The Omnibus budget was a disaster. Everybody hates it, it was worse than Obama, and it’s going to depress Republican voters. Trump’s team has a plan to fix it, but what if nobody backs the play?

Chad Pergram at Fox News has been asking around, and this is a report that should utterly depress anyone who cares about fiscal responsibility:

Trump Administration to send spending cancellation proposal (recissions measure) in early May. This is an effort to nullify some of the spending agreed to last month in the omnibus package. Sr GOP sources skeptical of reneging on a spending deal though

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) April 12, 2018

That’s a dense tweet, so let’s unpack this: The White House is going to send a proposal to the Congress, to pass a bill that cuts spending. The Omnibus was terrible, and we can do better. Since Trump has no Line Item Veto, the best he can do is send a list of things to cut to the Congress and ask them to pass a bill cutting them.

This is a case of Trump doing the right, responsible thing. This is the process you follow if you care about the law and the Constitution. This is something that’s reasonable and that folks should be able to support.

It’s also politically brilliant if done well. Make a list of the most terrible, egregious, untenable parts of the Omnibus, and dare the Congress to vote No. Republicans and Democrats a like could be put on the spot here.

However according to Pergram, Congressional GOP leaders don’t want to play ball. They won’t back the President on this for fear of hurting the Democrats’ feelings. This makes them worse than Trump on a core GOP issue: fiscal sanity.

Do we want a smaller government, or don’t we? If this report is true, then Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell seem more interested in making friends with the Democrats, than they are in shrinking government and cutting the deficit.