Senate Republicans who shared laughs with President Obama over dinner at the Jefferson Hotel in March are grumbling there has since been little follow-through from him on deficit talks. They say the White House has not set up a process for negotiating controversial reforms to Social Security, healthcare programs and the tax code, and that absence of basic organization has stalled negotiations. "We've made no progress. None," said a GOP senator who had dinner with Obama earlier this year. "There's no process in place. Right now we just have 20 Republican senators meeting and talking to themselves."

“Everybody knows what the problem is. Everybody knows what the range of solutions to the problems are. Just stand up and lead on it,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who participated in the March 6 dinner. Coburn agrees with colleagues who say there has been very little progress on deficit-reduction talks with Obama. “I’d say that’s a fair assessment,” he said.

The amazing thing isn't that there's an article in The Hill today with the headline "Senate GOP feels jilted after being wined and dined by Obama" ... the amazing thing is that Republican senators have actually gone on record to voice their childish complaint:Apparently, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 55-45 margin, a group of 20 Senate Republicans think they ought to be running the show. They aren't satisfied with using and abusing the filibuster to stop everything in sight—they also think their coveted status as minority party entitles them to set the policy agenda.But there's no consensus on what to do about long-term fiscal issues. Conservatives want to do things like reducing benefits while progressives want to do things like lifting the cap on Social Security taxes. And when Obama sided with conservatives in his budget, House Republicans reacted by attacking him for proposing cuts to Social Security. So Coburn isn't living on planet earth when he says the only thing that Obama needs to do is "stand up and lead."

Fortunately, there's some good news here: Even as Republicans bellyache about how Obama isn't doing what they want, the deficit continues to drop. When President Obama took office, it was fiscal year 2009 and we had a $1.4 trillion deficit. Now it's fiscal year 2013 and CBO projects the deficit will fall by more than half to a deficit of $642 billion. That's more than $200 billion less than earlier projections. But apparently Senate Republicans won't let little details like that get in the way of feeling jilted.