. . . is Arizona's Jeff Flake. Here are a couple of key 'grafs from his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (not available w/o subscription yet, check Opinion Journal over the weekend when the WSJ releases some notable op-eds from the previous week):
Traipsing down a flower-strewn path unpricked by the thorns of reason. Perhaps no adage more accurately describes Congress right now. In the midst of a national debate on how to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild hurricane ravaged communities, it has blithely authorized $2 billion for H.R. 250, "A bill to establish an interagency committee to coordinate federal manufacturing research."
There is virtue in getting back to "business as usual" after a tragedy -- if it is a business you ought to be in. But lavish spending on questionable programs should have been out of step with Republican principles before these two hurricanes struck. From any vantage point outside the Washington Beltway, it now looks even more out of place.
How did we get here? Is this the same party that just 10 years ago insisted on dollar-for-dollar spending offsets for its $15 billion response to the Northridge, Calif., earthquake -- with the California Republican delegation leading the charge? Where did we go wrong? And how do we convince the voters in the midterm elections that two more years of Republican control will produce anything more than bigger government and growing deficits?
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