The US still lacks a Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Congress, egged on by its vocal new Republican members, is using the debate over interim "Continuing Resolutions" (which allow the government to function in the budget's absence) to impose spending cuts to reduce or eliminate activities they don't like.

Among their targets are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Planned Parenthood, and Public Broadcasting.

The attack on the environment is highlighted by withdrawing US funding from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international body of 2000 experts dedicated to studying this issue. Other anti-environment actions would withdraw funding from that part of EPA addressing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by US industries. In total, of 25 anti-environment amendments proposed for the first Continuing Resolution Bill, 22 were adopted by the House of Representatives.

In the case of Planned Parenthood, lack of funding would limit that organization's ability to help educate women on family planning. Likely result: more unwanted pregnancies and thus more demand for abortions, procedures which the Tea Party and its adherents oppose.

Finally, Republicans propose cuts in government support for public broadcasting (think WETA), presumably because it presents news and opinion in an unbiased fashion that does not hew to the thinking of the political Right.

Obviously the nation has a huge debt and deficit problem. But neither Party has offered a comprehensive plan to go after the meat of the problem – health care costs, social security, military spending, climate change, subsidies for farmers and oil companies, and taxes and tax reform.

Instead, the Republicans pose as deficit hawks, crowing about spending cuts amounting to minor dollars compared to the enormous realities the nation faces. Their aim seems to be to advance their social agenda, while embarrassing the President so they can win in 2012. That they are ignoring America's real issues, as defined by science and arithmetic, seems to them irrelevant.

Fortunately, there is a ray of hope. Senators Mark Warner (D, VA) and Saxby Chambliss (R, GA) are working together to see if there is a bi-partisan opportunity to get serious on these issues. All they have to overcome is the aging and ethnically changing demographics of the nation, voter ignorance or rejection of science, political cowardice in telling voters to face up to arithmetically obvious deficit facts, and political party single-minded focus on the 2012 elections. Good luck.

It's high time to wake up, America.