Republican "logic"

So the Republicans have unveiled a plan to stave off automatic cuts in defense spending that were triggered when the "Super Committee" failed last year to come up with mandated cuts.

Part of their plan includes a way to save some of the social programs dear to Democrats, in an effort to woo them over to the dark side. Of course, Democrats are actually fairly united in their idea for saving those social programs -- raise taxes on the "wealthy" (whatever the definition of that is).

According to the Repugnicans, though, raising taxes on the wealthy is bad because it would cost jobs (a dubious argument, but...).

"We're not going to use a millionaire tax to fix every problem around here," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) added. "We have a problem with that because we think it's about jobs."

So, what do we need to do in order to stave off these job-killing tax increases on the wealthy?

Cut jobs.

Yeah, that's right. Only a Repugnican could come up with such a brilliant plan (it's very reminiscent of George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" that was based on cutting trees down). What they want to do is cut the federal workforce by five percent, and freeze their wages.

Here is the follow-up question from Talking Points Memo:

Why are the jobs that would supposedly be lost as a result of a millionaires tax better than the ones that will be lost by phasing out federal jobs? Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) finessed the question.

"We're not laying anybody off, we're not proposing to fire anybody," Kyl said. "We're simply saying as people retire or quit and go to another job in the private sector or for what ever reason they leave the federal workforce, we don't have to replace all of them -- we can replace two out of every three."

But, as TPM goes on to point out, those are still jobs lost. But that's actually not entirely true...you see, the Repugnicans always accuse the Dems of being socialists and wanting to "redistribute" wealth. But they are just as guilty of it -- it's just harder to pick up on when the wealth is moving the other direction.

Graham:

"It's a spot not filled in the public sector. That doesn't mean it can't be filled in the private sector. We believe that the growth of government has been too large.... That's something we should do apart from defense. I would want to do that no matter if you had a defense problem."

What Repugnicans hate at all levels of government is people getting decent salaries straight from the government -- whether it's a teacher or some under-secretary to an under-secretary in the Department of Gravel Roads. Their problem with the bloated bureaucracy isn't that there are all these needless jobs being performed -- it's that needless jobs are being performed without the private sector getting a cut off the top.

So fire the government worker making $50,000 per year and bring in a contractor who can pay someone $40,000 to do the same job, while taking $10,000 for themselves.

It's not unlike what their likely 2012 Presidential nominee did as a private equity investor...