This really ought to encourage conservatives who are wondering whether they should bother to vote in November–a new budget analysis from Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation:

Federal spending in 2006 is set to rise 9 percent, the largest increase since 1990 and enough to earn Congress near failing grades from the Heritage Foundation’s third quarter report card. …
Budgets are about setting priorities and making trade-offs. With the first baby boomers only 15 months away from their first Social Security checks, it is reckless and irresponsible for lawmakers to bust the budget by more than $32 billion. Calling these routine expenditures “emergencies” has no effect other than to allow lawmakers to misleadingly claim that they stayed within the spending limits. But taxpayers will not be fooled when they receive the inevitable tax bill for Congress’s excess.