Philosophical debate rages in GOP

[CatWoman]

But later Wednesday, RSC members in a press conference unveiled Operation Offset, an attempt to cut earmarks and reduce the drug subsidy bill. Pence offered to delay his $26 million highway earmark for Muncie and Anderson in eastern Indiana. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a 48-year-old second-termer from Texas, similarly would be willing to delay $16 million for roads in Mesquite. Flake is a rare congressman who asked for no earmarked highway funds for his district (though it did not keep him from re-election last year with 79 percent of the vote). Young is the grand champion earmarker, with more than $1 billion in the highway bill for projects in his state of Alaska.

The beleaguered conservatives see all this spending leading inexorably to a tax increase, which would redistribute the tax burden to the disadvantage of the successful and threaten an economic recession. Barry Goldwater long ago assailed Dwight D. Eisenhower for presiding over a "Dime Store New Deal." That stinging rebuke no longer would be appropriate for today's Republicans. They outdo Democrats on pork and are in the same ballpark on entitlements. Even Katrina and now Rita do not restrain them.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak26.html

[applegrove]

1. Was the drug bill a total dupe to get seniors to re-elect Bush? You

have to wonder.

[zbdent]

2. Notice that the repukes are just going to "delay" their $$s, not give them

up entirely . . . unlike destroying Medicaid or SS . . .