You know if you think about it, you could (almost) argue that the Bush tax cuts were a form of government spending.

From a purely big-picture economic standpoint, they were. However, tax cuts allow the individuals in the economy to direct wealth in their own best interests, which generally has much better results in creating new wealth, than government spending, which tends to be targeted more along the lines of politics, rather than economic good.

As for fiscal discipline, I suspect that had the tech market somehow managed to sustain itself, and there had been no 9/11, that no matter who had been elected in 2000, the Congress (both parties) would have eaten the surplus like a kid in a candy store.

That's exactly what happened in California.