Backlash over the lack of fiscal restraint in the Senate continues to mount. Americans for Prosperity has a Roll Call cartoon here. The Muskogee Phoenix (Muskogee, Oklahoma) editorializes:

[Sen. Tom] Coburn deserves credit for carrying on that fight even though he hasn’t gotten very far....At some point, Congress will have to control its spending, or Congress’ decades of uncontrolled spending will suddenly make unpleasant economic decisions for us.

Unfortunately for Americans, Congress apparently lacks the willpower this year to address its economic irresponsibility.

The Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania) adds:

Politicians...rarely if ever address real problems that require difficult solutions and choices that, to many, might be unpopular.

So we have Medicare: The program's main funding source for hospital care is projected to go broke in 2018.

And we have Social Security: Despite the rhetoric and proposed privatization schemes, nothing has been done to shore up the financial system millions of older Americans are forced to rely on. The program's trust fund will be depleted by 2040, its trustees say.

While shamefully ducking their responsibility -- leaving to the next generation the difficult, the controversial, the vital, the absolutely necessary -- our politicians are nevertheless busy.

They are busy spending, according to one taxpayer watchdog group's accounting, $29 billion on pork-barrel projects this year -- bringing bacon home for local frying pans in exchange for the inevitable vote for the incumbent.

The Fort Morgan Times (Fort Morgan, Colorado) says:

What's this? Our members of Congress actually voting against some pork barrel projects sneaked into bills that have nothing to do with whatever the topic of the particular bill might be?

This is a turnabout long overdue but not likely to continue for long.

Sticking pet projects -- projects that will benefit the folks back home (and, in return, the representatives and senators when it comes time for those same folks to cast ballots in the next election) -- into major spending bills is so ingrained in our lawmakers there is little hope this sudden, unexpected surge in practicality and realism (and clear thinking) will last.

Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn dropped his last remaining amendment. Andrew Roth at Club for Growth tallied the votes of the "unabashed porkers" who voted against all three of Coburn's cost-saving measures:

After doing some more research, I discovered that Allard, Bennett, and Bond -- who are all on this list -- also signed the letter to President Bush promising to uphold his possible veto of the very same bill! Clearly they want their cake and to eat it, too. Score points with squishy constituents and hard-pressing colleagues while passing the buck to the White House. Shameless.

Another loss was added to the Senate porkbusters' column yesterday, when the Senate rejected, 37-61, an amendment by Sen. John McCain that would

strike a provision that provides $74.5 million to states based on their production of certain types of crops, livestock and or diary products, which was not included in the Administration's emergency supplemental request.

The senators did, however, see fit to add even more pork:

An amendment by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), approved 53 to 46 yesterday, would add $289 million to compensate recipients of an experimental flu vaccine, in the event of an adverse reaction. By 51 to 45, senators added $1 million for water monitoring in Hawaii, which was hit by a torrential rainstorm. On Tuesday, the Senate tossed in nearly $1.7 billion in additional flood-control money for the New Orleans area, without offsetting it with cuts to other programs, as Bush had urged.

And more spending:

Kennedy also succeeded Wednesday, over the objections of the State Department, in directing that $105 million in economic aid go to private U.S. groups that help Iraqis build democratic institutions.

The Bush administration says it already has substantial dollars going to such organizations. Kennedy's move probably will not survive the House-Senate negotiations.

Also Wednesday, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., added $60 million for U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Sudan's Darfur region. His plan was financed by a companion cut to money for the huge U.S. Embassy project in Baghdad.

Mississippi newspapers continue to rigidly support their porker Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran. From the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

Thank goodness Republican Mississippi U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran - the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee - knows the difference in pork and legitimate needs. Cochran and U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Pascagoula, continue to fight to thwart efforts by Coburn and other conservatives to strip spending for Mississippi's recovery from a $106.5 billion emergency spending bill.

Jim Barksdale of the Mississippi Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal adds in a letter to the Wall Street Journal :

Let me emphasize: This project is not about relocating a railroad; it is about establishing a new east-west connector on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the most feasible way to get the necessary right-of-way for this new highway is to acquire it from CSX.

Clearing the way for a casino corridor is hardly a "legitimate need."

Over at Cato Unbound there's an excellent series on "The GOP and Limited Government: Do they have a future together?":

The era of big government is alive and well. You might think that after dominating all branches of the federal government for more than a half decade, Republicans, who like to talk big about lean and limited government, might have taken Leviathan down a few notches. But life under Bush has been less than a dream for conservatives who agreed with the Gipper when he said "government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." Republicans under Bush have tallied up a budget deficit of historic proportions, added an enormous entitlement to an already unsustainable system, created a vast new security bureaucracy, and strengthened Washington's grip on local schools. Are Republicans selling out and failing to lead, or are they just giving voters what they want? Does the spirit of Goldwater flicker still in the breasts of Republicans? Or is the Contract with America stamped null and void?

David Frum sees big government on the rise, and more coming:

The retirement of the baby boomers is now closely pending—and the time in which they could make adjustments to altered programs has drastically shrunk. The Medicare program has been vastly expanded by the Bush administration—and Social Security reform collapsed without so much as a bill ever being introduced into Congress. Defense budgets, which dropped from 6% of GDP in the mid-1980s to 3% in the late 1990s, have recovered to about 4.5% of GDP and will likely remain at that level for many years to come. And deficits in the $400 billion range not only preclude future tax cuts – but also raise real doubts about the sustainability of the Bush tax cuts.

Meanwhile, the pressures for even further expansion of government are gathering. Health care costs bear ever more heavily on the middle-class: Rising health burdens help explain why wage growth has stalled despite strong overall economic growth. The ranks of the uninsured continue to grow.

The tax bite is pre-programmed to gulp down ever greater portions of individual income. The Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, and the Alternative Minimum Tax applies to ever more millions of upper-middle-class families.

The free-trade momentum of the 1990s has likewise evaporated. American policy has turned in a protectionist direction since 2001: steel tariffs, the abuse of “mad cow” disease to bar Canadian beef from US markets, and so on. Populist-nationalist governments have come to power in Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, and (likely) soon in Mexico, dooming President Bush’s once-bright hopes for a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The House's lobbying reform measure is drawing more criticism. Kristina Rasmussen at NTU's Government Bytes has this to say:

If an amendment from Representatives Mike Castle (R-DE) on the lobbying reform package being considered by the House today is successful, registered lobbyists would have to complete a minimum of eight hours of government-sponsored ethics training every Congressional session as directed by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

As someone who just finished a political management ethics class for graduate school (paid by my own dime), I’ve come to the conclusion that a sound moral grounding is unlikely be taught to a bunch of adults sitting in a classroom – especially if Uncle Sam is the teacher. But Congress is ready to spend your money trying anyway.

The lobbying reform bill passed, a foregone conclusion after last week's deal between House leadership and the appropriators. The New York Times has more:

The measure, which passed 217 to 213, is the first lobbying and ethics legislation since 1995, the year after Republicans took control of the House. Republicans have been promising to pass lobbying legislation since January. But the measure proved extremely divisive, so much so that the bill nearly died last week in a Republican feud over earmarks, the pet projects that are often slipped into bills at lobbyists' behest.

The new bill would require lobbyists to disclose more of their activities, increase financial penalties for violations and require lawmakers and their aides to attend ethics training.

It also aims to discourage earmarks by requiring House members who write spending bills to disclose them, a move lauded by fiscal conservatives who complain that earmarks waste taxpayer money and drive up the cost of legislation.

Some lobbyists say the bill won't change business as usual:

"I don't see any significant changes whatsoever," said Dan Haley, a longtime lobbyist for Sun-Maid Growers, the California Walnut Commission and other farm groups. "For the day-to-day work of representing valley agriculture, nothing is going to change."

Finally, The Hill provides another good area for reform: the House Appropriations Committee's budget.

The Appropriations Committee had nearly $19 million dollars budgeted for staff salaries last year, far more than any other committee, according to public records. The Ways and Means Committee, which with Appropriations is considered one of the most powerful in Congress, with jurisdiction over taxes, Social Security and Medicare, had $9 million budgeted for salaries....

Twenty-six staffers on the Appropriations Committee had a salary over $158,000 last year, nearly as much as lawmakers themselves earn. In total, 116 staffers on Appropriations were slated to earn salaries worth more than $100,000, according to House records.

Unlike the other committees of the House. Appropriations writes its own budget and passes it in the annual legislative-branch appropriations bill. Other panels receive their operating budgets from House Administration.