I’m sure that when Charles and David Koch — pronounced like “Coke” — read about the Republicans’ most recent budget cuts, they smiled with joy. These billionaire brothers own Koch Industries of Wichita and have long supported libertarian and conservative political causes.

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the federal government needs to reduce its spending in order to decrease the deficit, though they differ on implementation. While Obama proposed budget cuts across the board that would end many small and inefficient programs, including those backed by liberals, Republicans in the House passed budget cuts obviously intended to anger Obama and the Democrats and please their Koch overlords.

The Republican plan included cutting funds to the Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental regulations, energy efficiency programs, parts of the recent health care legislation, family planning centers and other areas. It’s almost as if the Republicans were taking their cues right from the Koch brothers who, according to a Aug. 30, 2010 story in The New Yorker magazine, “are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.”

The Koch brothers’ support of these ideas makes perfect sense for the owners of a huge corporation that would benefit from less regulation. The Republicans, however, don’t stand to gain much from these budget cuts until you realize what the Koch brothers have been up to.

Politico.com reported on Feb. 11 that “the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle.” That must be a huge incentive for any Republican hoping to run again in 2012 to do just about anything to please the Koch brothers.

Sadly, even with the Republicans’ inane budget cuts, the deficit and the national debt will continue to rise. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to talk about the three 800-pound gorillas sitting on the floor of Congress: Social Security, the health insurance programs — namely Medicare and Medicaid — and defense spending. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report from April 14, 2010, each of these programs accounts for about 20 percent of the federal budget. Unless the politicians deal with these three sectors, little can be done to curb the deficit.

I’m not necessarily supportive of cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but these programs need to be addressed in the long run. While I find the myriad of military programs to be a much easier target for budget cuts, others disagree. In the end, however, ideologies must be put aside before we can ever hope to tackle the three areas of the budget that add up to more than 60 percent of the whole.

In the meantime, the political fight over the budget brings us even closer to a potential crisis. If the government doesn’t pass a new budget by March 4, then the whole government will essentially shut down. The government only funds itself through a certain date, after which government employees and programs will stop working.

This is made no easier by the fact that Congress just went on a weeklong break, giving legislators only a few days when they get back to work out a new budget. I doubt they’ll let the entire government shut down, though; Democrats and Republicans will either work out a compromise or pass a resolution that continues funding until they get their act together. But having only a few days to work out such a complex problem means the solution will likely be nowhere near ideal. Somewhere, the Koch brothers are laughing.