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.”

This consideration long seemed to make sense as a critical element of political analysis, and even today one often encounters it. Something akin to it seems to motivate the current Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs in other venues when they represent themselves as members of the (exploited) 99 percent, in opposition to the (exploiting) 1 percent.

Certain long-established trends in the welfare state, however, have progressively weakened the force of this analysis. The main element of these trends is the tremendous growth in the number of people (and in their proportion in the population) who are directly dependent on government benefits to a substantial degree. Researchers at the Heritage Foundation have been tracking this development for several years and have pushed their analysis back for several decades. An index of dependency based on this research increases from 19 in fiscal year 1962 to 272 in fiscal year 2009.

The Heritage index uses information on almost three dozen important federal programs on which Americans depend for cash income and other support—including housing assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance benefits, educational benefits, and farm-income supports—but it is scarcely a comprehensive measure, inasmuch as the total number of federal programs with dependents is gigantic at present. Of course, each such program has government employees and contractors who run it and hence depend on it to earn much, if not all, of their income. Government civilian and military retirees add millions more to the ranks.

The Heritage researchers found that in 1962, 21.7 million persons depended on the programs they included in their index for benefits. By 2009, the corresponding number of dependents had grown to 64.3 million. Adding dependents not included in the Heritage study might easily increase the number to more than 100 million, or to more than a third of the entire population. Thus, the parasites verge ever closer to outnumbering their hosts.

It would be a mistake, of course, to lump all of these dependents into the ruling (exploiting) class. The elderly recipients of old-age pensions, the recipients of unemployment insurance benefits, and the beneficiaries of temporary assistance for needy families are, as a rule, as far from the ruling class as one can get. However, to the extent that those who depend on government programs for substantial parts of their income enter the calculus of ruling and being ruled, they are likely to become, in effect, cyphers. They have approximately zero influence on the real rulers, yet they exert virtually no weight in opposition to those rulers, either. Fear of losing their government benefits effectively neutralizes them in regard to opposing the regime on whose seeming beneficence they rely for significant elements of their real income. Of course, for whatever voting may be worth, they vote directly or indirectly in overwhelming proportion for the continuation and budgetary enlargement of the government programs on which they depend. Hence, they help to produce seeming legitimacy for those at the top of the ruling hierarchy—a token of their appreciation for the crumbs their political masters drop on them.

As the ranks of those dependent on the welfare state continue to grow, the need for the rulers to pay attention to the ruled population diminishes. The masters know full well that the sheep will not bolt the enclosure in which the shepherds are making it possible for them to survive. Every person who becomes dependent on the state simultaneously becomes one less person who might act in some way to oppose the existing regime. Thus have modern governments gone greatly beyond the bread and circuses with which the Roman Caesars purchased the common people’s allegiance. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the only changes that occur in the makeup of the ruling elite resemble a shuffling of the occupants in the first-class cabins of a luxury liner. Never mind that this liner is the economic and moral equivalent of the Titanic and that its ultimate fate is no more propitious than was that of the “unsinkable” ship that went to the bottom a century ago.

Worst gaffe of the night: CNN, which mis-identified former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark as a Republican in its pre-debate analysis.

Best comeback: Newt Gingrich to Ron Paul, on the need for the Patriot Act: “Timothy McVeigh succeeded. That’s the whole point.”

Worst neo-colonialism: Mitt Romney, channeling his inner Kipling by suggesting that we have to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan into “modernity.”

Best follow-up answer: (Tie) Michele Bachmann on the Patriot Act, who focused on Barack Obama’s eagerness to grant rights to terrorists, rather than taking the bait to attack fellow Republicans (that time, anyway); and Ron Paul, who highlighted problems with immigration and the war on drugs in answering a question about border security.

Worst attempted dodge: Rick Santorum, allowing Wolf Blitzer to back him into saying that Muslims should be profiled at airports.

Best nickname: Herman Cain wins for calling Wolf Blitzer, “Blitz.” Somehow, I think that’s going to stick.

Worst question-begging: Jon Huntsman, who tried to turn a direct question from Fred Kagan about Pakistan into a question about dysfunction in Washington and nation-building in Afghanistan.

Best answer: (Tie) Michele Bachmann on Pakistan. Solid, nuanced, and direct–on a very difficult and complicated subject; and Rick Perry on border security, outlining the many reasons to take steps, and the precise steps to be taken.

Worst decorum: Jon Hunstman to Mitt Romney on Afghanistan: “Did you hear what I just said?” We sure did that time.

Best follow-up question: Mitt Romney to Jon Hunstman on Afghanistan, asking whether he advocates pulling all U.S. troops out “tomorrow,” which resulted in the angry response above.

Worst follow-up answer: Rick Santorum: “I agree with Ron Paul” on Pakistan and terrorism. Especially because he doesn’t.

Best gaffe of the night: Wolf Blitzer, who referred to Herman Cain as “Congressman Cain.” Was that a continuation of their “Blitz” repartee?

Worst prediction: Ron Paul, who asserted that a US/Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites is not going to happen. I’ll take the other side of that bet.

Best answer on Iran: Newt Gingrich, who noted that removing the Iranian regime without a war is better than having a war. He missed the opportunity (seized by Bachmann) to point out Obama’s failure in that regard, but later added that no attack on Iran that leaves the regime in place is going to be successful–and he’s probably right.

Worst geographic mistake: Rick Santorum, who described Africa as a “country” on the brink.

Best honest answer: Ron Paul on foreign aid, who argued–convincingly–that it is wasted on war and corruption, while hurting our own financial security.

Worst waffle: Herman Cain on foreign aid to Africa, who tried to get away with a giant “it depends” response.

Best wonkish answer: Mitt Romney, detailing the precise military cuts planned by the Obama administration–followed up by a passionate argument for a reversal of Obama administration policy toward US allies like Israel, and harsh policy steps against Iran.

Worst over-statement: Rick Perry: “If Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he should resign in protest” over defense cuts. A bit unfair, no?

Best question from the floor: Mark Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute, who asked candidates to identify the foreign policy issue they worry most about.

Worst taking the bait: Michele Bachmann, picking a fight with Newt Gingrich over amnesty and the Dream Act for illegal immigrants. She has done a better job than anyone else of tearing down GOP frontrunners.

Best departure from orthodoxy: Newt Gingrich, defending his position that some illegal immigrants should be treated differently from others, especially those who serve in the military. However, he came perilously close to recapitulating Perry’s “you don’t have a heart” attitude from an earlier debate.

Worst re-hash of past debates: Rick Perry, going after Mitt Romney with a “there you go again” line during discussion of immigration policy. What was the point of that?

Best wonkish question: David Addington of the Heritage Foundation, asking candidates to identify U.S. interests in Syria and how we should act to protect them.

Worst re-write: Wolf Blitzer, who re-wrote Addington’s excellent question as a question about Rick Perry’s support for a no-fly zone over Syria, then changed the subject as quickly as possible.

Best refusal to be distracted by moderator: Jon Huntsman, who used Blitzer’s attempted re-write as a way to steer back to the question of American interests in the Middle East.

Worst policy: Ron Paul, for “mind our own business.” See World War II. Does he really hope to convince Americans we are our own worst foreign threat?

Best attack on Obama: Mitt Romney, who repeatedly contrasted his foreign policy vision with Obama’s vision, more frequently and effectively than any other candidate.

Worst comment on China: Rick Perry, who called China a nation “without virtues.” Frugality and hard work, for a start…

Best answer on biggest foreign policy threat: Herman Cain, on threats to cybersecurity–a point seconded by other candidates who answered after him.

Worst answer on biggest foreign policy threat: Jon Hunstman, who cited joblessness, squandering a question–and a debate–that ought to have played to his strength on foreign policy issues.

By now, Republican voters are used to the clash between the hawkish approach favored by the party mainstream and the isolationist posture championed by Rep. Ron Paul–a confrontation that has been a feature of GOP presidential debates since the 2008 election.

Yet the events of the past year–especially the upheaval of the Arab Spring–have generated real debates among conservatives about how the United States should respond to a rapidly changing Middle East, an ambitious China, and a disintegrating European Union. Those new fault lines within the party will likely make their appearance on the stage tonight.

Though it is certain that each of the Republican candidates on stage tonight will criticize President Barack Obama’s record, each will find something different to criticize–not just because of their own divergent views, but also because of Obama’s incoherent policy.

Of the candidates, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy is the closest to the post-9/11 Republican consensus, emphasizing a strong military, tough anti-terror policies, support for democracy abroad, and willingness to use pre-emptive action where necessary. In the first debate, however, Romney appeared to back away from a commitment to a strong U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and he has also been criticized for his confrontational approach towards China on economic issues. Rick Santorum has also been hawkish, criticizing Obama’s “appeasement” on Iran, and taking on the cultural battle against radical Islam. Newt Gingrich generally shares the same views, though his prevarication on Libya was once thought to have condemned his (now-resurgent) campaign to the political margins. Earlier this week, Rick Perry suggested that the U.S. should establish a no-fly zone over Syria–an idea that had even some hawkish conservatives scratching their heads.

Though admirably consistent in his opposition to American intervention abroad, Ron Paul has faced criticism recently for suggesting that he would not have ordered the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Libertarian Gary Johnson might no go quite so far, but shares the president’s policy of removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and as much of the rest of the world as possible. Earlier this year, Michele Bachmann strenuously opposed intervention in Libya, prompting ill-founded media speculation (celebration?) that Tea Party Republicans had rejected Bush-era foreign policy.

The two remaining candidates are noteworthy less for their ideological differences than for their contrasting experience. Herman Cain’s foreign policy is strong on principles–”peace through strength and clarity”–but rather weak on details. In contrast, former ambassador Jon Huntsman has the most extensive foreign policy experience of any of the Republican candidates, and the most interesting things to say about China. His complex approach–favoring military action on Iran, for example, even while withdrawing from Afghanistan–fails to fit neatly within any ideological category.

Tonight’s debate will highlight these differences, but is unlikely to shift the candidates’ relative positions in the polls, especially ahead of a long Thanksgiving weekend, when fewer voters than usual will be paying attention. There will be plenty of opportunities for attacks on Obama–and gaffes that the Obama campaign will store for later use. Except for Huntsman–who could seize the moment to make the most of his foreign policy resumé–most of the Republican contenders will focus on Obama rather than themselves.

Tonight, eight Republican presidential candidates will take the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., to share their foreign policy and national security views with the American people. The debate, hosted by The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, will be broadcast on CNN at 8PM ET.

The debate will focus on a number of crucial national security and foreign policy questions that will undoubtedly reach the President’s desk in the coming years. Ensuring our country’s defense is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government, as set forth in the Constitution. And it is up to the President to take the lead in crafting American foreign policy while also serving as commander in chief of the armed forces.

Heritage has put together a short behind-the-scenes video to highlight all the work that has gone into tonight’s event.

The Republican presidential debate will air nationally tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on CNN and CNN en Español and worldwide on CNN International, CNN Radio, and CNN.com.

In an interview at The Heritage Foundation, Texas Senator John Cornyn had strong words for President Obama. “Unfortunately the President is already out complaining trying to channel Harry Truman, railing against a “Do Nothing Congress”, when he has apparently given up on governing and has decided to campaign full-time and he’s not really contributing towards the solution.”

Cornyn (R-TX) was at Heritage to stress the importance of enacting the strongest possible Balanced Budget Amendment, one that caps federal spending at 18 percent of the economy and requires a super-majority vote in Congress to increase taxes.

During his interview, Cornyn gave a brief overview of that fight:

Starting in the House this week they will vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment. And then before the end of the year, we are guaranteed by the provisions of the Budget Control Act a vote in the Senate. I expect there will be two votes. One on what I call the “strong” version that 47 Republicans have co-sponsored and another on one that will, honestly, be more in the nature of a cover vote.for Democrats up for election in 2012.

Cornyn also addressed the botched gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious. He criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for being uncooperative with Congress. He said he was not satisfied with Holder’s congressional testimony last week, telling us, “We need to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to continue to press the issue until we get to the truth.”

The interview runs about 5 minutes. Hosted by Rob Bluey and produced by Brandon Stewart. For more videos from Heritage, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The current administration’s controversial federal regulatory policies (the US Treasury Department’s stunningly bad bet on Solyndra, the NLRB’s tone death sanction against Boeing, the EPA’s onerous new rules imposed on, well, everything) place heavy-handed bureaucrats in Washington squarely behind the wheel on the road to America’s economic future.  In each of these cases, the White House has empowered federal regulators to decide outcomes best left to the free market.  Washington, it seems, knows best. Against this backdrop of regulatory overreach, we await another major decision – the approval by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission of the potential merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.

Of economic concern, however, is not the Federal government’s decision to approve or reject the deal, but whether the FCC will use its responsibility and power to approve the deal to also impose new regulations on the entire telecom industry. Doug Holtz-Eakin warns, “already we are seeing calls for a presumptive regulatory response.” He worries that “the U.S. will continue down an overly regulatory, prescriptive approach to competition that is doomed to fail.”

The greatest risk to a free, wide-open Internet is that overreaching regulators are using the merger review process to mandate new policy – circumventing the congressional review process to impose regulatory restrictions such as the controversial “net-neutrality” rules. “The job of regulators should not be to choose the best market strategy,” wrote James Gattuso, a Senior Research Fellow with The Heritage Foundation in a May report.  “It should be simply to make sure that the marketplace itself is working. In wireless, it’s working remarkably well, and there is every reason to believe it will continue to do so after the acquisition is completed.”

The real issue, he wrote, is that, “The FCC can and does use this discretion to reject proposed transactions. More often, however, it uses its review authority to further its own agenda by imposing conditions on proposed transactions. Often, the restrictions and mandates imposed in this way are only tangentially related to the transaction at hand.” Federal officials and consumer watchdogs are challenging the potential merger on the usual anti-trust grounds.  If “Bigger is Bad,” they argue, then “Biggest is Worse.”

But the concerns historically voiced by regulators against such telecommunications mergers don’t necessarily apply here. Approval of the merger would result in only a ten percent difference in market share between the nation’s two largest telecommunications companies.   Jobs lost to eliminating redundancies?  They don’t compare to the number of jobs created in infrastructure upgrades in broadband capacity (think 4G speeds for more than just some of us).

The question over future control of the Internet is not whether it’s AT&T, or Sprint, or Verizon.  The real question is who will control the future of the Internet itself – the free market, or agency regulators in Washington? Under normal circumstances, the answer would be simple.  But given recent history, questions about the combined federal merger review process – and the encouragement of federal agencies to overstep their authority – are rightfully causing alarm.

In the case of Solyndra, American taxpayers don’t want the Federal government picking marketplace winners and losers in alternative energy.  Ask Boeing, or any of its fellow aerospace rivals, if they want the NLRB dictating to them where they should build their airplanes. After 30 years of unrivaled technological breakthrough, job growth and lower costs, can Americans afford to have the FCC in charge of the wireless Web?