The upcoming vote in the House over "mandatory spending" cuts is being hailed as one of the most important votes this year -- as it rightly should be. The vote will indicate as much about the direction our country is headed as it will about Congress' spending priorities. And the outcome is likely to be shaped by the courage and integrity of moderate Republicans. Conservatives see the House vote as an opportunity to blaze forward on the path to "starving the beast" -- dramatically downsizing the federal government. Progressives and some moderates see it, instead, as an opportunity to reject a radical agenda and begin to realign national policy with the values of the American people. Until recently, with the Bush administration commanding high public approval, conservatives quietly complained as Congress accelerated spending for defense, homeland security, and new entitlements. Behind closed doors, however, they grew bitter that deep cuts to domestic spending had not been accomplished, despite Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. At the same time, conservatives pursued reckless tax cuts, largely benefiting corporate elites and wealthy individuals. Their "have your cake and eat it too" policies have exacerbated a ballooning deficit and, along with major issues related to health care and pensions that loom unresolved, created an unsustainable long-term structural problem in the federal budget. Now, with Bush's popularity tanking and the House leadership in disarray, conservatives have stood up and taken the gloves off. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, the House Republican Study Committee, a group of roughly 100 Republican conservatives, launched "Operation Offset" -- a potpourri of proposals to de-fund the federal government by slashing budgets or completely removing programs, including such mainstays as subsidized student loans, NASA, Medicare, and food stamps. The far-right group claimed that any spending on Gulf Coast reconstruction needed to be offset with cuts in spending elsewhere. This conservative assault came at a time when many believed Congress, faced with glaring domestic need, would suspend yet another set of new tax cuts, particularly those to the wealthy, in order to retain revenues and pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction. With President Clinton, in recent speeches and interviews, making a strong case for the difference between good deficits (created by investments in the infrastructure and people affecting by natural disasters) and bad deficits, (created by unlimited tax giveaways to corporations and the rich), the moderate Republicans who hold real sway in Congress appear poised to assert themselves. These moderates certainly have public support. Various polls have repeatedly shown that the public believes hurricane recovery costs should be paid for by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy. In one poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the Democracy Corps, 75 percent of respondents wanted planned tax cuts for those earning over $200,000 per year to be cancelled. The American people are clearly expressing their recognition of the need for more government now, not less. It's not just polls where this message comes through loud and clear. In Colorado last week, the "starve the beast" coalition was soundly defeated by an alliance forged between a Republican governor and a Democratic House speaker. Fifty-three percent of Colorado voters supported Referendum C and agreed to give up $3.7 billion in automatic tax refunds over the next five years in order to ease strict limits on state spending on education, health care, and transportation. The voters in Colorado implicitly acknowledged the importance of government services and the need for an adequate revenue base to support these services. This notion of shared sacrifice, a long-standing American value, has been all but absent from this Congress and the current administration. This absence is particularly glaring when you consider that households earning more than $1 million are expected to receive $103,000 in tax break windfalls this year, according to from the Tax Policy Center. Even more startling, starting Jan. 1, these millionaires will get an additional $20,000 with two more tax breaks kicking in that benefit only the top 4 percent of wage-earners. Incredibly, on top of all that, the House and Senate are now debating an additional $70 billion tax cut that primarily benefits the wealthy, leaving many to wonder how Congress and the president can be so woefully out of touch with the will of the American people. Last Thursday, the day before Veterans Day, moderates in the House and Senate stepped up and exercised the power newly at their command. In the House, the vote on harsh spending cuts collapsed as the Republican leadership could not rally enough votes to pass the bill. This spending bill was one of two under the reconciliation process, making $35 billion in mandatory spending cuts (such as Medicaid), while the other cuts $70 billion in taxes. Despite its design as a deficit reduction tool, this reconciliation package actually increases deficits by at least $35 billion. It was thought that, in light of Hurricane Katrina, Congress might choose to suspend these reconciliation bills. When Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) was indicted and forced to give up his leadership post, however, the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) saw an opportunity and leaped. Instead of canceling reconciliation, RSC members decided to up the ante, calling for a 58 percent increase in spending cuts. At first it appeared that their plan was to enact spending cuts across the board, including for defense and homeland security. But quickly the conservative agenda shifted: the cuts would target programs serving low- and moderate-income families, with about one-third of the spending cuts coming from poverty programs. (See Service Cuts for the Poor to Finance Tax Cuts for the Rich for a description of the bill.) The moderates expressed concern over these cuts along with riders attached to the bill, including authorization of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - and their lack of support threatened the bill. These conflicting pressures began to squeeze the options available to the House leadership team, and the action last week revealed the ugly inner workings of a Congress trying to ram through radically misguided and unpopular policies. The Republican leadership was willing to give up ANWR drilling to get the moderates votes, but conservatives threatened to vote against a bill without ANWR drilling. Then the Republican leadership agreed -- with a wink and a nod to conservatives -- that ANWR drilling would be removed for now, but reinserted later in conference. But the moderates continued to withhold their support for the bill because of the cuts to Medicaid, student loans, food stamps, and other low-income supports. With members anxious to return home for Veterans Day, the Republican leadership gave up and withdrew the bill, promising to take it up this week. It is scheduled to be voted on again this Thursday. In the Senate, a similar principled stand by a moderate Republican derailed efforts to pass more tax cuts for the wealthy. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said no to extending the tax cuts on capital gains and stock dividends at a time when the Congress is also enacting spending cuts affecting poor Americans. Senate Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA), moved to accommodate her concerns in order to get enough votes to get the tax cut bill out of committee, but the other Republicans reportedly went "ballistic" over dropping capital gains and dividends cuts from the package of tax cuts, especially since tax breaks on investments are the mainstay of the Bush tax cuts. With no possibility of getting enough votes to get the tax cut bill out of committee, Grassley postponed the committee markup. While Grassley could try to employ a similar wink and nod maneuver with conservatives on the Finance Committee to win passage and bring the bill to the Senate floor only to attempt to reinsert the capital gains and dividend cuts, other moderate Republicans such as Sens. George Voinovich (OH) and Lincoln Chafee (RI) have concerns similar to Snowe. While success if not assured, these issues are not dead yet in either the House nor the Senate. Fierce negotiations are underway and enormous pressure is being applied to the moderates to cave. According to columnist Robert Novak, conservatives are "outraged" by the "coddling" of the moderates. "[W]istful Republicans [are] longing for the strong arm of suspended majority leader Tom DeLay." Conservatives have already made implicit threats of holding a vote for new House leadership in January or supporting more conservative Republicans against these moderates in the 2006 elections if spending reductions are not enacted this year. With conservative Republicans increasingly advancing policy options outside the mainstream, moderate Republicans are left with the task of controlling the direction of future policy. It is clear that some combination of tax and spending cuts will continue to be pushed this year. The hope among those observing from the middle is that the moderates will stick with common sense and the will of the public and reject the radical minority's push to institute an ideological agenda of shrinking government. Whatever the outcome, the House vote is sure to be just the tip of the iceberg. Calls for controlling spending will increasingly be heard emerging from Congress and the White House. The rhetoric will convey an out-of-control spending machine, but the evidence shows that domestic discretionary spending has steadily dropped as a percentage of the economy over the past 30 years and will decline precipitously in the next five. By framing the issue as a spending problem, both Republicans and Democrats fail to address the real issue: the need for an adequate revenue base to meet the spending needs of the country. Supposedly "rational" members of Congress may claim we have a spending problem but disagree over where spending cuts should be made. While this may be an important theoretical debate, it is the wrong debate for the current times. Truly rational members of Congress should instead concern themselves with raising the resources that are clearly needed now. It is clear that moderate Republicans in the House now have the power to make an important statement about our immediate needs and the proper priorities of the country by defeating the budget reconciliation bill this week. It remains to be seen if they will have the integrity or the courage to stand up to their far-right colleagues.