Scott Tipton will cut vital services for Colorado by half

Yet again one of Scott Tipton's reckless primary promises is coming back to bite him. In a letter to his supporters, Two-Ways Tipton says: "I am running for Congress because I have a vision for a federal government that is half the size and cost that it is today. Half as expensive as it is today. Half as many programs. Half everything!"

See the letter:

That may play well with Scott's extremist friends but it's reckless policy for the 3rd Congressional District as the Durango Herald notes:

Durango Herald: Federal budget

No one is about to cut it in half

State Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, wants to replace Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, as this district's next U.S. congressman. Fair enough. That is how the system works, and without good people to step up and run for office, democracy cannot function.

As for elections setting a course for the country, however, the process works better if candidates keep their campaign promises and policy positions somewhere near reality. And offering to cut the federal budget by 50 percent does not qualify.

Nonetheless the Tipton campaign sent out a news release Tuesday promising to do just that. Nor is there any confusion as to his meaning. In the announcement, Tipton said he has a "vision for a federal government that is half the size and cost that it is today. Half as expensive as it is today. Half as many programs. Half everything!"

Now, restraining the growth of federal spending is a fine goal. And nobody likes the waste and fraud we all decry.

But the joke is that it is only pork if it goes to someone else's district. Does Tipton want to stand up in Cortez and advocate closing Mesa Verde half the year? What other federal spending in the 3rd Congressional District would he eliminate? And how many jobs would he be willing to see go away?

Better yet, how would you like to be a fly on the wall when he tells a group of Blue Star Moms that their children, now serving in the armed forces, are going to get their pay, their pension and their government-supplied health care cut in half? That is in addition to getting only half the equipment, ammunition, training, fuel or even food they have now.

Even more interesting might be listening to the explanation at the local senior center about how spending on Social Security and Medicare also are going to be cut by half.

And no, the answer is not that we can protect those programs. Taken together, defense spending, Social Security and Medicare total slightly more than half the budget. Cutting 50 percent of all federal spending would require completely eliminating all funding for everything else, and then some.

Say goodbye to the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, national parks, federal funds for airports or highways, the Food and Drug Administration, the Postal Service, the FBI, veterans' benefits and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Federal oversight of aviation, communications, natural resources or the stock market would be history, as would any aid for agriculture or education. And the whole war on terror thing would take an exciting turn when there was no one at the airport to check bags or passengers.

Or we could go back to Plan A, cut everything by half and figure out how much we could get for some used submarines and aircraft carriers.

This not to mock Tipton. Most campaigns at some point make some ludicrous claim. And while the news release uses the first person throughout, much of this could be the work of an overzealous volunteer. Tipton wants to run against Salazar, but first he has to get past another Republican, Bob McConnel of Steamboat Springs, who is coming at him from the Tea Party side of things. That could be figuring prominently in the thinking of his campaign staff.

Still, cutting the federal budget by 50 percent would be economically disastrous, trash huge segments of society and cripple national security. It also is politically impossible. That such a notion would surface in an otherwise reasonable discussion, however, probably says more about the temper of the Republican electorate than about the candidates.