President Barack Obama and many lawmakers in Washington are tying our country in knots with proposals to spend too much, tax too much and add to our national debt. Sen. Bob Corker of Chattanooga has a more sensible view.
He joined 45 other Republicans on Friday in voting for a bill that the U.S. House of Representatives had passed earlier -- a bill that would have cut federal spending, placed real limits on future spending and promoted a constitutional amendment to require balanced budgets.
But on a strict party-line vote, the Senate's Democrat majority killed the bill, 51-46.
That understandably disappointed Corker, who has long pressed for a return to fiscal responsibility in Washington and for similar legislation designed to achieve that goal.
"This bill put on paper what I've been pushing from day one of the 112th Congress," he said in a news release after the Senate vote.
But he is not giving up hope for meaningful legislation.
"Now, more than 814 days since the Senate passed a budget, we must put enforceable limits on all future spending in a way that encourages economic growth and demonstrates to the American people and the world that we will get our debt and deficits under control," he said.
That is a worthy prescription for the United States' debt and the ongoing economic crisis. Regrettably, too few in the Senate share Corker's commonsense plan to try to get the nation to live within its means.