Bipartisanship = big government.(Politico)

Since George W. Bush came to Washington the bipartisan love-fests have included the "No Child Left Behind" expansion of the federal Department of Education that jumped the department's annual budget from $14 billion to $23 billion; the pending $400-plus billion addition to the Medicare entitlement program; a large spending increase on foreign aid; and large expansions of federal employment and police powers for the war on terror.

There were uncomfortable moments of "partisan bickering" that led to the tax cuts of 2001, 2002, and 2003.

At the state level, partisan divisions between Democratic governors and Republican state legislator's have stopped tax hikes in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia. A united Republican caucus in California denied Democratic governor Gray Davis and his large legislative majority the two-thirds majority they needed to raise taxes. And "partisan" Republican governors in Colorado, Texas, Florida, New Hampshire, and Minnesota have closed over-spending gaps without tax hikes.

Yet in a fit of non-partisanship, the unicameral Nebraska state legislature overrode Republican governor Mike Johanns' veto of a $34 million tax hike. And in New York, Republican Senate leader Joseph Bruno and Democratic Assembly head Sheldon Silver joined "bipartisan" hands to ram through a $2.1 billion tax hike. Partisan divisions at the state level have stopped threatened tax hikes in 21 states in 2002 and 24 to date in 2003.

The good news for taxpayers is that we are moving into an increasingly partisan political era. For more than 100 years the Republican and Democratic Parties were largely regional power blocs, with Republicans coming from the North and Democrats from the South. Since the 1960s, though, the parties have become more vessels for political philosophy than regional identity. From Goldwater to Reagan to George W. Bush, the Republican Party has become the smaller-government, anti-tax party. Today, 217 House members, 42 Senators, and one President have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge against tax hikes, and all but three are Republicans. At the federal level, the Republican Party has even progressed from the party that will not raise your taxes to the party that enacts a tax cut each and every ...