Media

It's not hard to find examples of wasteful government spending. The IRS has its own television studio that costs taxpayers $4 million per year to operate. The National Science Foundation paid seniors $1.2 million to play video games for a study. Just last year, the government shelled out an estimated $115 billion in payments to ineligible individuals.

President Obama's State of the Union address was even more disappointing than his inauguration speech. Once again, the president disregarded the gravity of our economic challenges and outlined an old-school liberal agenda that is utterly out of step with our problems.

In his second inaugural address, President Obama did not utter the word "debt" a single time. While the president had no hesitation discussing policies to increase spending, he remained virtually silent regarding the most important and urgent challenge currently threatening the nation's future.

Much of the recent coverage of 11th-hour legislative deals and partisan stalemates focuses on negotiations between House Republican leadership and the White House. Yet the most underreported factor in the habitual Washington gridlock of the past two years is the failure of the Democratic Senate to do its job.