The editorial board of the conservative Washington Times takes a look behind the optics of the coming budget fight, which concerns less than one percent of federal spending. While we welcome the fiscal restraint now being demonstrated by President Bush and congressional Republicans, we regret that their unrestrained profligacy during the previous six years has contributed so much to the fiscal challenges that now confront the nation...

Lots of good stuff came out today.

• A Congressional Research Service (CRS, aka the super-authoritative researchers who members of Congress ask to do reports for them, but typically the reports aren't available to the public) comparison of the House and Senate SCHIP bills
• The House Budget Committee's breakdown of how some of Bush's proposed budget cuts would impact each state
• A knowledgeable article in the Washington Post about the

Stan "The Man" Collender had another good column yesterday. Comments follow: You've heard the song before, probably on a country station. It sometimes crosses over into the mainstream and seems to get a lot of airtime in Washington just before the Redskins play the Cowboys. With apologies to Willie Nelson, my guess is that the parents of would-be fiscal conservatives are singing their own version of the song these days. Start with George W. Bush, the self-professed fiscal conservative who has done more to damage the notion of fiscal conservatism than any big-spending liberal has ever done. The Bush administration has proposed and agreed to some of the biggest increases in spending since the Great Society. In the process, some of the largest hikes ever in federal borrowing will have occurred while this president is in the White House and the amount spent on interest by the federal government will be much higher than it would otherwise be for decades to come.