SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- After dethroning fiscally reckless Democrats from the House of Representatives, and riding high on aggressive campaign promises to slash the deficit, House Republicans presented a proposal to gut $2.5 trillion in spending from the federal budget over the next 10 years. Gone would be Amtrak subsidies, bloated checks to the Legal Services Corporation and National Endowment for the Arts, and some $900 million to run the President’s hotly contested, socialist health care agenda.

The “Spending Reduction Act of 2011,” proposed by members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, was intended to reduce current spending levels for non-defense, non-homeland security, non-veteran, and essentially all non-military programs. However, in the flurry of slashing items from the budget, Republicans inadvertently ended all public funding for Congress, effectively sending themselves to the unemployment line for benefits, which they also eradicated in their proposal.