It's Easy Spending Other People's Money

The Cato Institute makes an interesting observation:

There's no reason why money spent on natural-disaster relief should not compete with spending in other areas of government. If the relief spending is truly more necessary than other programs in the budget, then those less essential programs should be pared back to make room for it. Congress does not seem concerned about how the federal government (read: taxpayers) is going to pay for any of this. Yet now is exactly the time to figure that out. Charity does require sacrifice, even from big-spending politicians using other people's money for charitable purposes.

Sadly, the truly fiscally-conservative wing of the Republican Party no longer exists; there will be no cutbacks to compensate for Katrina.