Richie, let's begin by me admitting that I was wrong in my criticism of the House as being totally responsible for government spending. I was wrong. Both spending and taxation is the responsibility and must be approved by both houses of Congress. So in that only the House is controlled by the Republicans, I was wrong in criticizing only them for the continuation of profligate spending by our government. Both houses of Congress and both political parties share the blame. I apologize.

But I don't agree that I was wrong in criticizing the Congress for our spending and deficit problems. Neither of the other two parts of the government have much to say about the fiscal avarice we've seen demonstrated in Washington for many years. Oh, the President starts the process by submitting a budget proposal, but for many years the Congress has rejected those proposals almost out of hand and proceeded to do their own form of "budgeting", often skipping the budgeting supposed to be done in House sub-committees and committees and moving directly to the creation of a gigantic and general "omnibus spending bill" containing very little specificity as to where money should be spent and how it will be paid for.

So the President has a little bit to do with spending--he starts the budgeting process and then finishes it by saying either yes or no, signing the spending bills or vetoing them. I can't see where the judicial branch has anything to say about fiscal issues at all and the Constitution grants them no such powers.

But I still assign most of the blame for the continuation of excessive government spending to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If you'll recall, it was the Republican leadership who couldn't reach any sort of reasonable compromise on the reduction of spending while debating a recent "continuing resolution" authorizing government spending. It was the Republican-controlled House that said "absolutely no" to any kind of tax reform. And it was the Republican-controlled House that after months of back and forth debate among themselves could only come up with $38.5 billion in cuts over a ten year future period. That was less than a 1% cut in spending. And they delayed reaching agreement on those puny spending cuts so long that it lead to the loss of the country's AAA credit rating! After the fact analysis of their "cuts" by the Government Accounting Office showed that in fact there were no cuts at all. It was the same old phony baloney smoke and mirrors, find the cuts under the moving shells game played by the Democrats before them, as well as what the GOP did when they controlled the Congress before the Democrats, during the Bush years.

So yes, I'm blaming the Congress...and the Congress alone. I'm specifically NOT blaming the President. Could he have used the bully pulpit more effectively? That's a good question. It seems to me that whenever he tried--remember the "grand bargain"?--his attempts got swept away in partisan politics. There was an absolute refusal of the House to try to use the POTUS' proposal as a negotiating starting point. It was a "no, my way or the highway" type of legislative statesmanship.

So to respond to your comment...yes I am blaming the Congress.

Now, if we keep our eyes and ears open and try to pry ourselves away from the negative primary election advertising, the whole process for 2012 starts again in a week or so. The President is required by law to present his budget proposal by February 1. It tells Congress what the President recommends for overall federal fiscal policy, as established by three main components: (1) how much money the federal government should spend on public purposes; (2) how much it should take in as tax revenues; and (3) how much of a deficit (or surplus) the federal government should run. Let's see how much thought the Congress gives to that budget proposal.

I'm guessing about a minute and a half before the politicizing of President Obama's 2012 budget proposal begins.