The Republican Party leadership unveiled it’s counter proposal to Obama’s budget yesterday to sour reviews and little fanfare. The reason for the lack of optimism is the omission of numbers or hard facts such as how much they plan to spend and on what.
GOP Minority Leader John Boehner
If anyone hasn’t read it yet, there’s nothing in it except talking points and anti-Obama hate. There is so much vitriol and pro right-wing propaganda that it is truly one document that is very hard to read. This document is nothing more than a sales promotion and a pander to the right-wing base. The only policy proposal in the whole document is a huge tax cut for the wealthy (Bushonomics).
See what you think. Here is a snippet from page 5 explaining the Republican plan to balance the budget. Most of this section is right-wing vitriol against the President’s budget, and very little offered to counter the President’s proposal, let alone prove their way is better:
LIMITS THE FEDERAL BUDGET FROM GROWING FASTER THAN FAMILY BUDGETS
THE PRESIDENT’S BUDGET
By any reasonable definition, the Democrat budget spends too much. In the current Fiscal Year, the federal government would spend over $4 trillion or 28.5 percent of the economy—the highest level since World War II. The new budget is fresh off an eight percent increase in nondefense spending from the omnibus—the highest increase since the Carter administration, except immediately following the September 11th attacks—and a $792 billion “stimulus” spending bill. The deficit for the
current Fiscal Year is projected to be upwards of $1.8 trillion, and over the next ten years, the deficit will total $9.3 trillion by conservative estimates. Families simply cannot afford to pay for such levels of government.
First of all, the budget doesn’t belong to the Democrat. The budget is a proposal introduced to Congress by the President of the United States. It is not the Democrat budget.
Secondly, almost all economists agree that an honest effort to recover from this Republican recession will take massive spending. (According to Republican leadership, the spending is too large because the numbers sound too large.) We may or may not be spending more since the end of WWII. I don’t know because I haven’t seen a comparison adjusted for the value of today’s dollars and GDP from that time adjusted to today’s per capita output, which is greater. But from what I’ve read, our economy is hemorrhaging jobs and housing value at a biblical rate and we cannot stop it without a matching effort. From Why the Stimulus is Too Small, The Huffington Post, February 9:
It’s a matter of basic math, says economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The economy is currently losing – annually — $450 billion in housing wealth, $650 billion in consumer spending and $150 billion in commercial real estate value.
“You’re talking about a gap on the order of twelve-hundred-fifty billion dollars, and we’re trying to plug that with four-hundred-something, so we’ve got a long way to go,” Baker says. (The stimulus package of roughly $800 billion doles out spending and tax cuts over two years.)
Galbraith, too, says that demonstrating that the stimulus is too small is a matter of basic math. The $400 billion it will inject into the economy each of the next two years is equal to about two to three percent of GDP, he noted. But the economy is falling at a much faster rate, projected at eight percent a year by the CBO – and that projection, again, doesn’t account for the financial collapse.
The verdict is that the stimulus was too small and the budget can make up some of the shortfall. What is really startling is the Republican plan to turn things around:
REPUBLICAN’S SOLUTION
Instead of recklessly borrowing and spending money on wasteful programs under the guise of “stimulus” and “investments,” Republicans seek to ensure that the federal budget cannot grow faster than families’ ability to pay the bill.In addition to securing our nation’s major entitlements, by enacting common-sense reforms and weeding out waste, fraud, and abuse, Republicans propose to undo the recent reckless and wasteful Democrat spending binge included in the so-called “stimulus” and omnibus bills.
In addition, Republicans would cut overall nondefense spending by reforming or eliminating a host of wasteful programs deemed ineffective by various government entities. And Republicans would fully fund our ongoing commitments overseas while devoting the entirety of any savings from reduced fighting to deficit reduction, rebuilding our military, and funding our commitment to our veterans.
They will construct the federal budget so as to not grow faster than families’ ability to pay the bill. Whose family, mine or Warren Buffet’s? I cannot imagine how they plan to tie in the federal budget with a family’s budget. Remember when Ronald Reagan said that deficits don’t matter? They may not matter to the government which has been operating in the red for generations, but they matter to my family’s budget.
Whenever you hear a Republican saying that they want to reduce wasteful spending, it is Republicanease for cuts in Medicare, subsidized housing, food stamps, welfare, unemployment benefits, infrastructure, and cuts to the budget for all the oversight agencies that keep us healthy and safe.
Don’t let them fool you into thinking that Obama is the only one borrowing money. They don’t want you to remember that the Republicans under Bush grew government faster and bigger than any presidency in history. Bush borrowed every dime to fund two wars and give out sweetheart no-bid, cost-plus contracts to his and VP Cheney’s cronies.
This document doesn’t offer any counterproposal, just more of the same stuff that we voted out last November. (Tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, etc.)
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P.S. Here is a funny but honest montage of the talking heads’ reaction to the Republican roll-out of the non-budget:
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