They're Called Revolutions Because They'll Roll Right Over You

Somehow, the fact that the Tea Party class of GOP House freshmen are actually serious about wanting Orange Julius to follow through on that whole "cut spending" thing is actually news to Orange Julius.

Rank and file Republicans aren't happy with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). They think the GOP should take a hatchet to the federal budget now, to make good on their pledge to slash spending by $100 billion "this year." And their displeasure is spilling out into the open.

"Despite the added challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep our $100 billion pledge to the American people," reads a draft of a letter to Boehner, obtained by TPM, being circulated by the Republican Study Committee. "These $100 billion in cuts to non-security discretionary spending not only ensure that we keep our word to the American people; they represent a credible down payment on the fiscally responsible measures that will be needed to get the nation's finances back on track."

The problem, as Boehner and Ryan have explained, is that they won't even get a whack at the budget until March, when the government's current spending authority expires. By then it will only be six months until the end of the fiscal year in September, and they're having a hard time squeezing a year's worth of promised cuts through a half-year window.

Boehner's office hasn't yet received and isn't commenting on the letter, but says that the final spending levels will be worked out in the legislative process.

Members want leadership to force the issue, though. When the current "continuing resolution" expires, they say, Republicans should adopt a new version that slashes at least $100 billion all at once.

Please do this, Tea Party faithful.

Please make Orange Julius get up in front of America in March and say "We're immediately cutting $100 billion in funding for education and health care and public safety" and use phrases like "indefinite furlough" and "completely cut off" and "eliminate benefit."

Do this in range of news cameras.  A lot.  Then say you're going to cut taxes for the rich some more.

By all means, hold Orange Julius's feet to the fire on this one.  Let's see what the guys who want to wipe out thousands of more jobs have for specifics and make these kind of massive cuts permanent over the next ten years by cutting $2.5 trillion in social spending.

The Republican Study Committee has quite a laundry list in mind. These folks actually map out cutting $2.5 trillion from the budget without touching Social Security, Medicare, or even a single penny of Pentagon spending.

To get there, these Republicans would go after plenty of familiar targets: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, Amtrak, and U.S. Agency for International Development. But given that the U.S. just doesn't spend that much on any of this, the Republican Study Committee has to dig much deeper, going after transportation and infrastructure projects, energy research, aid to states, legal assistance for low-income families, family planning funds, and assistance to American businesses seeking to export their products overseas.

(Even this doesn't come close to $2.5 trillion over 10 years. The RSC makes up the difference by playing some budget games. Brian Beutler explained, "Like most major spending cut proposals, this one's not entirely rigorous. It relies principally on an aspirational spending cap -- specifically, limiting non-defense appropriations totals to their 2006 levels without adjusting for inflation. In other words, it punts the question of what to cut to future Congresses, which could just as easily bust the cap.")

All of these cuts are necessary, the Republican Study Committee believes, because large deficits call for broad sacrifices. This is, of course, the same Republican Study Committee that demanded massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, without paying for them, all of which was financed by larger deficits.

I want to see Republican after Republican on my TV saying  "Well, we'll have to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthy by skipping pothole repair and bridge building for the next decade, canceling science funding that will provide the jobs of tomorrow, eliminating passenger train service, shutting down PBS and NPR, mothballing the Smithsonian,  firing thousands of people at the federal level and then an order of magnitude more among the 50 states, and that's just for starters."

By all means, Tea Party.  Conduct your "revolution" and let's see what the American public thinks.