There are a handful of articles in today's papers that illuminate the race to control the House of Representatives in the upcoming 110th congress. To begin with, Dan Balz and Thomas B. Edsall relay some comments from a former House Speaker warning the GOP to take notice of some recent developments.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) warned fellow Republicans yesterday not to ignore the implications of the party's narrow victory in Tuesday's special election in Ohio, saying the public mood heading into next year's midterm elections appears to helping Democrats and hurting Republicans.

"It should serve as a wake-up call to Republicans, and I certainly take it very seriously in analyzing how the public mood evidences itself," Gingrich said. "Who is willing to show up and vote is different than who answers a public opinion poll. Clearly, there's a pretty strong signal for Republicans thinking about 2006 that they need to do some very serious planning and not just assume that everything is going to be automatically okay."

Gingrich's reaction came after Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and vocal critic of President Bush's Iraq policy, came within 4,000 votes of upsetting Republican Jean Schmidt in the solidly GOP 2nd Congressional District in southwestern Ohio.

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Gingrich, the architect of the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, cited evidence that voter unrest is fueling Democratic hopes.

"There is more energy today on the anti-Iraq, anti-gas-price, anti-changing-Social Security and I think anti-Washington [side]," he said. "I think the combination of those four are all redounding to weaken Republicans and help Democrats. . . . I don't think this is time to panic, but I think it's time to think. If we don't think now, then next September [2006], people will panic when it's too late."

In related news, both The Post and The New York Times hit on another issue that could prove important in the 2006 midterms -- GOP spending. The Times' Carl Hulse writes that the recently passed surface transportation bill, a behemoth at over $285 billion, could be even larger than originally believed.

President Bush has never exercised his veto power, but he brandished it over major transportation legislation for two years, threatening Congress with the V-word should lawmakers break the bank in pursuit of home-state road and bridge work.

So when Congress delivered transportation legislation with a price tag put at $286.4 billion, the administration claimed victory, noting the final amount was just $2 billion above the White House's limit and far below what senior members of Congress wanted.

But as details of the measure came under closer inspection this week, the spending picture got a bit blurry. In a piece of legislative legerdemain, Congress managed to stuff an extra $8.5 billion into the highway bill and still meet Mr. Bush's demands by requiring that the added money be turned back to the Treasury on Sept. 30, 2009, the day the bill expires.

The question of whether that new bottom line translates into financial flexibility or fiscal irresponsibility now depends on who is adding things up.

Budget watchdog groups, already upset at spending they equate to highway bill robbery, say the maneuver is the crowning offense perpetrated by a profligate Congress and exposes the administration as co-conspirators.

Jonathan Weisman pens a page one article in The Post noting the larger trend among Republicans away from fiscal restraint.

GOP leaders this week sent House Republicans home for the summer with some political tips, helpfully laid out in 12 "Ideas for August Recess Events." Drop by a military reserve center to highlight increased benefits, the talking points suggest. Visit a bridge or highway that will receive additional funding, or talk up the new prescription drug benefit for seniors.

Having skirted budget restraints and approved nearly $300 billion in new spending and tax breaks before leaving town, Republican lawmakers are now determined to claim full credit for the congressional spending. Far from shying away from their accomplishments, lawmakers are embracing the pork, including graffiti eradication in the Bronx, $277 million in road projects for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and a $200,000 deer-avoidance system in New York.

When the year started, President Bush made spending restraint a mantra, laying out an austere budget that would freeze non-security discretionary spending for five years and setting firm cost limits on transportation and energy bills. But now, as Congress fills in the details of the budget plan, there is little interest in making deep cuts and enormous pressure to spend.

Lawmakers have seen little to fear from a political backlash, some acknowledge, and Bush has yet to wield his veto pen. In fact, the White House has proved itself largely unable to overcome the institutional forces that have long driven lawmakers to ply their parochial interests with cash.

When lawmakers return in the fall, they are almost certain to vote for more tax cuts. They also will vote on a huge new defense spending bill. But proposals for cutting entitlement programs including Medicaid have yet to pick up much support.

Despite the fact that the short-term budgetary outlook has improved in the past year as a result of increased tax revenue (or at least revenue that exceeded the very conservative estimates of the GAO and the CBO), the long-term deficit situation is clearly deteriorating. Although it is uncertain that voters today will punish politicians for saddling future Congresses with massive debts, it is nevertheless clear that there is an opening for fiscal hawks -- be they conservative Republicans, centrist Democrats, Libertarians or others -- to make a case that the current direction of the country is unsustainable. In a year that could evince dissatisfaction with the status quo, as Gingrich suggested, this could prove to be a boon for these deficit-cutting outsiders, just as in 1994.