Besically, this group is divided into two camps: One side is more ideologically committed to supply side economics. The main part of this political agenda is that tax cuts act as a stimulus for economic growth, regardless of deficits and other externalities. The other group consists of the deficit hawks, whose main agenda is the reduction of government spending in order to maintain a balanced budget. Some conservatives believe in the concept of "starving the beast". By forcing a reduction in government revenues through tax cuts, the government will have to cut certain programs "out of necessity". In more practical terms however, this is not possible, for here you're asking Congress to cut programs that are politically popular at home. Taxes were cut during the Reagan and Bush administrations, but at the same time, government spending was not reduced enough, thus creating deficits. Some deficit hawks support tax cuts, but not when it means a mounting debt.

This is the most important faction of the GOP. Too bad its not getting much action these days.

Where's Newt Gingrich when you need him? The reality is that Republicans have gotten drunk on authority just like Democrats did for years and have forgotten their basic core principles. Neocons like Bush are no help with the majority of the budget already ear marked for entitilements like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid including then defense (which Clinton gutted to balance the budget) little is really up for debate. This with increases in education, prescription drug benefits, transportation bills, farm subsidies and the new homeland security initiatives there simply is no fiscal responsibility. The reality is our debt in the context of our GNP is very low in comparable times of war. Yet this does not exonerate a complete lack of policy cohesion. We need to privatize social security. We need to eliminate farm subsidies. We need to abolish the department of education. We need to deregulate our health care industry to expand the options with in the systems to reduce cost. We need to eliminate aspects of federal aid and disaster relief and demand individual citizens insure themselve against disaster. We need to all this and reduce taxes while increasing defense spending. That would be fiscally responsible. But that wouldn't get me elected.

How can you rate something that doesn't exist?

Before people begin to portray fiscal conservatism as something that died around the time dinosaurs became extinct, let us not forget that the balanced budget under the Clinton adminstration occured with the assistance of a Republican held congress. Though I might not call myself a fiscal conservative it truly would only be because I view myself as a conservative for many other reasons than simply economics. The word conservative is not usually defined by fiscal conservatives as a philsophy that can be extended to other aspects of government and so the term can be rather misleading.

A quaint reminder of years gone by. What was once the foundation of the Republican Party has been sold out for pork, political favors, and cronyism. And with a Republican President, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, not even even the most partisan can try and blame this on the Dems. Indeed, compare Clinton's responsible spending with Bush's drunken binge. Where are the fiscal conservatives now?