The debate about whether and how to pay for more than $200 billion in projected Hurricane Katrina relief is really heating up on Capitol Hill and across the nation.  The Rocky Mountain News in Denver this morning offers the following common-sense spending Rx:

"The answer is that Katrina should be paid for by some combination of the following: postponing the prescription-drug benefit; scaling back on the pork in the just-passed $286 billion highway bill; requiring new spending programs...to be offset elsewhere in the budget; and paying rigorous attention to existing federal spending, such as the billions squandered on farm subsidies."

Unfortunately, this call for fiscal responsiblity still hasn't made its way to the highest levels of Capitol Hill, where Roll Call this morning reports this less-than encouraging quote from a "senior House GOP leadership aide"...

“We have been through this in the past,” said a senior House GOP leadership aide of offsetting federal disaster spending. “Getting offsets is a great idea. But getting it through the House is another thing. I don’t see where there are the votes” for delaying the Medicare drug rollout or retroactively cutting highway funds.

It looks like the real deficit on Capitol Hill is one of leadership.  The Congressional leadership worked overtime to secure enough support to pass the recent $286 billion highway bill that includes more than 6,000 pork projects.  They worked overtime to secure enough support to pass the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement , which will cost an estimated $600 billion to $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, depending on who you believe.

But when it's time to secure support for spending restraint and fiscal sanity?  They give up before the battle even starts.  This is not what the voters expected when they gave Republicans control of Congress 10 years ago.