A compromise

Barack Obama, still basking in his own messianic glow, chided Senate Republicans over the weekend for not swooning and collapsing like teenage girls at a pop idol concert and simply rubber-stamping his misnamed "stimulus" package.

"The American people were hoping that Congress would begin to confront the great challenges we face," the new president said. "That was, after all, what last November's election was all about."

Interesting. Wasn't Mr. Obama part of a Democratic minority in the Senate that attempted to scuttle virtually every Bush administration initiative or nominee? Funny how the fact that Americans had given Republicans control of both Congress and the White House never dissuaded Democrats from engaging in their hyper-obstructionist approach.

But that was then, this is now.

An equally instructive lesson from recent events is how congressional Democrats deny their most base instincts, but can't help acting upon them.

A frequent and legitimate criticism of the Bush administration and his GOP Congress was that they talked a good game about fiscal responsibility, but spent us into oblivion. Many Democrats argued that they were better stewards of taxpayer dollars than their Republican counterparts -- remember that Bill Clinton balanced the budget, they said.

But less than a month into the Obama presidency, Democrats are the principle architects of the biggest budget-busting spending plan in the history of the planet, passing off as "economic stimulus" a multibillion-dollar bill so laden with pork and liberal special-interest handouts that it would have astonished even big-spending left-wing icons such as FDR or LBJ.

Instead of a "stimulus," it is a wish list intended to please big government activists and will hinder rather than help the nation's long-term recovery.

After three northeastern Republicans helped trim the House version of the "stimulus" bill down to $827 billion, it will pass the Senate this week. That a handful of liberal GOP senators would jump on board as part of a compromise is disappointing, but not surprising -- at least they managed to cut the outrageous price tag by a tad.

In the meantime, the great majority of congressional Republicans are correct to ignore President Obama's admonitions and make sure their fingerprints are nowhere to be found on this spending monstrosity. It marks the first step toward reclaiming their own principles and fending off charges that they're no better than the Democrats when it comes to budget busting.