Is the tide turning for the GOP in Washington? Are they finally going to limit spending and do away with earmarks? Well who knows, but a small victory was won last week that shows the National GOP may be waking up and changing their spend thrift ways.

Though obscured by the complexities of legislation, reformers trying to rein in congressional spending excesses scored signal victories in the House and Senate in the same hour late Thursday afternoon.

In the process, chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees suffered humiliating defeats. In the House, Chairman Jerry Lewis bowed to Republican leaders to reform runaway earmark spending. In the Senate, Chairman Thad Cochran lost an effort to stop Sen. Tom Coburn’s crusade against earmarks.

House Appropriations Chairmen Jerry Lewis (CA) was pimped-slapped by the leadership and forced to capitulate on earmarks. Before the Easter recess Lewis forced the cancellation of the budget consideration because he refused to allow restrictions on earmarking by appropriators. After the break Speaker Hastert and Majority leader Boehner held firm and Lewis capitulated limiting the earmarking of bills by Appropriation members.

In the Senate, the conservative champion, Tom Coburn (OK), is making considerable headway in curbing spending.

On Wednesday, Coburn offered an amendment to eliminate 19 earmarks from the emergency appropriations bill and came just shy of defeating a $700 million railroad relocation in Mississippi.

On Thursday, Coburn proposed to eliminate $15 million for “seafood promotion strategy.” McCain told the Senate: “Let me save the American taxpayers $125 million right now by telling all Americans now to eat seafood. Eat seafood. It is good for you.” When Coburn rejected Cochran’s call for a voice vote, the normally calm Appropriations chairman in a fury made a non-debatable tabling motion to kill Coburn’s proposal. The astounding outcome was a 51 to 44 bipartisan victory for Coburn and McCain, following years of failure in such initiatives.

After the vote, Coburn could be seen on the floor animatedly lecturing a silent Cochran. It can be guessed he was promising to hold the Senate’s feet to the fire on one earmark after another. Coburn this coming week will propose removing from the bill $500 million to be paid Northrop Grumman for lost income caused by Hurricane Katrina. The outcome will indicate whether last Thursday’s events on Capitol Hill truly point to new congressional concern about using taxpayer money.

It is safe to say that the threat of an embarrassing defeat in November is what is driving this turnaround. Will it be enough? Only time will tell.