Yesterday, as we’ve discussed here extensively, House Republicans released their “Pledge to America,” which contains the policy steps they would supposedly take immediately, were they so empowered. The document is chock-full of lofty rhetoric about reducing the size of government, but while it lays out plenty of budget-busting tax cuts — to the tune of $4 trillion — it has precious little in terms of actual spending cuts.

In fact, its lead author, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), couldn’t identify a single program he’d cut from the federal budget during a cable television appearance today. And Republicans like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and the Republican budget chief, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), have been careful not to explicitly say that the Pledge, by itself, will eliminate the deficit or balance the budget. Other Republicans though, have seen nothing wrong with asserting that the plan would cause the deficit to disappear and lead to a smaller federal debt:

Rep. Charles Djou (R-HI) “says the proposals will reduce annual budget deficits and lead to a smaller national debt.”

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO): “We have a credible plan to rein in the budget deficit.”

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA): “As massive debt threatens the prosperity of our children and grandchildren, we have a credible plan to rein in the budget deficit.”

However, even if we take the Republicans at their word that they’ll actually cut every dollar they say they will in the Pledge, the plan doesn’t come anywhere close to eliminating the deficit. As Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden calculated:

The “Pledge to America” budget would mean $11.1 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. By 2020, the federal budget deficit would be 6.3 percent of gross domestic product, the federal debt would exceed 93 percent of GDP, and interest payments on the debt would be more than $1 trillion a year. The budget deficit would be about $200 billion larger in 2020 under the “Pledge to America” plan than it would be under President Barack Obama’s budget, and over the next 10 years deficits would be $1.5 trillion higher than under the president’s budget.

Were the Pledge implemented, federal revenue would be about 16.7 percent of GDP; the last time that the federal budget was balanced, 20 percent of GDP was raised in revenue.

And there’s really no reason to believe that the cuts laid out in the Pledge would actually ever be made, as they are achieved through across-the-board reductions, not specific program cuts. And when push comes to shove, will the GOP really cut into discretionary programs like the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and federal highway funding? If not, that will require even larger cuts in other programs to achieve the savings they want, which still don’t come close to covering the cost of their massive tax cuts.

Click here for more on “Unpacking the GOP’s ‘Pledge to America’: The Who, What, When, Where and Why Behind Republican Irresponsibility.”

Yesterday, House Republicans rolled out their “Pledge to America,” which is supposedly a series of ideas that the GOP would enact tomorrow, if given the chance. At the top of the list, of course, is a full extension of the Bush tax cuts — at a cost of almost $4 trillion — and a promise to allow no tax increases.

At the same time, though, the Pledge claims to put the country “on a path to a balanced budget.” But when it comes to spending cuts, it is incredibly vague, including only a promise to reduce non-defense discretionary spending to the 2008 level and to “set benchmarks” for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Today, in fact, the lead architect of the Pledge, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), couldn’t name a single program that he’d cut from the federal budget when pressed by MSNBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd:

GUTHRIE: Everybody likes to cut spending, but the issue is where, how? What specifically are you going to cut? [...]

MCCARTHY: What are you going to cut? Discretionary spending. Anything that’s not security…

TODD: Well, hang on. What is discretionary? Give us two or three items that are discretionary.

MCCARTHY: You could go through every different program within government, outside of entitlements, outside of national defense, that is discretionary spending that Congress has control of. That has gone over 88 percent in the last two years.

GUTHRIE; So what comes to mind for that, if you could wave a magic wand and do it unilaterally, what would you cut?

TODD: If you had the line item.

MCCARTHY: The line item would be across-the-board.

Watch it:

McCarthy finally settled on cutting Congress’ administrative spending, which he said would save $100 million. So in a $3 trillion federal budget, with a $1.3 trillion deficit, McCarthy identified $100 million in savings, reducing the deficit by less than 0.01 percent. And those savings won’t even come out of a federal program. But McCarthy is not unique in this regard: plenty of Republicans, including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), can’t identify a single program that they would cut.

With the Pledge, McCarthy and the rest of the House Republicans would have you believe that eliminating the deficit with cuts to discretionary spending is both possible and simple. But discretionary spending this year will be about $1.4 trillion. So you’d have to get rid of almost all of it — including discretionary defense spending — to eliminate the deficit.

The non-defense discretionary side of the budget — which includes all federal education funding, FEMA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the National Park System, federal highway funding, food safety inspection, and the Secret Service — comes to about $530 billion, nowhere near enough to eliminate the deficit.

And if the Pledge were actually enacted, Republicans would be starting from an even deeper fiscal hole, as deficits over the next ten years would be $1.5 trillion higher under the Pledge than they would be under President Obama’s budget. That’s right, the House GOP pledge, taking Republicans entirely at their word that they’ll cut every dollar of spending they say they will, produces $1.5 trillion more in deficits than we would have under Obama’s budget.

Of course, since McCarthy can’t even be bothered to understand the economic policies laid out in his own book, it’s not surprising that he’s unable to justify the Pledge’s fuzzy math.