Headline Opinion Journal: Bush’s Looming Political Deficit: Conservatives grow restless with big-spending Republicans.

As this report on the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) shows, I’m not the only Conservative dissatisfied with the big spending ways of President Bush and the Republican Congress.

Bush and his advisors are aware of the growing problem, and part of the State of the Union speech was aimed to quiet the Conservatives by throwing them a few bones. One of Bush’s proposals is to limit discretionary spending increases to 4% or less for the 2005 budget. However, non entitlement spending is up 36% since Bush took office. Bush has yet to take a stand against the wasteful spending of the Congress and veto anything.

What bothered CPAC attendees most is that while they don’t expect much from Congress in the way of spending restraint, the Bush administration continues to be in partial denial over the problem. Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t mention spending at all during his address to CPAC delegates. The Bush White House has proposed what it claims is a near-freeze in nondefense controllable spending next year, but its long-term plan is to merely cut the deficit in half over the next five years.

This is not a good sign. Bush and the Republican Congress continue to increase spending. Worse yet, they are increasing the size of government. But, believing that conservatives can’t go anywhere else, they are only concerned with trying to win the unwinnable vote of the liberals by spending more than the liberals ever were able to spend.