The Republican-led Senate stiff-armed President Bush’s call for belt-tightening yesterday and adopted a $2.8 trillion fiscal 2007 budget resolution, after adding over $16 billion in spending to Bush’s request and rejecting calls to rein in entitlements. The Senate snubbed even modest attempts to slow mandatory spending programs, which Bush had targeted for $65 billion in net savings over five years. Almost all of the proposed amendments sought to increase spending.
Republicans in Congress are riding roughshod, violating all budgetary principles. It’s real simple. The architects are using gimmicks, like Arlen Specter’s “advanced appropriations.” Specter got $7 billion for education and other programs under the jurisdiction of the Labor, Health and Education Appropriations Subcommittee which he chairs, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Specter’s blatant disregard for any sort of budget discipline was summed up with his smug remark, “It’s not sort of a gimmick; it is a gimmick.” It is precisely this attitude which is likely to haunt the GOP come November, as the small government conservative base of the party stays home.
Exactly.
As I've said over and over again, the woes the Republicans are facing have nothing to do with Americans turning to the left and everything to do with the Republicans themselves not turning far enough to the right.
Read the whole thing.