It's déjà vu again in America

The Republicans in the House just proposed a budget that would cut benefit programs by $69 billion over the next five years. These cuts will supposedly reduce the federal deficit.

The spending plan would trim $69 billion from benefit programs over the next five years. While decisions about which specific programs will be targeted will be made in separate bills later this year, the Republican-led House is expected to cull savings from Medicaid, student loans, farm programs, veterans and perhaps welfare and unemployment insurance.

I love the provision that the specific cuts would be decided later on in the year. It's very convenient to pass a bill that doesn't go into specifics. Republicans don't have to fight battles on multiple fronts, or deal with anyone pissed off lobby and Democrats who vote for it can always say that they didn't know which programs were going to be cut, or that they were promising not to cut from certain programs... blah blah blah.

But of course.

Domestic programs, excluding benefits, would be cut by 0.8 percent. Such programs range from national parks to food safety protection, but final decisions on exactly where the cuts will fall will be made in later bills.

Defense spending would grow by 4.8 percent while spending on domestic security programs would grow by 2.3 percent. Overall, spending on security and domestic programs that Congress must approve annually would grow by 2.1 percent to $843 billion next year.

And the details for tax cuts are in the air too.

The House budget calls for $106 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, about the same as President Bush proposed. But only $45 billion of those cuts would be granted procedural advantages that would let them avoid Senate filibusters, procedural delays that could kill them.

While the details of tax cuts, too, will be decided in later bills, the budget leaves room for reductions that Bush proposed for capital gains and dividends taxes.

Yes, it's morning again in America.