First of all, “vindicate their ‘principles?’” I don’t think “vindicate” means what you think it does. No one is “justifying” or “defending” their principles with a budget. They vindicate during a debate. Administrations “institutionalize” their principles via budgets. That’s what policy-making is. That’s what President Bush did when he directed more of his budgets toward funding programs that “save America one soul at a time.” I understand if you don’t agree with the policies, but it’s kind of silly to assume that only one party “hurls huge chunks of cash” at their principles. Please. It’s not like President Bush left the country with the hefty surplus that was there when he began.

It’s a couple of weeks old now, but I just caught up enough in my magazine reading to reach Ryan Lizza’s article in the May 4th New Yorker entitled Money Talks, a report on how the Obama Administration has gone about preparing the federal budget. And...