On Monday, in its very first sign of political will, the city council took a knife to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s 2009 budget, cuting enough to balance the budget and whacking off an additional $46 million just in case city revenues go the way of the stock market.

This was a prudent thing to do, in light of the spending sprees that previous councils engaged in, like ones that sent the city toward bankruptcy a dozen years ago.

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