Republicans in the U.S. Congress today are starting to take the first tiny steps that they hope will lead to billions in federal budget cuts for the current fiscal year.

The venue is the House Rules Committee, where the panel will consider a simple resolution that would start a series of dominoes which the GOP vows will result in a vote on budget cuts in coming months.

The goal of the plan is to "reduce spending through a transition to non-security spending at fiscal year 2008 levels."

First, let's read the bill, so you can understand it.

"Resolved, That, pursuant to section 3(b)(1) of H.Res. 5, the Chair of the Committee on the Budget shall include in the Congressional Record an allocation contemplated by section 302(a) for the Committee on Appropriations for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 that assumes a transition to non-security spending at fiscal year 2008 levels."

Yep, that's it.

Translated, it means that this resolution would give the Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the power to set the spending levels for the Appropriations Committee for the rest of this fiscal year - establishing an overall budget number that is equal to spending levels set back in 2007 for fiscal year 2008.

But that will be true only for "non-security spending," as Republicans will not pursue cuts in homeland defense or the Pentagon.  Some Republicans also say spending on veterans programs falls into this category.

That means about $100 billion in cuts, or about one-fifth of the money spent on the rest of what we call the 'discretionary budget,' which covers everything from transportation to education and health programs, housing, energy and more.

Expect Democrats to attack that plan, arguing that there are billions which could be trimmed instead from the military and homeland defense without negatively impacting their missions.

So far, Republicans haven't tipped their hand on what they would cut, but expect a lot of flak, no matter what they choose to do.  

It's always easy to increase spending, but identifying cuts and following through can be more difficult.

The last two Presidents have routinely sent the Congress ideas for cuts in each budget, only to see the Congress - sometimes controlled by Republicans, sometimes controlled by Democrats - ignore those spending cut ideas.

Republicans had talked about having votes in their first month in power in the House on specific spending cuts, but that seems to have faded from the schedule.

We'll see where this debate goes in coming weeks.  A temporary federal budget ends on March 4.