Like watching television? Like it enough to pay $3 billion tohelp your fellow Americans buy new converter boxes for digitalbroadcasts?

If not, you better let your lawmakers in Washington know whereyou stand on that and other proposals that would add more than $30billion in new spending to the upcoming federal budget underconsideration by Senate committees on Capitol Hill.

The House Republican leadership, for its part, has promised tocap the amount of new spending and hopes to cut overall spending by$50 billion, but even the House GOP plan would include at leastsome new spending — just not as much as the Senate’s.

What in the world has happened to fiscal responsibility?

For decades, the Democrats wore the label of a tax-and-spendparty. But fiscally conservative Americans could, more times thannot, count on the Republicans to exercise more restraint (to thepoint of earning the reputation, in some circles, of being cold anduncaring). In recent years, however, GOP lawmakers have joinedtheir left-of-center counterparts crafting ballooning budgets withno end in sight.

When “maverick” fiscal conservatives speak out these days,they’re rebuked by party leaders, as freshman Rep. Tom Coburn,R-Okla., learned recently when he questioned the need for $453million earmarked for an Alaskan “bridge to nowhere.”

This spend-spend-spend mentality is a vicious cycle, as people,states, cities, etc. will take full advantage of federal money aslong as it is offered. It’s up to our elected politicians inWashington to put their feet down and declare that enough isenough.

Of course, this presents problems of its own for the lawmakers– assuming they want to win re-election — because if they cut offthe gravy train, they certainly will lose votes. Again, it’s avicious cycle.

That said, however, there is no excuse for uncontrolledgovernment spending. As mom told us as kids, that money doesn’tgrow on trees. Rather it’s the hard-earned money earned byAmericans and paid in the form of taxes.

Ironically, Congress also is working on a $39 billion-plusdeficit-reduction bill for the upcoming session. That’s no smallfeat and would be quite an accomplishment. But juxtaposed withspending that keeps going up, up, up, it loses some of itsluster.

Lowering the deficit by $39 billion but proposing $30 billion innew spending can hardly be called sweeping progress.