"Pay-Go" Goes

A DC Examiner editorial on how the Dems are already wiggling out of their "pay-go" reform. (No big surprise, of course.) An excerpt:

Congressional Democrats are employing another Washington spending fiction to mask more spending increases in their proposed $2.9 trillion federal budget for fiscal 2008. It's called the "Reserve Fund" and it makes possible a $50 billion hike in spending on health insurance for low-income children.

Under their "Pay-Go" rules, congressional Democrats promised not to raise spending unless there was specific federal revenue available to pay for it. The Reserve Fund is their way of guaranteeing a funding increase when — wink, wink — at a later date they will have found the needed revenues. Call it the "Spend Now, Maybe Pay Later" approach to federal budgeting.