BY Gary Andres

 Reprinted from Weekly Standard

 Two seemingly unrelated news stories unfolded in Washington last week — developments that could further stoke the flames of voter discontent across America. Taken together, these reports could also label the Democrats with an ugly and hard to erase moniker heading into the November elections:  They are now the Party of Debt.

 The first piece of news concerned Congressional Democrats’ plan to forgo passing a budget blueprint this year – an unprecedented display of fiscal policy malpractice.

 A January 2010 Congressional Research Service report demonstrates that only four times in the past 35 years have lawmakers not adopted a concurrent budget resolution (a document projecting long term spending and revenue goals). And even when the two legislative bodies have failed to reach an agreement, in every year since the enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, at least the House has produced its own blueprint and given members a chance to vote on it. How do we get our fiscal house in order if lawmakers can’t even develop a plan?

 Democrats might still reverse course and produce a budget this year.  But as recently as yesterday, Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad told the Washington Post the chances of doing so were “fading.”

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