Nothing specifc has been outlined yet, but the WaPo claims Democrats argue that:
cuts of that magnitude - if applied across the board - would require the Justice Department to fire 4,000 FBI agents and 1,500 agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration. The federal prison system would have to fire 5,700 correctional officers, the Agriculture Department would have to cut about 3,000 food safety inspectors, and the Head Start early-childhood education program would be forced to cut about 389,000 children from its rolls.
And this is for the $100 billion plan, the 10 year $2.5 trillion dollar plan will certainly cut more -- except for defense spending. Again the question will be, as we are dealing with this in Texas, how will the general public react to these specifics?
David Frum doesn't think this will help Republicans in the next election:
. . . if you want to cut $100 billion from spending in FY11, you will have to start with immediate furloughs of hundreds of thousands of government workers, stop paying the government’s share of the TSP savings programs, close down most government funded operations, and stop most of the research grants the U.S. funds.
It can be done. But if it is done, President Obama and the Democratic Party will have been given one of the great electoral gifts of all time.
Just imagine the head of a local hospital, funded in part by federal monies, who headed up the finance team for one of the new House Republicans, calling that Member and saying, “Holy Cow, do you know that you have just closed down part of the cancer wing here.”
But if they don't go forward with the cuts, they risk losing the Tea Party. There's your dilemma.
