PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: John Fund writes about Republican spending problems:

Republicans should have learned from the reaction of their core voters to last fall’s pork-stuffed transportation bill and the bloated Hurricane Katrina relief measure that excess spending was driving their base crazy. Earmarks–home-state projects slipped into budget bills without adequate review or transparency–became a dirty political word, led by the infamous $220 million Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

Apparently the lesson hasn’t sunk in, especially with porkmeister Jerry Lewis of California, chair of the House Appropriations Committee:

After tough negotiations, a deal was finally struck between GOP leaders and the reformers. First, members would have to have their names attached to individual earmarks. Second, projects that had not been included in either House or Senate bills but were created out of conference reports negotiated between the two parties would be subject to a debate and vote on the House floor. Simple transparency and accountability, you would think.

But not to House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis. “The appropriators deep-sixed it,” Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told National Journal. “They’re taking their toys and going home.” Last Thursday at 6:20 p.m., Mr. Lewis’s staff sent out an e-mail declaring that the reforms were unacceptable and trod on the prerogatives of the powerful committee, which is known as “Congress’ favor factory.”

In his email, Dave Gibbons, an Appropriations Committee staffer, told fellow committee staffers that Mr. Lewis “will NOT SUPPORT passage of the RULE and/or the BUDGET RESOLUTION tomorrow. He also requested that you inform your members of his position in this regard and asks that they likewise support the Committee.” Mr. Lewis followed up with his own statement saying it was “unfortunate that the whims of a few would prevent the overwhelming majority of our members” from passing a budget.

“Lewis’s move is political suicide for the party,” one top GOP official told me. “He is putting his self-interest ahead of the GOP caucus, the party and the country. If the president and Speaker [Dennis] Hastert don’t shut him down, then any pretense we are a reform party goes out the window.” . . . From their scramble to ram through a national legislative solution to Terri Schiavo’s plight, to their overreaction to Hurricane Katrina, to their failure to recognize the public’s disgust with pork-barrel projects, to the Dubai Ports deal, Republicans have appeared to the world to be as unprincipled and rudderless as the politicians they campaigned against back in 1994. Unless they change course dramatically in the seven months between now and Election Day, they may well find themselves facing the same fate as the Democratic political dinosaurs of that year that they replaced.

I hope somebody talks to Hastert about this. Otherwise, well, there are Democrats who are supporting these kinds of reforms.

UPDATE: More bad indicators for Republicans. The question is whether they’ll be inspired to take corrective action, or panicked into doing something stupid. I know which way to bet, but . . .