THE LOW POST: Tasting Their Own Medicine

Here's the deal with pay-go. It is designed to apply to permanent expenditures only -- traditionally, the programs that are usually called entitlements. That means Medicare, student loans, etc. Basically, pay-go was designed as a way to cap spending on welfare; if you want to raise expenditures for this entitlement, you have to make a corresponding cut somewhere else. It does not apply to emergency expenditures or what is called discretionary spending, i.e. spending that is made on a year-to-year basis, in response to temporary problems.

Republicans like Price can't vote for pay-go as a general principle because that would mean they would have to somehow pay for the Bush tax cuts. They also can't ask to expand pay-go to emergency expenditures as a general rule, because that would mean they would have to pay for the Iraq and Afghan wars, which are still being paid for almost entirely out of emergency appropriations -- despite the fact that they are no longer unanticipated emergencies in the traditional sense.

So what do they do? They're left to stamp their feet and cry Orwell when the Democrats pass a relatively small appropriation for housing for hurricane victims. In other words, there's no Tom Price to be found screaming for fiscal responsibility when a $90 billion Iraq appropriation is passed, but when $1.175 billion goes to the Gulf Coast, he and the likes of Diaz-Balart start singing "We Shall Overcome."

I'm no big fan of the Democratic party. I think they pussyfoot about key issues like the war and they whore for their campaign donors almost as much as the Republicans. And their ethics and procedural reform to date isn't something to write home about. Even Barney Frank conceded on the House floor: "[Diaz-Balart] is right about one thing. He chides us for setting the bar too low. We only promised to do better than they did, and we met that standard with ease. But we should do better."

But Jesus, at least they have some shame. The Republicans ran Congress like a basement cock-fighting ring for more than a decade, and two months or so after they're out of power, they're already transformed into a bunch of squawking dissidents more pretentious than Rage Against the Machine. And they know how absurd it is, too. When I called Diaz-Balart's office, and asked his press representative, Victoria Martinez, how her boss could possibly complain about a lack of open rules considering his record, there was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Uh huh," she said. "I'll get back to you."

Click. Should I hold my breath while I wait?

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