Bruce Bartlett calls a spade a spade in his latest column where he castigates Republicans who now claim fiscal responsibility and yet supported the Medicare expansion of 2003, when perscription drug benefits were added.

It’s a worthwhile read and yet I have questions.

Megan McArdle once said the budget is basically used a political club to whack at the other party. During the Bush years, the Democrats lambasted the Republicans for reckless spending and said that when they were in power things would be different. When they came to power, things were different: now the GOP would complain about the Democrats’ reckless spending.

I think that Republicans have been hypocrites when it comes to fiscal policy. And so have the Democrats. So what do we do about it?

Dissident conservatives like Bartlett and E.D. Kain have rightly complained about the GOP fiscal problem, but other than expend a lot of righteous anger, there are few in any solutions.

Part of the problem is that the deficit is a weapon but not an issue people actually want to tackle. It’s not sexy like health care or the war in Iraq. And far too often, as Bartlett notes, politics gets in the way of trying to tame the deficit monster.

As Timothy Taylor noted in a recent op-ed, the deficit is an issue that can have a big effect on the well-being of our nation. It’s an issue that should be of concern to all Americans regardless of political persuasion and not a club to use against political enemies.

I guess my question to Bartlett, Kain and others is how can Republicans be the party of fiscal responsibility? How do we get beyond slogans of tax cuts and “starving the beast” and find ways to actually get our fiscal house in order? How do we tell a nation that it must live within its means and learn that government action comes with a price?

All the righteous anger works for a while, but it’s time to come up with answers. And force politicians to listen.

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