From Washington Post
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

This week the Republican Party hopes to escape its immediate past. House Republicans will elect new leaders. They hope that the party’s corruption scandal will be forgotten and that the names Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff will become as unmentionable in their world as Lord Voldemort’s is in Harry Potter’s.

President Bush hopes for a new start with his State of the Union address. The words from last year he wants to wipe out of the political lexicon include “Brownie,” “Katrina,” “heck of a job” and “Social Security privatization.”

But there is an uncomfortable bit of business left over from the Republican disaster year of 2005 that will test the seriousness of the party’s supposed commitment to change. The cut-the-poor, help-the-big-interests federal budget passed last year needs final ratification in the House. The vote could take place as soon as tomorrow.

Let’s be clear: Anyone who votes for this fiscal mess will be standing for the bad old ways of doing business in Washington. Those who do so will have no claim to being “reformers.”

At least one Republican, Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, has had a change of heart, thanks to laudable grass-roots pressure — which, to his credit, Simmons acknowledged.

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