The Tangled Webs the Republicans Weave

Republicans on the Hill have suddenly found their fiscally conservative sea legs, raising question after question about the size of Obama's fiscal stimulus bill, and sounding off about burgeoning deficits. Strange. For the last eight years not a peep, hardly a whimper from them, while spending increased year after year under the Bush administration, with nary a veto in sight. Republicans, when confronted with the budget deficit created under their watch, cited increased national defense spending in the wake of September 11 as the overriding factor. Fair enough.

Strange, though, that these same Republicans on the Hill are so eager to call the Democrats to account for forgetting that we're still in a war. Following this logic, don't we need to keep spending? Why go miserly now?

Perhaps, as is so often the case in politics, the suddenly spendthrift Republican attitude has surfaced mainly because the other party now holds the purse strings. And so the minority party rediscovers the problem of budgetary deficits, while the majority soon spends, and spends, and spends again.