Budget Trap - Really?

This WSJ.com op-ed piece discusses the current budget process and run-away spending practices of Congress. In it, they attempt to defend the Republicans by pointing out changes made by the then-majority Democrats under the Nixon administration and used successfully during the Reagan years. It isn't until the close of the editorial that they call for new changes. The answer is not to use the earlier changes as an excuse, but to change the process again now that the Republicans control both houses. After all, a Republican is no different than a Democrat if government over-spends and over-reaches. They are all, just politicians - not that that's a surprise:

"Democrats have also learned to skewer Republicans for their individual 'earmarks,' which by one account total 18,000 this year and add up to $22 billion. These pork-barrel classics -- e.g., $1 million for a 'Wild American Shrimp Initiative' -- obscure the larger truth that this year's spending bill is actually the first in years to show some restraint. Domestic non-defense
discretionary spending will rise by less than 2% in Fiscal Year 2005. But what many voters will remember instead is that Republican incumbents are as spendthrift as Democratic incumbents.

A solution here is for Republicans to change the current budget rules, which were passed by Democrats in 1974 over a Watergate-weakened President Nixon. Those rules were deliberately designed to obscure the budget process to make it easier to spend, and to reduce Presidential leverage over spending decisions. Republicans denounced them throughout the 1980s, but now they embrace them as tools of incumbent protection."