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The front page of today's Post reports:

Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts to pay for the soaring cost of hurricane relief... A revolt has been stirring within the House GOP ranks for months. Fiscal conservatives had accepted an expanded federal role in education enshrined in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, had lost a fight to block the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson was president -- and had even embraced the mammoth transportation law that passed this summer with a record-shattering number of pork-barrel projects... Since Bush came to office, federal spending had grown by a third, from $1.86 trillion to $2.47 trillion, while record budget surpluses turned to record deficits. Conservative activists, led by talk show hosts and opinion columnists, had begun pressing Republicans hard on what they saw as Big Government Conservatism... After several meetings, Hastert emerged from a closed Republican session the night of Oct. 6 to announce that he had gotten the message. Cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and farm supports would be raised from $35 billion to $50 billion in the massive budget bill that will be compiled in November. Republicans would push an additional across-the-board spending cut for 2006 and would try to trim programs already funded.

Keep 'em coming - this is music to my ears. More analytically, this is probably the best time to execute painful budget cuts. When polls are already down, the cost of a political loss becomes significantly less. When you're on top, the potential of an unpopular spending cut can bring a party's momentum to a screeching halt. Now, the GOP has no momentum - but has all the voting power. So bring on the cuts!