More BullS*** from the GOP

Eric Cantor, the Minority Whip of the House has a weekly online vote where people can vote to have the House have an up or down vote on one of three spending cuts. This week's choices are: 1. Stop all direct or indirect funding of NPR; 2. Cut funding for the Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners program; or 3. terminate the Presidential Election Fund.

Cantor is obviously trying to convince you that the GOP is serious about cutting bad spending choices of the current government. I will grant him that funding NPR is a policy choice over which the Dems and the GOP can have a good, serious debate. But let us look more closely at the other two.

The Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners program provides funding to five museums named in a statute and there is no procedure for evaluating the effectiveness of the program. How could the President possibly support such a boondoggle? But wait, read Cantor's description more closely, and then look at blogs from February 1, 2010, and you discover that the President's 2011 budget already cuts the program. So this choice is meaningless. It will be cut no matter what you vote for.

The third choice is the Presidential Election Fund. We all know about this one. When you fill in your tax return, you have the choice of contributing $3 to the fund. Your tax liability is unaffected. So far as I know, it is the only Federal Program funded entirely voluntarily. If the fund is depleted, no money comes from the general Treasury. So eliminating the fund would have no effect on anyone who does not support the program, and would only potentially save those people $3.

In other words, the GOP has very limited ideas for cutting the budget.