For all the talk by pundits and politicians of how Washington, D.C. is “broken” and how “things can’t get done,” congressional Republicans and Democrats sure seem to be proving that notion wrong in the worst of ways. Because for all the talk and chatter we hear, Washington politicians always seem to come together to advance a cynical, mutually-beneficial agenda that expands government and perpetuates liberalism.

The latest example of “Washington working” is the budget bill, passed by the House and the Senate last week. It now goes to President Obama’s desk, where he will sign it into law, averting a serious debt limit fight between Republicans and Democrats. In the bill, Congressional Republicans, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, gave away the entire store. They capitulated and surrendered on virtually everything to avoid another round of Obama and Democrats shrieking that, because Republicans who control majorities in both the House and Senate didn’t pass a bill they liked fully, Republicans were going to cause a government shutdown. Apparently, this lack of logic didn’t stop Republican leadership from fully embracing their own cowardice. 

How bad was this deal? So bad that discretionary spending caps imposed under the 2011 Budget Control Act have been busted. Washington will now spend an extra $50 billion in 2016 and $30 billion in 2017. The only real victory Republican leadership could claim on spending since they’ve been in power has suddenly vanished without a trace. The New York Times proclaims that Obama can now “break free of the spending shackles,” a scary thought given the president’s lust for record-setting, trillion-dollar deficits.

This deal is so bad that the main talking point leadership used to sell this awful deal to their constituents and to their voting base was that spending cuts will offset the breaking of the spending caps. It sounds good until you realize that these cuts will take effect … in 2025. Who in their right mind believes that anything in Washington will be enforced, without change, so far down the line? 

In fact, we don’t need to speculate — this was the exact same argument used by now-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) in his budget negotiations with Washington Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) to avoid a debt ceiling showdown in 2013. 

When the BCA was originally passed, the terms of the law were that spending caps would be enforced in 2014 and 2015. Instead, in negotiations, Ryan and Murray agreed to jack up spending by $63 billion for those two years and pushed the expiration of the spending caps back from 2021 to 2023. Ryan was able to claim that their negotiations actually cut spending by $28 billion over 10 years because of his promises that the BCA would surely be enforced years down the line. 

Now, Congress is kicking the can down the road again, with no remedy in sight to fix our enormous sovereign debt problem (over $18 trillion without looking at unfunded liabilities) and our addiction to spending. Instead of attempting to get any meaningful concessions from Democrats in exchange for raising the debt limit, a move done 28 times in the last 55 occurrences of the debt ceiling being raised, Republicans have come away empty handed, with constituents and a Republican voting base further demoralized. 

Underlying this specific culture on the part of Republican leadership is that this is how Washington ― and bipartisanship ― currently works. Rather than fighting for their principles, the Republican Party instead chooses political expediency. This means that Democrats effectively run the show, even with a minority in both houses of Congress.

No conservative is saying that the Republican Party should pick every fight. Moreover, no conservative believes that every fight is winnable. But this debt ceiling fight was a prime opportunity for Republicans to stand up and push for meaningful reforms. Now, it has become yet another prime example of Republican ineptitude and capitulation.

Texas Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is “the de facto leader of the Senate.” Indeed, there is much truth in that statement.

A simple look at the other recent highlights from the Republican-controlled Senate and House back up what Cruz is saying. The list includes many abysmal failures. 

There’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who whipped votes in favor of Loretta Lynch for Attorney General, who would eventually be confirmed with Republican support even though, as predicted by many conservatives, her tenure has been marred by the continuation of politicizing the Department of Justice that Eric Holder started. For example, just recently, Lynch’s DOJ completely dropped their investigation of Lois Lerner and the IRS in a scandal targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, an unjustifiable and blatantly political move. 

Then there’s the situation that occurred late last year, where Republican House leadership approved a $1.1 trillion “Cromnibus” bill to fully fund the federal government until this past September while funding the Department of Homeland Security until this past March. The reason for this separation was purportedly to zero in on fighting President Obama’s unconstitutional executive order granting amnesty to five million illegal immigrants. 

However, this move eliminated any check Republicans had with the power of the purse and delayed the inevitable. Republicans in March would eventually pass a bill to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security without any stipulation that defunded President Obama’s executive order. 

The GOP deliberately funded that executive order in direct contradiction to the promises they made to the voters who elected them into office. They also funded a trillion-dollar monstrosity, in direct violation of their vows to actually reform the budget and bring our fiscal house in order.

Alongside these failures leadership has also fully funded Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and other liberal priorities in their entirety even in light of stories that justify a strong Republican response. Planned Parenthood senior officials, for instance, caught on tape admitting to selling baby parts for profit — a federal crime — along with potentially breaking other federal laws, warrant a genuine and strong response that at least gets to Obama’s desk in some form.

 Instead, as Americans debated the question of whether these videos were “doctored,” even when facing the fact that over 17 hours of tape on Planned Parenthood were released to the public, we got the usual song and dance from Washington — all talk and no action.

All this necessitates two questions: What has the Senate under Republican leadership done that would’ve been different had Harry Reid still been Majority Leader? Where has Republican leadership shown any willingness to fight for anything? There are no good answers. Time after time, Republicans have acquiesced to Democratic demands. Time after time, Washington has “governed,” “legislated” and “worked.”

When someone says that the problem in politics is that “Washington isn’t working together,” one should react with caution and skepticism. In the most recent Gallup poll, 82 percent of Americans said they disapproved of Congress, while only 13 percent approved. Maybe instead of being fed up with a fictitiously-depicted do-nothing Congress, the American people, knowingly or unknowingly, are perhaps fed up with liberalism.