During this campaign season, many Republicans were loathe to lay out any spending cuts that they would make in order to offset their desire to extend all of the Bush tax cuts. Extending the entirety of the Bush tax package would cost nearly $4 trillion over ten years, including about $830 billion to extend the cuts for the richest two percent of Americans alone. House Republicans, though — including Pledge to America architect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — simply said that they would cut discretionary spending across-the-board to offset that cost. “The line item would be across-the-board,” McCarthy asserted.

Even though election night was upon them and a new majority secured, House Republicans weren’t any more willing to lay out specific spending cuts last night. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that the most important thing that Congress can do is extend the Bush tax cuts. But when Matthews pressed her for spending reductions, Blackburn only named parts of the budget that she has deemed off-limits for cuts. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) did the same, refusing to name a specific cut in two separate interviews. Watch a compilation:

Contrary to one of Blackburn’s assertions, defense spending is part of the discretionary budget. The Sustainable Task Force — composed of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — has identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years by simply eliminating unnecessary Cold War-era programs.

Blackburn and Cantor seem to be under the impression that there is nothing that matters in the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget. But that portion of the budget includes all federal education funding, some veteran’s benefits, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, federal highway funding, the National Park Service, the Coast Guard, and Congress itself.

Will House Republicans be reducing all of those across-the-board? It isn’t likely, which means that that they will have to make even deeper cuts to some programs to achieve their desired savings. Of course, they could just be confirming that they agree with Sen. Mitch McConnell’s pronouncement that giving tax breaks to the rich is deficit spending that Republicans support!

See The Wonk Room for a list of potential progressive spending cuts that could be made.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) hosted a town hall meeting in Bartlett, TN this week, where she sought to assure the right-wing crowd that Republicans won’t become more “moderate” if they take back control of Congress. Underscoring this point, Blackburn said that one of the top priorities of Republicans would be to repeal health care reform:

Blackburn said the key to Republican conduct, should the GOP win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, is in the Republican conference of House leaders where priorities of a GOP majority would be determined. She said the priority of the conference will be to repeal national health care reform.

This week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) also told the National Review that the GOP agenda’s “first plank” this fall should be to “repeal Obamacare,” noting it was “very close to a universal position on the part of Republicans.” So far, all but seven of House Republicans have signed onto Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) repeal petition. Blackburn was one of the earliest signatories, getting on board on June 23.

The Republican leadership has been reluctant to release its agenda for the next Congress. This month on Bloomberg News, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Republicans wouldn’t tell the public about their plans until September. While the GOP touts fiscal discipline and reducing the deficit, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) were recently unable to name any spending cuts they were considering. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), however, has said that in addition to repealing health care, Republicans should “issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another and expose all the nonsense that has gone on.”

On Thursday, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) referred to the government as a “gangster government,” telling a group of conservative activists, “We’re on to them. We’re on to this gangster government. And we are not going to let them have their way.” The following day, President Clinton — who has drawn parallels between the Oklahoma City bombing incident in 1995 and the current atmosphere of right-wing, anti-government hatred — took aim at Bachmann’s comments. “They are not gangsters. They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.”

Clinton said people involved with “hatriot” groups like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters may take the wrong lessons from irresponsible rhetoric. “Ninety-nine percent of them will never do anything they shouldn’t do, but there are people who advocate violence and anticipate violence,” he warned. Fortunately, some of Bachmann’s conservative colleagues are heeding Clinton’s warning. This morning, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) — also a strong supporter of the Tea Parties — refused to endorse Bachmann’s “gangster government” rhetoric:

GREGORY: Do those kinds of words, April 19th is coming up, which is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, when an anti-government person who was obviously a sociopath attacked the federal government. When you describe a “gangster government,” do you think that is over the line and inappropriate in our political discourse?

BLACKBURN: It would not have been a choice in words that I made. And what we have to realize is that any time you have large public gatherings, whether it is a group from the left, or a group from the right, you’re going to have lots of individuals with different opinions who show up.

Watch it:

This wasn’t the first time Bachmann has described the government as “gangster.” In June of 2009, Bachman took to the floor of the House and declared, “We have gangster government when the federal government has set up a new cartel and private businesses now have to go begging with their hand out to their local — hopefully well-politically connected — congressman or their senator so they can buy a peace offering for that local business.” In May of 2009, Bachmann compared Washington, D.C. to “enemy lines” and urged her supporters to become “armed and dangerous” and fight a “revolution” against cap and trade legislation.

On Wednesday, a group of women GOP lawmakers held a press conference to denounce a new recommendation by the federal Preventive Services Task Force that women receive mammograms less frequently. “This is how rationing begins,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “This is the little toe in the edge of the water.”

“Women in particular may lose a great deal of clout in decision making,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). “We don’t know how far government will go in this bureaucracy,” she added, noting that they “want to empower women” and “want to have all the data on the table so individuals can make the best decision they can.”

On MSNBC this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman took Blackburn to task for getting the “public health message lost in the politics.” “Now, there’s nothing that came out of this panel recommending rationing,” said Snyderman. “Just a prudent use of screening tests.” When Blackburn tried to claim that the guidelines meant “bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow,” Snyderman pointed out that Blackburn was acting as a “bureaucrat” standing between patients and “the best possible evidence”:

BLACKBURN: It is troubling also that another of our colleagues has said many times, we. And that we means bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow.

SNYDERMAN: But you’re one of those bureaucrats. You’re my bureaucrat!

BLACKBURN: But I’m not, no. And you see, I don’t think a bureaucrat should be between a patient and a doctor. See, I don’t want to be that bureaucrat.

SNYDERMAN: Excuse me, I think that’s exactly where you are right now.

Watch it:

As the Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis notes, the concern of the congresswomen about rationed mammograms is especially ironic considering that they oppose legislation that “would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.”

Recently, the White House announced that it would appoint a Census Bureau director who would have a direct line to the White House, after “black and Hispanic leaders raised concerns over Commerce Secretary-nominee Judd Gregg’s commitment to core functions of the Census Bureau.”

In the following days, conservatives had a conniption over the new census procedures, claiming it would lead to White House politicization at the behest of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) even called for an official investigation:

Rep. John Boehner: It just tells me that the census, the counting of the population of the United States is going to be politicized.

Sen. John Cornyn: And to shift it to the White House to me just politicizes the census, which is not something we should be doing.”

Rep. Darrell Issa: Would Democrats Trust Karl Rove to Control Census?

But in an interview with CNBC today, Gregg suggested that the census procedures weren’t much of an issue to him. “The way it was explained to me is that the Census would still report to the Commerce Secretary, but the White House wanted to have a major interest in the census process also,” he said. Gregg even praised the White House:

GREGG: The person that the White House has proposed to manage the Census, Ken Pruitt, did it in 2000 when I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee that had oversight over Commerce Dept. And I thought he did an excellent job. So I thought the people were going to be in place to do a pretty good census.

When CNBC asked if he “didn’t feel comfortable” with the White House’s involvement, Gregg responded, “I actually hadn’t concluded as to how that was going to play out, to be honest. I thought that when I go there I could probably straighten that out if it was a problem.” Watch it: