Step into the source code, won’t you, and travel to the ancient time of February 3, 2011. That was the day that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., released his proposed spending limits for FY2011. He wanted to cut $74 billion from the budget request – really, $32 billion, because the fiscal year had already started. But Republican freshmen (among others) reminded their leadership that they’d pledged to cut $100 billion in FY2011 – really, $61 billion. On February 19, they passed it, and Democrats said it was absolutely dead in the Senate. Sure enough, on March 9, the Senate voted it down.
Where are we now? Democrats say
they’ve agreed
to cut a total of $78 billion in FY2011 – $38 billion for the rest of the year. Their proposal is larger than the proposal that was originally rejected by House conservatives for being too small and Senate Democrats for being too cruel.
