Man the Lifeboats ; Sos Probably Comes Too Late to Save Gop

Summary

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It may be too late for Republicans to restore their lost luster as the party of fiscal responsibility, at least in time to prevent a drubbing in the coming elections, but at least some of them, including Sen. Wayne Allard, are trying. Allard is joining with a few Senate colleagues to push the SOS bill, the Stop Overspending Act of 2006, which attempts to make repairs to a badly broken budget process and curb unchecked congressional spending. We don't have a lot of faith that the effort will go very far, or save the GOP's lost souls, but we think the plan has merit, nonetheless.

SOS is basically a repackaging of budget reform ideas that have been around for years, but that doesn't mean they won't or couldn't work. There's a line-item veto-like authority for the president, for instance, which bill backers believe will survive judicial review. President Bush seems to have a phobia of the veto pen, but perhaps another chief executive, at another place and time, would make good use of a mechanism that permits him or her to veto certain provisions of catch-all spending bills. A line-item veto approved during the Clinton years was itself vetoed -- by federal judges. This authority would have to be fairly specific and limited to pass judicial muster without a constitutional amendment.

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Man the Lifeboats ; Sos Probably Comes Too Late to Save Gop

SOS also includes what backers describe as a "Grammmanesque" rate- of-growth cap on discretionary federal spending. The aim is a balanced budget by 2012. We hate to think that such mechanisms are required to force Congress to l...

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