Why I love Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), reason No. 825 (still the number of days the Senate hasn’t passed a budget!): Tea Party trash-talking has crept from the extreme corners of the progressive movement to NYT columnists to the second-highest seat in the country (although Vice President Joe Biden denies it), but Sessions doesn’t take it. Here’s the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee on CNN’s Piers Morgan last night:

“I think the Tea Party movement represented a spontaneous American expression of shock and concern over the spending that was going on in Washington,” Sessions says in the video. “We cannot possibly justify members of Congress borrowing 42 cents of every dollar that is spent. This is irresponsible and they demanded change and elected a lot of new people. They’ve been called terrorists. I would just say they put some terror in the hearts of big spenders. They are people who care about America and I think have helped move us to a discussion of how much we can spend to how much we can save.”

Yes. Thank you, Sen. Sessions. Why is it so hard to accept the Tea Party as an authentic, non-orchestrated political movement? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid laments the way Tea Party representatives and senators have made the political process more difficult. Without them, Reid said, the debt ceiling could have been increased so much sooner. What? Like in December 2010, when Democrats still controlled the House and Senate? Why did Democrats wait, except to be able to blame Republicans? But Tea Partiers didn’t back down because they wanted a long-term solution to overspending. They’re happy to take the blame (I’d say the credit!) for making the political process a process once again — not merely a well-oiled machine designed to thoughtlessly grow government. Good for them.

(And a little off-topic, but I like my Townhall.com colleague Katie Pavlich’s aside about Piers Morgan: “Every time Piers Morgan expresses his anti-Second Amendment and Anti-tea party views, I always say he’s just bitter about a little thing called the American Revolution, but I digress.”)