transformation comes in the form of a $700,000 study the agency commissioned last year from the National Academies of Science. Its aim: how to use existing laws to new ends.

The EPA announced on December 21st, new national standards to cut air pollutants from power plants, a regulation that will force older facilities to close – costing thousands of people their jobs, or clean up – costing consumers more in passed on costs.

The Department of Health & Human Services, under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, disregarding the fact that the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) is set to be heard for its constitutionality by the US Supreme Court later this year, has moved forward with its implementation of the entitlement program. In HHS’s implementation, Sec. Sebelius has issued over 1,800 waivers to the health insurance law, mostly to Progressive and labor union friendly businesses

HHS did, however, thwart the plans of another agency, the Food & Drug Administration, to lift a controversial age limit and make Plan B One-Step – or “the morning after pill,” the nation’s first over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, available for purchase by people of any age without a prescription.

Foreign Policy
And while there was hope that controlling the purse strings in Washington would affect Mr. Obama’s dismal foreign policy record by, perhaps, scrutinizing the funding of myriad UN agency programs enveloped in graft and corruption; by questioning the allocation of funds by USAID to pro-Islamist entities in the Middle East; and by examining the distribution of foreign aid to countries, including China, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy agenda has been left unscathed, for the most part.

And we see the fruits of Mr. Obama’s global handiwork across the globe.

In the reckless pursuit of “hope and change,” international style, the pro-democracy agenda, started administrations ago, was given a dose of steroids, only to see leader after leader in the Middle East and North Africa toppled, replaced by fundamentalist – and in some cases violent – Islamist factions. In location after location, from Egypt to Libya, from Syria to Tunisia, we are witnessing the rise of organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda sympathetic factions to the seats of power, threatening a regional war for influence between the Sunni and the Shi’ite; the Shi’ites championed by an about-to-be nuclear capable Iran, another nefarious facilitation labeled an “accomplishment.”

And while it is true that US Navy Seal Team VI took out “Geronimo” – albeit not a stone’s throw away from Pakistan’s “West Point,” it can hardly be attributed to the “extended open hand of peace” that Mr. Obama said US foreign policy in the Middle East would be under his administration. Conversely, it was the continuation and, even, the escalation of former President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” strategies that found Osama bin Laden with an extra hole in his head.

But, perhaps the biggest foreign policy disappointment – and one where Congress held significant influence to affect a positive outcome – was in the Obama Administration’s refusal to confront China on its currency manipulation.

The Washington Times reports:

“The Obama administration said Tuesday that China is making headway on its currency-valuation policies and should not be deemed a currency manipulator — fighting back against top Senate Democrats who had demanded President Obama sanction the US’s top economic competitor…

“Earlier this fall, the Democrat-led Senate passed a bill that would push the administration to declare China a currency manipulator, which would trigger automatic penalties…

“[The] Republican-led House bottled the bill up, saying it wanted to see the White House take a position. The administration has been reticent to do that, saying it feared action would spark a trade war.

“Tuesday’s report, released while Mr. Obama is vacationing in Hawaii, signals the administration has not changed its attitude and likely means the China-currency legislation is moribund in Congress.”

China owns the United States and Mr. Obama ducks the issue…he’s on vacation, don’t you know…as is Congress.

So, as 2011 winds down, a year that began with so much promise for the reform of a runaway federal government; that started with enthusiasm – at least among the freshmen TEA Party class – to affect real and meaningful change for the American people and change that would see the marginalization of the anti-American despotism exhibited by Progressives elected under the Democrat banner, what did we actually receive from our elected officials in Washington? No budget; no meaningful deficit or debt reduction and, in fact, increased debt and spending; boards, agencies and departments expanding the authority and reach of government; and a foreign policy that sees fundamentalist Islamists taking control of the Middle East and North Africa, and China getting away with currency manipulation even as they continue to receive foreign aid for their biggest debtor; the United States government.

Maybe 2012 will be different…maybe not…all I know is this: for all the compromising and deal making, for all the speeches, rhetoric and congratulations, We the People are in the very same position we were in prior to the 2010 election…and it’s pathetic.

And the debt clock keeps ticking…as does the nuclear clock in the Middle East…as does the encroachment of government into our lives…