Fiscal conservatism makes a comeback.

OpinionJournal editorialized It's only taken a decade or so, but suddenly there's momentum in Congress for spending restraint. We'll be watching the fine print, but you can tell Republicans are worried about complaints from conservative voters because for a change they're trying to act, well, like Republicans.

Hallellulah!!!

In a first good sign, House leaders are rewriting their Fiscal 2006 budget resolution to increase the amount of "savings" to as much as $50 billion over five years. This is far from onerous, but it is better than the $35 billion Congress passed the first time around.

In another miracle, they are also moving to "deauthorize" 98 federal programs that long ago outlived their usefulness. These include such pork-barrel classics as the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program. A deauthorization doesn't cut any spending, but it does reduce the likelihood that money will be spent on these fiscal dodos in the future. Political symbolism has its uses.

By far the most promising idea is for a spending cut of as much as 3% on every discretionary federal agency, program and department. The case for across-the-board cuts is especially persuasive given the boom times that federal agencies have enjoyed in recent years. As the nearby chart shows, spending for federal education programs is up 99% since 2001; international affairs and foreign aid is up 94%; community development 71%; housing programs 86%, and so on. The inflation rate over the same period was 12.5%.

This "cut," by the way, would only reduce spending from the "baseline" that already includes annual increases for inflation for 2006.

What would really be nice if a cut could mean an actual cut, rather than what we planned to spend.

A 3% sequester, as it's known in Beltway lingo, would save $36 billion in 2006. And because baseline spending levels would be reduced going ahead, the savings would magnify over time--to as much as $500 billion over 10 years. This is without even touching the $1.4 trillion to be spent on Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements. (The programs that would be cut are those that Congress agrees to fund every year; entitlements go up automatically unless Congress rewrites the law.)

Which it should, but won't, do

Democrats are deploring an across-the-board cut as a "mindless buzz saw" that fails to set priorities and hurts the poor. And it would be nice if Congress actually debated priorities. But since the late 1990s, spending has gone up on nearly everything every year. Given Hurricane Katrina and the war on terror, an across-the-board cut is a blunt political instrument whose time has returned.