It was announced on Fox News last night that the House Administration Committee is considering a gigantic increase of $90,000 this year for the office budget of the average Member of the House of Representatives which now is over $1,200,000 per year. Staff salaries and other offices expenses come out of this annual budget. Normally, the annual increase in the budget is about $10,000 or so.

Democrat Congressman Ron Kind from Wisconsin opposes such a huge increase in the congressional office budget. Indeed, he believes the budget itself is too large. Ever since he became a Congressman some 12 years ago, he has returned some 10% of his annual budget back to the American taxpayers. Indeed, recently his total return to the American people went over $1 million.

On the other side of the aisle, there are far more fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party, and Americans will have to rely on them to ensure that federal government spending does not get out of control. Yesterday when the Republican members of the United States House of Representatives met with Barack Obama in the U.S. Capitol Building, Maryland Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, confronted the new president.

Congressman Bartlett said: "Mr. President, I probably come at this from a slightly different perspective. I remember when FDR beat Hoover in 1932. So I remember the Great Depression very well. I don't remember any of the many government programs affecting the course of the Depression. Government programs didn't work then, I don't know why we think they would work now. Mr. President, I think our obsessive borrowing has fully mortgaged my kids and my grandkids. Now we're working on mortgaging my two great-grandkids. Mr. President, I think it's more than a little bit selfish to try to solve our economic problems which we created by burdening future generations yet to be born."

Congressman Bartlett is another fiscal conservative who has frequently returned a good portion of his congressional office budget to the American people each year. A key vote for the Republican Party will occur when the so-called stimulus bill comes up for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives this week. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has determined that the bill will not cost the American taxpayers the advertised $825 billion, but a whopping $1.1 trillion. A 100% no vote by the Republicans would be a good beginning to get the party back to being the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps, they would even gain seats in the Congress in next year's election.