WASHINGTON -- Republicans control both the White House and Congress, but Washington, D.C. remains a fiscal sinkhole. The best hope for budget probity is to turn over one branch of government to the Democrats.
Republican politicos have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads. But big-spending President George W. Bush and the GOP Congress have turned a budget surplus into a half-trillion dollar deficit. Worse is to come: the Bush administration has requested an extra $25 billion for Iraq, merely a down payment on the growing occupation bill.
Nevertheless, the Republicans cannot blame Iraq for spreading red ink. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of former President Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, new foreign aid outlays. The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."
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