While I’m always in favor of aiming high and falling short, I have enough confidence in Ryan to give him his head. He’s well aware of what the felling is out here.

Give them a chance to lead; don’t kick them aside because they might appear to be going the “wrong” way because of a boulder in the road that must be circumnavigated.

Heck, I say cut funds for payroll by 50% across all civilian agencies of government. That would just about put government salaries in line with their non-government counterparts. But I don’t think that will happen.

Give them a chance to get the ball rolling before we take it away.

although I don’t want to give anybody an excuse to do less than what is best in the long run.

I agree with Hillyer. Your argument is a non sequitur. “$100B is simply 25 days of spending” doesn’t square with “The current ?budget? adds $4+B to the debt EVERY DAY.” One of the statements is wrong.

Neither one proves that a $100 billion cut is reasonable, doable, good in the long run, or not. Nor does anything else you added.

Considering the tremendous downside of pissing off the non-conservative public by over-reaching and getting replaced by leftists, versus pissing off conservatives by going too slow but continuing to work at it and getting the job done, I’ll let them go for another budget year. If that one isn’t a major improvement, I’ll side with you.

I’m expecting major progress by this time next year.

Meanwhile, I see nothing wrong with keeping the pressure on all of them. The furloughs and cutbacks in operations that Hillyer is afraid of? They have to come sooner or later, or at least salary rates have to be cut, and they might as well get started on the reduction. Let’s just say a 2% cut in the top rate for all pay grades each year until government salaries are 5% less than private salaries (military excluded). Eliminate funding to all agencies with the word “endowment” in the title. And let’s use this year to do all the “little, meaningless” symbolic things, then go after bigger bucks next year.

I see you support Donald Trump for President.

Without the base numbers, I can’t be specific in my comment here. Ryan’s argument may be perfectly reasonable based on its arithmetic, or it may not be, but it may also be reasonable based on the expectations of what could happen in November 2012 if the ax falls on a popular ox’s neck.

The saving grace can be in amendments offered from the House that eliminate things like CPB and NEH and NEA. This is NOT the time to try to eliminate the DOE. That would give Obama a righteous pedestal from which to veto the CR, shut down National Parks and food stamps, and blame it on the Republicans’ “wildly unreasonable budget.”

Let’s not do the Democrats’ work for them; they already have the NYT to help.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/us/politics/04budget.html

“After clamoring loudly about their plans to curtail federal spending, House Republicans announced Thursday that they would cut $32 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year ? a minuscule amount compared with a projected annual deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion.

The Republican proposal is effectively $58 billion less than the domestic and foreign aid programs in President Obama?s budget request for 2011 ? far short of the $100 billion in cuts that Representative John A. Boehner promised before the November elections that catapulted Republicans into the House majority and made him the speaker….

But at a background briefing, Republican leadership and Budget Committee staff members struggled to explain the seeming timidity of the cuts, given the boldness of their party?s rhetoric.”

That is the NYT spin. The ‘Pub leadership spin (from the same article) is

“?Chairman Ryan?s gavel is not a magic wand which can enact all the things he would like to do,? one aide said. ?This is restoring some sanity to a broken budget process.?

Committee aides urged reporters not to measure the $100 billion goal against the annual spending levels assumed in the current stopgap measure, but rather against Mr. Obama?s overall budget request, including security-related spending.

Compared with Mr. Obama?s request, overall spending would be reduced by $74 billion, the Republican aides said.”

Think Progress also agrees that Republicans are just plain bad, and weasels to boot:

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/06/100-videos/

Maybe Ryan is being forced by reality to adjust the target (or “move the goal posts” as Think Progress likes to say), but is it bad enough that we should help our opponents (or “enemies” as Obama likes to call us)? Some of us sound like far lefties who think Obama should be impeached because he didn’t close Gitmo two years ago.

Or, maybe he’s just being realistic–we SHOULD be looking at this as a calendar- or fiscal-year promise. He still sounds good to me.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4348100/rep-paul-ryans-pledge-to-america-promise/

At base, we elected these people because we trusted them more than we trusted Democrats. Let them give it their best shot for a year. We’ll have plenty of time after that to remove them.

Nobody should be under the mistaken impression that Fox News is a friendly face for Republicans, either. They want to catch a slip of the tongue just like the alphabets do.

A 33-year-old Republican Illinois congressman was being interviewed by Stuart Varney today. The CC mentioned how his campaign opponent used out of context everything the CC said, as a bludgeon to try to beat him. So he, like all ‘Pubs, was being very careful what he said.

After a few minutes of blathering by SV, Stuart asked, “Will you support privatization of Social Security since it is so important to make it solvent?” The CC didn’t fall into the trap, neatly pointing out that although Obama mentioned SS during the SOTU he hadn’t taken any lead on the matter. A “Yes” there would have been archived by Illinois Dem’s for use in 2012.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2011/01/16/20110116robb16.html

Robert Robb, the best op-ed writer on the Republic, wrote about Obama’s inadequate spending “reductions.”

“The federal government will reach the legal limit of its borrowing capacity this spring. I used to think that playing games with increasing the debt limit would be a serious mistake. Now I’m not so sure.

It may be that trouble with the credit markets is the only thing that will shake Washington, and particularly Obama, out of the current torpor.”

That more or less agrees with you in spirit.