The Party of Fiscal Responsibility

From today's Washington Post:

"Although the GOP has portrayed itself as the party of fiscal restraint, it has presided over sharp increases in pork-barrel spending since Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate in the 1994 elections.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog group that compiles an annual list of pork-barrel projects in the federal budget, 1,318 such projects cost taxpayers $7.8 billion in fiscal 1994. By 2000, the group recorded 4,326 pork barrel projects worth $17.7 billion.

The surge continued under the Bush administration. In its 2006 Congressional Pig Book, Citizens Against Government Waste identified 9,963 pork projects in the 11 appropriations bills that make up the discretionary portion of the fiscal 2006 budget. Their total cost came to $29 billion. Although the number of projects dropped 29 percent from the previous year, their value went up by 6.2 percent from the 2005 total of $27.3 billion, the group reported."

Can we stop the charade and call them the spend and spend conservatives. The party of fiscal responsibility my ass.