House freshmen have a grand(standing) plan to cut the national debt

By Dana Milbank

House freshmen have been on the job for almost exactly a year, and until now they’ve done little more than talk about cutting the national debt.

But on Wednesday morning, eight lawmakers finally decided to take action. They scheduled a “major announcement,” invited the media and declared that they had a plan to reduce the deficit by — are you sitting down? — $1.5 million.

That amounts to a whopping 0.00001 percent of what the nation owes. Among budget analysts, the technical phrase for this is “chump change.”

The eight lawmakers announced that they were returning unused portions of their office budgets in the hope that the money could help pay down the debt. And they were feeling mighty pleased with themselves.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-grandstanding-plan-to-cut-the-debt/2012/02/01/gIQAJW6ziQ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions