TNR's Jonathan Chait chuckles at how quickly House Republicans are cutting back on their promises to cut back on spending:

They haven't even taken over yet, and they've already reduced their target by half! They will reduce it further still as they get into the details. The one thing that won't be scaled down is the Republican appetite for tax cuts.

The basic situation is that you have a tiny handful of principled conservatives who genuinely want to cut the size of actual government programs. But that accounts for a tiny slice of the general opposition to government programs, which is rooted in misperceptions about what government spends money on alongside strong support for the programs that actually exist. Government programs are popular. Some of them serve little purpose (think farm subsidies) but those generally exist precisely because they have powerful constituencies.

Read the rest here.

Here in Arizona, I suspect that a GOP majority is eager to show us what government cuts really mean. Already, as Stephanie Innes tells us at the morning daily, sick people are dying.