PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Tim Chapman has an interview with Mike Pence about budget-cutting efforts in Congress. Pence looks at how the GOP Congress has lost its way:

TC: I just read a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, and I think it was Dick Armey actually who wrote it and calling for another Republican revolution. It almost sounds like that’s what you’re talking about there—a complete reversion, not reversion in a negative way, but a reversion to conservative ideals that brought a bunch of people to the Republicans in 1994.

Pence: Well, I’ll always believe that the experience of November 2003, where this majority allowed for and supported the creation of the first new entitlement since the Great Society in the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, that we reached something of a turning point. It was in that three-hour vote, the longest vote in Congressional history that many of the relationships that have now become the foundation of the Republican study Committee and its effectiveness were forged during that legislative battle. And if there is any silver lining to Medicare bill and the No Child Left Behind bill was in those defeats. House conservatives were reinvigorated and renewed in their commitment to be more effective in limited government and fiscal discipline. And the successes, however modest, of this year are a direct result of dozens upon dozens members being unwilling to allow government to expand under Republican control.

The Congressional Republicans certainly need to remember why they were sent there. And, as I noted on January 1, there’s a connection between pork and corruption that they would do well to keep in mind. Maybe we should send them all a copy of Size Matters.