Republicans aim to cut expired programs

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Republican Study Committee Recommends Cutting Welfare Program That Already Expired

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/09/republican-study-committe_n_781122.html

Before y'all go getting your panties up in a bunch about the link to the Huffington Post, here is the direct link from the committee, led by Rep. Tom Price (Ga.)

http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/week1.htm

The republicans are off to a great start - go get 'em!

So? The co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction commission will propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as reductions in income tax rate. Obama's not doing much better.

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ajXqHH3ZYLvo

And you miss the point that when a program expires, it is excluded from future budgets, meaning the budget for this program has already been cut. This is the usual way that programs become defunded by the government, in fact - that way, if it was popular, nobody has to take the hit for "cutting" it, but if it was unpopular, everybody can claim credit for "cutting the budget" by the simple act of not doing anything (something at which Congress excels...).

That, for instance, is how NASA removed expenditures for the Apollo program from their budget, without ever actually having to admit that they had no intention of returning to the Moon anytime soon - they simply stopped requesting allocations, and permitted it to quietly expire. As I understand it, something similar happened to the Ares program in the last budget cycle. It's also how the Civilian Conservation Corps vanished quietly into the night back in the Fifties - it was simply permitted to expire.

No, this is a clear example of how the Republican Party, once serious deficit hawks, have been reduced to "playing to the back rows", putting on the appearance of doing their jobs for the folks back home rather than doing anything substantive for the country. But then, what can you expect of a party with a stated (although publicly backpedaled-from) position that their major goal for the next two years, above and beyond taking care of the country's business, is to ensure that the sitting President isn't re-elected?

If expired doesn't mean dead, then why are the republicans freaking out over the possibility of letting the Bush tax cuts expire? Although technically they were never funded to begin with, so apparently there is a huge disconnect by the republicans about what the terms "funded" and "expired" really mean.

Never heard the saying “there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program"?