GOP Forgets Pledge to "Govern Responsibly," Now Refuses To Govern At All

                   AP Photo Charles Dharapak

For all the talk about President Obama coming up short when reaching out to congressional Republicans, we're occasionally reminded who's ultimately to blame for the partisan dysfunction in the nation's capital.

Today, for example, the White House will unveil its final budget blueprint to Congress...

...(It includes) the kind of ideas that would be the start of an important budget debate with Congress.  Except, as the New York Times reports, Republican lawmakers have announced they're not even willing to have this conversation:  they don't know what's in the administration's budget plan, and they don't care.

"Breaking with a 41-year-old tradition, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees announced that they would not even give the president's budget director, Shaun Donovan, the usual hearings in their panels..."

"G. William Hoagland, who was the Republican staff director at the Senate Budget Committee for much of the 1980s and 1990s, and is senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said he could not recall a year since the modern budget process took effect in the 1970s when a president's budget director was not invited to testify before the budget committees...

...At a press briefing on Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters:

..."It says a lot of things, I think.  It certainly does raise some questions about how serious Republicans actually are about governing the country."

eye'm thynkin':  No matter how much things change, they remain the same.

Read more at MSNBC