Earlier, Barb posted some "highlights" from the GOP's newly released list of budget cuts, including a nearly $1 billion cut in WIC -- the Women, Infants, and Children program, which provides food and nutritional advice for mothers and their toddlers.

Almost nothing was spared in the GOP's target list, including the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI, job training, alternative energy research, and green jobs initiatives. In fact, the only thing that was actually spared was the budget deficit, because while the GOP targeted 70 different programs, they only managed to shave $23 billion in spending. (View the list in spreadsheet form.)

As things now stand, the budget deficit will be $1.500 trillion for this fiscal year. If the GOP has their way, it will be $1.477 trillion. That's a cut of merely 1.5% . Despite everything the GOP is going after, our budget deficit will be 98.5% of what it would have been otherwise -- virtually unchanged. In other words, the only thing they didn't slash was the budget deficit.

What this exercise proves is that the Republican approach doesn't represent a serious effort at deficit reduction. Instead, it's an exercise in targeting programs that help the kinds of people Republicans don't like. They really don't care about deficit reduction: the GOP's precious tax cuts for the wealthy added nearly twice as much to the deficit as the total amount of cuts in this proposal.

In the aftermath of the Bush Recession, restoring fiscal health is going to take some time. It will start with economic growth, which will both boost tax revenue and eliminate the need for the kinds of tax stimulus measures which have brought federal taxes to their lowest level in 60 years. It will require raising taxes -- at the very least, by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. It will require strengthening -- not repealing -- health care reform so that we can get even more cost savings than currently projected. (Yes, this means Medicare must be allowed to negotiate on prescription drug prices and we absolutely need a Medicare-for-all public option to compete with private insurance.) Finally, we need to control our spending top line while redirecting military spending on overseas conflicts towards domestic investments like infrastructure, education and renewable energy.

That's the kind of approach we need to take to fiscal issues, not what the Republicans are proposing. For the better part of two years, they've claimed that the way to balance the budget is to just cut domestic spending programs. Today, they've proved that claim to be a myth.

Update: It turns out the GOP is promising another $12 billion in cuts on top of the $23 billion they itemized today (bringing the total to $35 billion), but they either haven't been able or haven't been willing to release the details of where exactly they they hope to make those cuts. Assuming they ever make that list public, it doesn't change the essential story -- the budget deficit will still be virtually the same as it is now.