Freedom Line Blog

The Cato Institute came out this week with its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and the results are very good for Tea Partiers. The nation’s top five chief executives in terms of fiscal stewardship are virtually all proud limited government advocates who have followed through on their promises of reining in government:

1 (tie) — Sam Brownback (R-Kansas); Rick Scott (R-Florida)

3 (tie) — Paul LePage (R-Maine); Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania)

5 (3-way tie) — Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana); Jack Dalrymple (R-North Dakota); John Lynch (D-New Hampshire)

Lynch deserves some credit for being the sole Democrat to crack the top of the list, but not nearly as much as the Republicans who swept to huge majorities in the Granite State’s legislature and forced the governor to abide by New Hampshire’s “live free or die” ethos.

And the nation’s worst fiscal leaders? Is it any surprise that it’s a cadre of blue state liberals?:

46. Christine Gregoire (D-Washington)

47. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii)

48. Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota)

49. Dan Malloy (D-Connecticut)

50, Pat Quinn (D-Illinois)

The full report is here.

Believe it or not, that’s the remarkable reality we’ll be facing when Barack Obama takes to the podium to deliver his State of the Union address tomorrow night: nearly three years wherein the federal government — the largest distributor of funds on the planet — has operated without a budget. That’s a failure that deserves widespread public attention. Happily, the GOP — which usually can be counted on to bobble these kinds of communications opportunities — is doing a serviceable job of highlighting this ignominious milestone: