Pete Du Pont of the Wall Street Journal has written a great piece Republicans should take to heart regarding fiscal responsibility and responsiveness. Clearly, Republicans must re-learn the art of cutting spending and chopping out the pork:

So how can Republicans get their identity back? The current Congress is unlikely to fix itself from the inside–would a Congressional majority ever want to give up authority to do anything?–so it will be up to the American people to fix it from the outside
 
First, the president must be persuaded to reduce congressional spending. He must use his rescission authority to force the Congress to vote on rescinding some $15 billion, about the average of what presidents have requested since the rescission process began in the 1970s. The president has proposed one rescission of $2.3 billion, but he must be far more aggressive.

Second, when Congress enacts legislation exceeding the president’s requested budget spending levels, he should veto those spending bills. Legislators need to be forcefully reminded that spending requires executive as well as legislative approval.

Third, the president needs line-item veto authority. Most of the states governors have it and use it to control spending, and so should the President. When President Bush recently suggested a line-item veto, Mr. Lewis said the legislative branch of government had the spending power and to give any veto power to the president “could be a very serious error.” But the opposite is the case: the line-item veto is a very serious improvement that the president and Republicans should pursue.

Next, Congress needs to clean up its earmark spending process. As a start it should adopt the proposal from Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) that each earmark’s sponsor be identified in the text of spending bills, and that a vote be allowed on specific earmark proposals. Congress should also establish term limits for Appropriations Committee members so that the congressional political establishment cannot go on swag-splitting forever.

Though I don’t agree with any proposal of line-item veto as I believe it violates the principle of separation of powers in terms of the constitution, I do agree President Bush needs to yield his veto power on spending bills that are either pork-laden and unneeded (massive earmarks or various highway spending proposals for starters). The Congress must cut massive federal spending in order to promote long term economic growth in the United States.

The end of fiscal conservativism