MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE ROSS PEROT AGAIN:

Deficits and Fiscal Credibility: A Democratic senator says no to a huge federal spending bill. (EVAN BAYH, 3/04/09, WSJ)

This week, the United States Senate will vote on a spending package to fund the federal government for the remainder of this fiscal year. The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 is a sprawling, $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largess.

The Senate should reject this bill. If we do not, President Barack Obama should veto it.

The omnibus increases discretionary spending by 8% over last fiscal year's levels, dwarfing the rate of inflation across a broad swath of issues including agriculture, financial services, foreign relations, energy and water programs, and legislative branch operations. Such increases might be appropriate for a nation flush with cash or unconcerned with fiscal prudence, but America is neither.

Drafted last year, the bill did not pass due to Congress's long-standing budgetary dysfunction and the frustrating delays it yields in our appropriations work. Since then, economic and fiscal circumstances have changed dramatically, which is why the Senate should go back to the drawing board. The economic downturn requires new policies, not more of the same.

The arguments against the debt and deficits are bogus as economics, but resonate for moral reasons in a Puritan Nation, as Ross Perot demonstrated in 1992. The GOP ought to steal a march and make debt reduction a focus, not least because it sets the stage for defunding Democrat projects.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2009 12:01 PM