Plenty of places for reductions.

Despite the extravagances, we are repeatedly assured that no significant federal reductions are possible. Last year, then-Speaker Tom DeLay (R-Texas) boasted about how spending had already been pared as far as possible, issuing a challenge to find any other cuts. The House Republican Study Committee, led by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), did just that--quickly coming up with potential cuts (over 10 years) of $500 billion. Merely delaying the institution of the prescription drug-benefit program for a year--allowing time to fix some of the problems already foreseen with its implementation--would have saved $31 billion.

Such "frugality" proved too much to stomach for many inside Washington and outside. Indeed, the Times' Herbert seems to think famine, pestilence, and death will follow the meager nick of less than $40 billion over five years. To the contrary, this is the proverbial drop in the bucket, being a reduction in baseline spending of barely 0.3 percent from expenditures of al most $13 trillion. Keep in mind this is not a real reduction--but a decrease in the rate of growth, which is being driven by burgeoning Medicare and Social Security programs. Lawmakers who agree to such a snip become budget "hawks" in today's Washington.

Nothing to cut? Demanding that lawmakers spend federal dollars only on constitutional functions would be appropriate, but few in the nation's capital these days have that kind of backbone. Even short of that, however, there is plenty of excess. As noted by Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, "Washington spends $60 billion annually on corporate welfare, versus $43 billion on homeland security."

How about special-interest payments? Last year was a new high for such pork. Some 13,997 pork projects were identified by Citizens Against Government Waste in the appropriations bills for fiscal 2005--totaling $27.3 billion, an increase of 31 percent over the previous year. Was every one of these vital? Probably not even to the New York Times.