We heard a lot of nice sentiment from President Bush Tuesday night but, alas, it is another case of too little, too late. (Or... is it never too late?) It would be great if the $18 billion in "pork barrel" spending he mentioned is really cut by restricting the ease with which our legislature can attach its pet projects to entirely unrelated bills under the cover of darkness. This is the equivalent of about seven weeks of spending on the Iraq war, at current levels.

It also begs the question as to what the administration was thinking until now, as we spent perhaps $100 to $120 billion during his watch on an abundance of special projects. If we give the President and his team credit for on-the-job-training the first year, even though every candidate makes cutting government spending a part of his platform, the administration should still have done something earlier, especially with Republicans steering this ship! This is very embarrassing -- and shameful!

It makes me think the attitude in Washington was that 'the Democrats got theirs, now we're going to get ours'.