The chorus calling for spending restraint in Congress is being joined by important conservative lobbying groups. The influential American Conservative Union chimes in:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union, acting on behalf of over one million ACU members and supporters, do hereby express their grave concern that the Republican Party has abandoned its traditional belief that the individual has supremacy over the state. Big government, in the hands of any party, threatens the rights and privacy of that individual. In the hands of the GOP, the federal government has grown bigger and faster in the last five years than during any previous five year period since The New Deal, and the GOP’s current leadership has forgotten the populist legacy of Ronald Reagan; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union applaud the efforts of Congressman Mike Pence, and other true conservatives, to curb the dangerous growth of government spending and regulation. As strongly as we support Congressman Pence, we just as vehemently oppose Speaker Hastert and other defenders of the status quo and urge them to remember that the GOP only became the majority governing party when it rejected Nelson Rockefeller’s liberal wing of the Republican Party and instead embraced the courageous conservative leadership of Ronald Reagan.

And Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, a significant conservative organziation, urges fiscal restraint in a string of letters to Congress (here, here, here and here).

The risk that the conservative base will stay home on election day, disillusioned by fiscal liberalism, is made clear when such staunch GOP supporters as the ACU and ATR openly express their concern about government spending. When George H. W. Bush lost re-election in 1992, it was largely due to reneging on his "no new taxes" pledge, which infuriated conservatives and dampened turnout. A repeat could happen in 2006 if the GOP fails to reform itself. Republicans cannot win elections by spending like Democrats.

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