Michele Bachmann  (and I) call it “gangster government.” The Washington Post calls it “three-Pinocchio” government, assigning the Democrats’ most recent budget claims a credibility rating of roughly You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me. Seriously: Even the Washington by-God Post is getting the message about Fiscal Armageddon.

At issue are Democratic claims that they are offering the Republicans a meaningful compromise on spending cuts, that they are meeting them “halfway.” Which, as the Post points out, is true, if your baseline is an imaginary budget that was never enacted. Congressional Democrats never could be bothered to actually pass a budget on their watch (and, seriously, if you were them, would you want to put all those numbers together in one handy place? Or would you rather spread the spending out so it’s hard to see?), so Obama’s 2011 proposal was never enacted. That means that the only real numbers we have to go on are actual 2010 spending, from which Democrats propose to trim a grand total of approximately nothing.

Quoth the Post:

The Democrats’ posturing that they have met Republicans “halfway” on budget cuts does them no credit. Either they should take a stand and say they won’t accept any further cuts, or they should begin a real negotiation that leads to a higher number. Obama signaled he was willing to deal when he said he was “prepared to do more.” But the persistent claims of going “halfway” when in fact Democrats have done little to engage Republicans on the issue will only hurt their credibility in the long run.

Given the uncertain constitutional status of Obamacare, and given the sneaky way it’s been budgeted for, how about we hold onto that $105 billion in implementation spending that Michele Bachmann is so excited about until we’ve got a Supreme Court ruling on the mandate, etc? That does not seem to me unreasonable, and making the Republicans’ $60 billion in cuts $165 billion would move us that much closer to national solvency.

If somebody isn’t already planning the next rally on the Mall to remind Republicans of why they’ve got a House majority and what we expect them to do with it, it’s time to get moving. The Republicans have been properly wary of overreach thus far, but this is the point at which political momentum can easily be dissipated. Spending-cut precedents have to be established, with real credibility, before we move on to the next — and significantly harder — task, which is straightening out the entitlement mess. (By which I mean straightening out the Medicare mess, mostly. Social Security and Medicaid are relatively easy fixes, but Medicare is going to be a beast.)

—  Kevin D. Williamson is a deputy managing editor of National Review and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, just published by Regnery. You can buy an autographed copy through National Review Online here.

So the Democrats are drawing their line in the sand: at $6 billion in spending cuts.

A top Senate Democrat said Sunday that the $6 billion in additional spending cuts that his party offered is the limit Democrats can accept – drawing a line well short of Republicans’ goal with less than two weeks to go before a government shutdown if the two sides can’t agree.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber, said the $6 billion proposal, released Friday, has “pushed this to the limit” on domestic spending. That comment stands in sharp opposition to a House Republican bill containing an additional $57 billion in cuts below 2010 spending.

Republicans should take up cudgels over this. $6 billion is nothing: Congress spent $3.3 trillion in 2010. $6 billion is 0.001 of that, a number that rounds down to about zero. Nothing.

Republicans are rightly afraid that a government shutdown will turn into a replay of their Clinton-era troubles, and they should be careful. But if you’re  going to have a fight, this is the fight to have: Democrats are saying in essence that every dollar of federal spending is sacred, that spending is never coming down, and that government has a prior claim on the wealth of generations of Americans unborn. I don’t usually give advice to politicians, but I’d make a marquee message out of that fact: Even after the shellacking, Democrats are willing to cut nothing of any significance. This isn’t shaping up to be a replay of 1995; it’s shaping up to be a replay of 2010.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates breaks the ice with a plan for some reductions at the Department of Defense.

Question: If DoD can take a scalpel to its budget, which funds an actual, legitimate federal responsibility, where are the secretaries of HUD, HHD, Education, Energy, etc? Those departments should be looking not at scalpels but at meat axes.