The departing Republican majority in Congress is about to leave the nation a memorial to its own shameful history as the grand enabler of record debt and deficits. G.O.P. leaders are preparing to walk away from their most basic constitutional responsibility  passing a budget. Instead of finishing work on government spending bills needed for the next year, they’re reported to be planning nothing more than a cut-and-paste, short-term continuing resolution. That will allow them to run out early from their lame-duck session, leaving the mess to the incoming Democrats in January.

Stopgap resolutions create a budget autopilot that does not allow for shifting conditions and costs in education, housing and other major agencies. Administrators warn that it will cause cuts in school breakfasts and shelter for the poor. There is no need for this angst except that Republican strategists plotting a comeback clearly want to pour sand into the Democrats’ agenda even before they take the gavel.

Conservative Republicans who are blocking the spending bills have the gall to portray themselves as principled budget hawks blocking pork-barrel spending “earmarks”  this after 12 years of earmarking and rubber-stamping the upper-bracket tax cuts of President Bush that tossed all budget discipline to the four winds. The Republicans depart leaving the nation in ever deeper hock to China and other potent bankers, with taxpayers stuck with the bill.

The Democratic majority will have more than enough to do in preparing the 2008 budget plan and dealing with an estimated $130 billion supplemental bill from the White House to continue the Iraq war. It doesn’t need the distraction of having to sort out some $460 billion in left-over spending priorities.