Cutting congressional pay? Good luck with that.
The problem is that besides symbolic votes about repealing HCR and extending Bush's tax cuts, the Republicans have absolutely no clue of what to do.
David Frum, Andrew Sullivan and other conservatives literally are begging Bhoener and Co. for a year now to present a serious plan about how they are going to reduce the deficit, to no avail.
Frum has gone even further saying that actually the GOP leadership will quickly drop any pretense about serious governing and will focus on passing the pet projects of Bhoener's lobbyist friends.
Unless of course by beating expectations you mean launching frivolous investigations, on things like Obama's trip to India, and trying to impeach him.
You lost all credibility when you claim Andrew Sullivan is a conservative. He is nothing of the sort - he's practically a Democrat, even if he doesn't call himself that. Nor is David Frum really that conservative.
The Republican leadership had absolutely no incentive to mention specifics about what they will cut while running for election. It only would have served to turn off some of the people who would otherwise vote for them, and taken the spotlight off of the real issue in the campaign - Obama. There will be budget cuts - Republicans know that if they don't govern better than in their recent past, they will be turfed again.
By the way, it's Speaker-Elect Boehner, not Bhoener, just like it's Speaker Pelosi, not Pelousy.
Sullivan and Frum are surely more conservative than pork king Mitch McConnell, Glenn Beck or Sister Sarah.
And Republicans refuse to specify what they will cut even now that the election is over. When Rand Paul says that defense and entitlements are off the table (and BTW, he is all for earmarks now) then I challenge you to guess what magic solution they will find to reduce the deficit.
Perception is reality in politics, and with that, there are two deficits:
There is the real deficit.
And there is the deficit Americans think we have.
The same could be said for anything. There are the tax rates, and the tax rates Americans think we have. Jobs numbers, and the jobs numbers Americans think we have. You could go on and on.
Republicans aren't aiming to reduce the deficit, they're aiming to reduce the imaginary deficit, the deficit in people's minds. The way you cut the imaginary deficit is by cutting symbolic things. Not things that will really cut the deficit in any meaningful way, but just making small cuts that people will notice. Cutting something like NPR funding, for instance, is not something that matters at all, but it's something that will make the news and play into the "cuts cuts cuts" narrative that will be set by the right-wing news channels.
Taking away extended unemployment benefits is another symbolic cut. Something people will notice and will be hurt by, but not really something that makes a huge dent in the deficit. Some have suggested cutting the national endowment for the arts, a tiny cut that doesn't matter, but a cut that will make news and be noticed. Cutting education spending, another small but symbolic cut. Whittling away at Medicaid funding, another small cut but, again, symbolic because it will make news and people will hear about it, even if all of these cuts combined amount to a tiny fraction of the budget deficit.
Another thing that was mentioned by the incoming Republican Governor in Pennsylvania was selling off the state liquor stores. This will get the state a small one-time infusion of cash, but how does that help anyone? It isn't a long term (hell, it's not even short-term) solution, it is just a big symbolic cut that will make the news and people will notice it.
Americans, most of them anyway, will not care about the amount of money this saves or doesn't save, most Americans will not be smart enough to look up the deficit numbers, they will simply see tiny symbolic cuts, and in their mind, this makes the deficit in their heads go down, and they vote on this perception.
Compare the Democratic and Republican efforts to cut taxes, as an example of practicality versus symbolism. When Bush cut taxes, he did so with big fanfare. The government sent checks to everyone and at the top of those checks there were big "HEY, THANKS TO THE BUSH TAX CUTS, YOU'VE RECEIVED ____ AMOUNT OF DOLLARS" messages that made sure to hammer home the fact that Republicans cut taxes, to make sure people really noticed it. It wasn't very economically stimulative (at all) but it made people notice "Hey, Republicans cut my taxes! Yay!" and then they drooled their way all the way to the ballot box to vote for the tax-cutting Republicans.
Democrats, on the other hand, don't do symbolism very well. The stimulus tax cuts, for example, took a (largely) different approach in distributing tax cuts. Instead of one big check with tasteless messages plastered all over it making sure Americans knew who to thank, the Democrats gave the tax cuts over time, shaving off dollars here and there from people's taxes. They did it this way because the best way to get people to spend money is if they don't actually notice they're getting more, because if they do, they're more likely to just throw it in the bank, and you get no stimulus from that.
This is the economically smart way to do it, but there's no big fanfare, no symbolism, no clear signs for the dog-like minds of the average American voter so they know who to thank. And thus, most Americans refuse to believe the fact that they received tax cuts.
There is reality, and then there is perception. And unfortunately, people vote on perception.
