Bring on the deadline!

Our latest national spending deadline is March 1, when $85 billion in federal spending is scheduled to disappear like Cinderella’s coach at midnight.

We’ve tried this before – back in May of 2011. We cut $37.8 billion. It was the biggest federal budget cut in history. Both parties supported it. Except the Washington Post discovered that $23 billion of that was cut without losing a single federal employee.

Because those cuts included highway projects that had already been canceled; and included $6 billion saved by not conducting a census in 2011, which they weren’t going to do anyway since the census was in 2010.

So this time around, top Republicans are digging in. Republicans like Eric Cantor are saying they don’t like this meat axe approach, not one bit.

“Clearly this is not the best way to go about trying to control spending.”

By all indications, come March, they’re going to let the clock strike midnight and see what happens. They don’t believe Democrats are capable of cutting anything.

Top Democrats like Dick Durbin go on Meet The Press and say ‘of course we’re willing to cut.’

Except, “Think about this for a second,” says Durbin. “cutting back on psychological counseling for the members of the military and their family?”

We will make some tough cuts, “But listen, do we really want to base our spending cuts on reducing medical research in America?”

And are you really going to insist, “On eliminating 70,000 children from HeadStart?” asks Durbin.

That, my fellow Americans, is how everyone can agree that SOMETHING must be done… and then still not do it.