GOP budget cuts fall short among Republicans in Congress

"The bottom line is that our constituents back home, are required month after month, week after week to make tough choices," Hice argued on the House floor, "and we need to do the same."

But Hice's $7 billion savings amendment was easily defeated by the House on a vote of 128-304, with 71 fellow Republicans voting against it.

The Hice vote was not an anomaly, as other Republican lawmakers didn't fare much better with their efforts to trim back spending on the House floor.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) offered a plan to reduce spending on Commerce, Justice, and Science programs by 14 percent.

That mustered 135 votes, with 296 against.

His next try was a proposed 14 percent cut in agriculture programs.

That received only 113 votes, with 318 against.

Banks has offered a 14 percent cut to two different spending 'minibus' packages on the House floor over the past two weeks, but has not yet been able to gather the support of even one-third of the House on any of those budget cutting efforts.

"You can show that you support fiscal sanity," Banks argued in vain before one vote.

His proposed plan for a 14 percent cut in environment and interior programs - like the National Park Service - lost on a vote of 132-299, with 65 Republicans voting against his amendment.

"The amendment would indiscriminately cut funding across the board,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), who singled out the need to fund the maintenance backlog at national parks, and said proposals like the ones from his GOP colleagues would lead to 'drastic cuts' in needed programs.

The atmospherics which ran against GOP budget cutters was evidently so acute that Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) - who won the right to offer two different amendments to cut billions from the spending package - didn't even offer his amendments for a vote on the House floor.