Or so I thought. There it was, on the Drudgereport – “GOP to propose budget with more than $4 trillion in cuts...”. I was excited, almost giddy, like a kid at Christmas. I eagerly clicked the link, hoping, believing that change was finally on its merry way. That the Tea Party had finally gotten through to the GOP. That America’s fiscal nightmare may at least be over.

But alas, while they are proposing to cut more than $4 trillion, it’s over 10 stinking years. Hello? That comes out to only $400 billion a year. When we, more on the “we” bit in a minute, are spending more than $1.3 trillion a year than we bring in, that’s not just not good enough. Of course, the GOP will tell you that it’s a 30% cut into deficit spending. Whoop-di-doo. The budget Obama requested was for $15.3 trillion, so it’s more accurate to say that it’s only a 2.6% cut in total spending, at least for 2011.

It’s obvious that neither party is really that concerned about fixing the problem of out of control government spending, or even following the Constitution for that matter. If they were, they could use the Constitution as the excuse to lop off whole departments that have no basis for existence in the Constitution. But rather than have that debate, they, both parties, choose to come at us with smoke and mirrors and numbers inflated by half-truths, to make us think they get it. Cutting $4 trillion sounds great and first glance, until you look more closely. If they were to cut $4 trillion out of the budget for one year, that would be something. Or even two years. That would eliminate deficit spending. But $400 billion is just a drop in the bucket.

Now back to “we”. The United States government is “we”. Remember Lincoln? One of the most famous things he said was “a government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Our government represents us – what we think about spending, what we think about foreign affairs, what we think about education, what we think about life, what we think of a variety of issues because the decisions made are made by people we elect. If you aren’t happy with the way things are going, did you vote? If you did, did you vote for someone who is more concerned with getting reelected or building themselves a legacy than doing the job you sent them to do? Or did you vote for someone who believes government is too big and needs trimming? Either way, it’s almost time to think about that again. Barack announced his re-election campaign this week.