A $9 Billion Start

Could there be hope for majority Republicans on the spending issue after all? And in the U.S. Senate, no less?

Robert Novak tells a very encouraging story:

The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Senator John Ensign voiced his objection.

The bill's Democratic sponsors railed in outrage against Ensign, a 47-year-old first-termer from Las Vegas, who usually keeps a low profile. But he was not acting alone. Ensign belongs to, and, indeed, originated, a small group of Republicans who intend to stand guard on the Senate floor against such raids on the Treasury as Monday night's failure.

That $9 bil was going to such hurricane-ravaged locales as Alaska, and was not slated to even be carved out of the $62 billion blank check that Congress already sent (ostensibly) to the Gulf Coast. It was, in other words, bread & circuses as usual, and precisely the sort of thing that has gotten Republicans into such hot water with their supporters.

When Ensign objected, all hell broke loose on the other side. Blanche Lincoln (D-AK) broke down in Tony-award-winning sobs, and Max Baucus (D-MT), ranking minority member of the Finance Committee and partner in crime with Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA), blew his stack so violently that his head threatened to explode.

But guess what? The majority didn't run away, at least this time. John Sununu (R-NH) "coolly analy[zed] the bill's excessive spending." Just shined the light of public scrutiny on what was supposed to be a "cockroaches gathering in the dark corner of the kitchen to raid the fridge" sort of deal. And what could the Dems do but rage impotently?

This Senate answer to the House's Republican Study Committee includes Ensign, Sununu, Tom Coburn (R-OK), Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint (R's-SC), and the only real drawback to this equation:

The group includes Senator John McCain, who long has tried to wean Republicans from ever greater federal spending but attracted little support from GOP colleagues until recently.

He's only in it for another angle at swindling his way to the '08 GOP presidential nomination. But as that's something he'll never get in any case, it can't hurt if he does good here, even if his efforts aren't really sincere or politically altruistic.

Another piece of encouraging news is that, at least so Novak says, Senate 'Pubbies are starting to properly align their perpetual anxiety with what they should actually be afraid of:

Fear has enveloped Republicans who see themselves handing the banner of fiscal integrity to the Democrats. The GOP is losing the rhetoric war, even though Democrats mostly push for higher domestic spending, because Republicans, while standing firm against tax hikes, have also declined to cut spending. Fearing the worst in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Republican senators who would not be expected to do so are looking to McCain to lead the party back to fiscal responsibility.

McCain will only lead to where McCain wants to go, whether or not that destination includes fiscal responsibility. But the more Pachyderms that get on that bandwagon, the better the chances of salvaging their majorities a year from now.

Besides, by that time "Sailor" will be off on his next calculating crusade.