The public says it wants to see government spending cut — and the Tea Partiers really, really want spending cut — but people don’t want to cut any program they like; and they like almost everything. What’s a conservative to do?

The obvious answer, once you think about it, is to eat the future: to cut spending in a way that undermines the nation’s long-run prospects, but doesn’t impose all that much pain on voters right now.

And that, as best as I can tell, is the running theme in the cuts proposed by House Republicans. The proposal is, deliberately I think, hard to read and interpret; I hope and assume that the good folks at CBPP will do the detail soon. But on a quick read, here are some of the cuts that jumped out at me:

WIC 1008 million

Food for Peace 544 million

NOAA 450 million

NASA 579 million

Energy efficiency and renewable energy 899

Science 1111 million

Nuclear nonproliferation 648 million

Federal buildings fund 1653 million

Homeland security administration 489 million

FEMA, various, around 1.2 billion

EPA clean water and drinking water about 1.8 billion

Community health centers 1.3 billion

Centers for disease control 900 million

WIC is nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children; let’s cut that, because the damage to the nation from malnourishment is a problem for future politicians. NOAA is weather and climate — hey, what we don’t know can’t hurt us. Nuclear nonproliferation — well, we probably won’t feel the pain of a terrorist nuke assembled from old Soviet fissile material for a couple of years. FEMA — well, how often do hurricanes hit New Orleans? CDC — with luck, by the time plague hits someone else can be blamed.

Don’t start thinking about tomorrow.