House Republicans decided some time ago to get the public involved in their efforts to cut the massive federal budget down to size.

Each week that Congress is in session, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) hosts a poll — named “YouCut” — on his House website, asking Americans to choose one of five wasteful spending projects they’d like to see removed from the federal budget. Americans then use a text message to vote for the project of their choice.

Since this project began more than 1.3 million votes have been cast. Total proposed cost savings? $120 billion.

Over the past nine weeks the House has been in session, Republicans have offered more than $120 billion in cuts to wasteful federal government spending. These cuts could have been used to pay for extensions of unemployment compensation, COBRA health insurance assistance and state Medicaid assistance with tens of billions of dollars still remaining to reduce this year’s deficit.

Of course, Congressional Democrats aren’t about to let these proposed cuts go through. They would rather continue on the present course, deficit spending the country’s way into fiscal disaster. Republicans appear to have learned their lesson from years out of power, while Democrats seem to think there’s no lesson to be learned.