CONSERVATIVES VS. BUSH SPENDING SPREES: NOW they get it...

Jonathan Chait is right. It is indeed amusing to watch conservatives struggle with how to pay for post-Katrina reconstruction. Pity they didn't do the same for the Iraq war, the pResident's tax cuts, and other gargantuan appropriation bills such as the infamous energy bill.

This is the problem with the GOP's fiscal hawks. They rightly complain about wasteful spending and call for budget balance. Yet they don't seem to grasp that the scale of the spending cuts they propose is nowhere close to the scale of the red ink. Accepting this fact would lead them to the realization that the cost of Bush's wasteful spending is dwarfed by the cost of his tax cuts, and down that road lies heresy.

I guess they didn't notice that under Bill Clinton, the infamous tax-and-spend liberals balanced the budget and left a surplus for George Dubya to inherit, huh? And while doing that, we reduced the percentage of Americans living below the poverty level EVERY YEAR of the Clinton administration. Amazing what a little competency can do, isn't it?

If this be heresy, let us make the most of it.