The Washington Post this morning carries an account of how the budget-cutting rebels in the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and his Republican Study Committee, have triumphed in their effort to make sure that the $50 billion in hurricane relief spending is paid for by corresponding offsets in other federal spending.

The rebellion came, the Post reports, after Rep. Tom DeLay claimed last month, in apparent seriousness, that 11 years of Republican rule had already cut the federal budget about as much as possible. That claim just wasn’t credible in an environment in which Mr. Pence and his Republican Study Committee are issuing press releases highlighting boondoggles such as a $500,000 federal grant to the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board to paint an Alaska Airlines 737 to look like a chinook salmon, making it a “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon.”

The post reports that the cuts will come from spending on farm subsidies, food stamps, and Medicaid. This will no doubt yield much squawking of protest from the Democrats, who prefer tax increases to spending cuts. Our own sense is that the voters will understand the need for some sacrifice to pay for hurricane reconstruction, and perceive, as well, that tax increases would only be another blow to an economy reeling from the higher energy costs imposed by the hurricane.

The surprise is that it took the costs of a hurricane to make Congress realize what most of those outside the beltway already had long since figured out – that increasing federal spending annually at rates well beyond inflation is a way to leave the taxpayers on the hook like a coho at a fishing contest.