As congressional Republicans reload for a new round of budget battles with the White House, they might well take the advice that critics used to give John F. Kennedy: less profile, more courage.

The revolutionary rhetoric of the early days of the 104th Congress far outdistanced that Congress’s fiscal achievements. Shortly after the 1994 election, Newt Gingrich triumphantly declared that Republicans would ” radically transform the way government works by Easter.” The question now is, Easter of which year? To be sure, the GOP did grind out some impressive work. It cornered Bill Clinton into committing to a balanced budget by 2002, thus (one hopes) limiting Democratic wish lists for new spending. It cracked welfare reform. And its 1996 budget produced the lowest rate of increase in federal spending in nearly a generation. The $ 107 billion deficit that resulted is nearly $ 100 billion less than Clintonomics would have wrought.