Simon Johnson’s post this morning mentioned that British politicians are more serious about cutting government spending than their American counterparts. For some good detail on Britain, check out Ruth Marcus’s column in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

An excerpt:

First, instead of conjuring up sugarplum visions of pain-free change, the Conservatives are addressing their fiscal crisis with seriousness and specificity. Osborne is about to unveil an austere deficit-reduction plan that will cut most departmental budgets by 25 percent over several years. This is not some dead-on-arrival presidential budget; the parliamentary system means that these are for-real cuts.

You can argue whether this is the right approach in a wobbly economy or whether these cuts are too draconian, but it takes guts to spell them out. Compare this with House Republicans’ laughable “Pledge to America,” which could manage to summon up just two measly trims: cutting Congress’s budget (all legislative branch spending totals less than $4 billion) and freezing the size of the federal work force (it’s smaller now than it was in 1967).