The Republicans want to pass 61 billion dollars in Budget cuts. Although I support the idea of budget cuts, this plan cuts only a little more then 4% of the projected deficit of 1. 5 Trillion dollars. Plus this proposal would "hit or eliminate hundreds of programs, including education, food inspection, health research, environmental regulation...".  Not only are these programs extremely important, they are already underfunded. For example, cutting funding for food inspection is a bad idea because recalls are common and our food industry is producing food in appalling conditions.  The beef we eat often comes from cows who live in their own manure.  Chickens are kept in such crowded unsanitary conditions that they can hardly move.  The FDA is struggling to keep even these obviously unhealthful practices from our food system.  The last thing we need to do is make their job more difficult by limiting their funding.   Cutting health research is also a bad idea because when the last pandemic stuck it took over 4 months to produce a vaccine. Also it would take much longer to cure current diseases like HIV than it already is supposed to take. With such high pollution and high carbon levels in the atmosphere not cutting environmental regulation is a no brainer. We need to increase not decrease funding for environmental regulation. Cutting education spending is questionable since we already are behind so many countries in math and science and have high dropout rates in many of our public schools. 
           In conclusion, we can still cut spending, but we need to make cuts in large programs like defense, social security, and medicare.  These programs make up a large proportion of our budget, and cutting them could make a big difference in our deficit. (see how to under one of my replies to a comment to one of my post on 1/7/11).  This is a much better idea than making drastic cuts in small but vital programs.


Sources: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2056389,00.html