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The Left Reviews the GOP Budget [Update]

By SusanUnPC on April 1, 2009 at 8:13 PM in Congress (House & Senate), Obama's Budget, Republicans

(Just in case: I’m joshing with you below! UPDATE Question: Why are the Brits calling Michelle “mite-y”? That’s NOT very nice!)

You silly fools who praised the speech and writings of Rep. Paul Ryan! Honestly! What’s WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE??? Here’s what TPM’s Josh Marshall has to say about Rep. Ryan and the idiots (that’d be you too) who applauded the fiscally cautious budget:

I realize that it doesn’t afford me a lot of opportunities for personal or spiritual growth. But I’m nonetheless comforted by the fact that the Republicans running things in the House GOP caucus are still as clinically insane as in years past.

There are plenty of others including the Washington Monthly’s sage Steve Benen,

Besides, what is WRONG with a debt of a few trillion dollars? Huh? Well, about nine years ago, the left-swinging writers for the drama, The West Wing, thought the cost required for equitable slave reparations was so huge that we’d have to sell “Texas and the U.S. Navy”!

In this scene, “Josh (Bradley Whitford) is assigned to talk with the administration’s controversial nominee (Carl Lumbly) for assistant attorney general for civil rights who advocates that African-Americans receive financial reparations for slavery.”

The nominee tells Josh how much slave reparations will cost, which is … well, you watch the video … and you’ll KEEL OVER at the total amount:

But that was nine years ago. Today, a trillion here, a trillion there … come on, people. Times change! Those West Wing writers must be MORTIFIED that they wrote that line that Josh utters.

Oh, you want to know what those other leftie writers said about you and yours today? Steve Benen titled his post, “A BUDGET PERFECT FOR APRIL FOOLS’ DAY….” Ouchie. And what an ORIGINAL LINE! WOW! What a writer Benen is!

Rumor has it that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, is one of the House GOP Caucus’ sharper members. He has a reputation for knowing what he’s talking about, and doing his homework. So, when I saw that he’d written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about the GOP’s budget alternative, I was anxious to see what he’d come up with.

To be sure, the roll-out for the alternative budget has been a rather humiliating fiasco, as evidenced by the Republican decision to unveil a budget with no numbers in it. And we won’t really be able to scrutinize the proposal until the caucus decides to release some, you know, data.

[...]

the “borrow-and-spend philosophy” did not create the crisis, so Ryan’s prescription is automatically based on a misdiagnosis. But even if we put that aside, the alternative budget reflects a political party that embraced a breathtakingly radical worldview.

[...]

It’s almost as if Ryan and his Republican colleagues are trying to destroy the economy. As Pat Garofalo recently explained, “The economic stimulus package’s main purpose is to close the GDP gap and jumpstart the economy by spurring spending by households, government and the private sector. A spending freeze would act as an ‘anti-stimulus,’ cutting spending precisely when it’s too low and the economy is moving too slowly.”

[...]

And if Paul Ryan is what passes today as a sane partisan, the Republican Party has a long way to go before it can sit at the big kids’ table.

See? With you people acting like a trillion here, a trillion there is a big deal, we’re never gonna get out of this recession.

What, you say? Recessions are cyclical and go away on their own? But, but … we have an opportunity here! Carpe diem, people! Spend, spend, spend! China loves us, and wants to give us lots of money. (I wonder why they love doing that so much. Huh.)

Let me pile on some more Josh Marshall, in case you need it:

We see today from their House GOP ‘budget’ that their new-found allegiance to fiscal discipline has them lowering the top marginal tax rate to 25% (it’s currently 35%, with the Bush tax cuts), which for anyone who knows anything about the federal budget would pretty much inevitably lead to gargantuan federal deficits and the Treasury exploding probably some time early in the next decade. They manage to still have the deficits coming down by bunch of nonsense hokum about oil rigs and other foolery.

Treasury is going to explode?!?!?! Wow.

This part I just don’t understand. Do you?

As you can see, predicting ideological stances over as yet unborn Democratic members of Congress, the GOP scoring appears to have us on track for the government owning about 90% of the economy in the early-mid-22nd century, which if I remember is about the time period of the invention of the warp drive. So I don’t know if they’ve figured that in too.

Then Marshall added an update, which I also don’t understand because, well, I am not a Trekkie. So? What’s it to ya?!?!?!?

(ed.note: Alas, I’m not the Star Trek aficionado I once was or flattered myself to be, I guess. Turns out warp drive is invented in 2063, almost two decades before the current House GOP budget projections.)

I think I’m supposed to laugh.

But mostly at you.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Ha!!!

  • cynic

    “A spending freeze would act as an ‘anti-stimulus,’ cutting spending precisely when it’s too low and the economy is moving too slowly.”

    Is this a valid point? With credit frozen, consumer spending falling, business spending falling, and unemployment rising, I’m wondering what the systemic effect of reducing government spending might be. Would tax cuts alone increase private spending, or be turned primarily to debt reduction and capital accumulation?

    • Tony

      Did Paul Ryan propose cutting or freezing spending? Or is this just the old Washington trick – Because Ryan’s budget doesn’t have a deficit anywhere near Obama’s proposed 1.7 trillion, he is therefore calling for draconian cuts?

  • Peggy Sue

    Susan, it’s obvious. We haven’t been drinking the kool-aide. If we’d slug some of that down, you and I would know with absolute certainty that “yes we can” spend ourselves into prosperity and reduce our debt by going into more debt and have every nirvana social program that’s out there.

    The Government “is” the solution, you silly rabbit. Why do we need to produce anything as long as the Government is willing to take care of us from womb to tomb?? Get with the program!! And yes, the Republicans are just killjoys for sticking their ugly mugs where they don’t belong. And that Ryan guy? Hah! What a pencil neck.

    Obama and Geithner and Ben Bernake have the solution. We run out of money?? We print those dollar bills like there’s no tomorrow. And if business doesn’t like it, we’ll fire their asses. They’re nothing but a bunch of corrupt, rich guys anyway. Who needs them?

    Inflation? I laugh at inflation. Jimmy Carter did.

    We are on the threshold of peace and love and shared misery. Please, don’t spoil the illusion.

    Go back to sleep. Barack and his cronies are depending on it.

    And 1.7 trillion dollars?? That’s chump change. We’re in a Brand New World, baby.

    Tell you what? I’ll hold your hand while we jump over the cliff. We can sing Kumbayah on our way down.

    I’m sure that will make it better!

    • beachnan

      LOL-Love your comments Peggy Sue. Do you think the unicorns will save us on our way down?

  • FrenchNail

    Reps or Dems, they just don’t get it. For them, it’s business as usual with our money. The minority party is a little more cautious to look good and gear for the next elections, but basically they go for the money because money means power and they are power hungry.

    I have no idea how all this will end. I wish, we could have some real constitutionalists reforming one or the other party so that we could really get behind them.

    • Peggy Sue

      I think you’re right, French. This money problem has infected both parties. Right now, the Dems are in the hot seat, but the Republicans hardly did themselves proud in fiscal responsibility. In fact, they set the stage grandly for the insanity we’re witnessing now.

      How will this end up? Badly, I fear. Worse than anything we’ve yet to imagine. The Democrats are on a suicide course, and they’re taking us all with them.

      Gird your loins! It’s going to be a long, painful ride down.

    • Senneth

      I’m with you French Nail. I don’t trust either Party at this juncture. After the mess Dubya and his Congress made, then the Dems did nothing great for the two years they had the majority, to this. I’ll just stock up on food and other items.

  • WMCB

    The thing that always boggles my mind is that I DO REALIZE that someone has to spend in order the get things moving again.

    My question is, why must it be ONLY the government who does it? If WE are the ones providing the money, why must it be funneled through THEM before it has this magical “stimulus” effect? If we spend the exact same money ourselves, it does bupkus? Did that money somehow get transformed into different money by virtue of having passed through their hands? Isn’t money flowing into the economy money flowing into the economy, no matter who is spending it?

    What if all of those trillions to the financial sector had gone out to US, to the people, and we all started spending it like crazy? Would that not be a “stimulus”?

    • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

      Some really great experts like Financial Times’s Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman say that Obama’s plan is far too timid and that we needed to spend more. But that that is now impossible given all the poor handling of issues like the AIG bonuses, etc.

      I think I should bump up that Martin Wolf piece again. Larry added a very good paragraph as an update to my post, about Wolf’s ideas and why it was important to go big if one were going to do it right.

      • Peggy Sue

        And this is my problem with the Dems right now, Susan. No one wants to take “real” responsibility. If this is the financial course they believe in [even though I don't agree with it] then blow the roof off, send it too the stars. It’s all or go broke and we’ll see what financial philosophy proves correct. But no. The politcos want to dip their feet in the water, so that they can pretend that it was someone else’s fault–the damn Republicans and Blue Dog Dems who wouldn’t get with the program or [from the Republican perspective] the spend and tax Dems who only have one solution. Meanwhile, both parties are sucking up funds from the very institutions they claim to despise and spending whatever reserves the American public has left.

        Leadership demands courage and bravado and I’ll take the reins. Whatever happens, happens. We don’t have that in either party. We’re desperate for real leadership in the country, the kind that isn’t looking at the polls or rely on focus groups, as if our future should depend on a popular survey, a gushing headline or the latest fad.

        All we have are pretenders and slogans and party brands. And Barack Obama is the eiptome of all that, the wizard of all wizards swaying behind the curtain.

        And that will be our undoing, sooner rather than later. Unless the American public, in unison, roars and says: enough already!

        Bring us leadership, the kind that we can believe in and trust, the sort that respects our laws, our history and our Constitution.

        Or tear the damn house down!

        This is a pivotal moment. We cannot afford to go back to sleep.

        • ME

          You couldn’t be more correct.

      • WMCB

        Yes, but Krugman believes that the govt needs to pull out the stops and pour money into the actual economy, including massive public works and infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam, etc, as FDR did.

        He is utterly opposed to trillions being dumped merely to prop up the bad assets of failed financial institutions.

        Krugman wants more money spent, but only if it goes to an entirely different, productive place than where Obama is intent on sending it.

        • http://noliinsipientiuminiuriaspati.blogspot.com/ adagioforstrings

          “including massive public works and infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam”

          What, specifically, is he proposing & would environmental hippies allow for more construction?

      • viking

        Seriously, do you believe this sh*t? We’ll spend our way into prosperity, borrow our way into solvency? You’ve latched onto Krugman’s ideas merely because they criticize Obama’s plan.

        How meek and shortsighted could you be? Is the magic unicorn expected to arrive at your house for a wondrous ride soon?

        • viking

          Support the republican budget. It peels back much of the wild spending in the previously passed measures, of which we were all aghast.

    • beachnan

      So true, but we are the little people. According to the government, they know better than us just what the money should be spent on. Oh, thank you big government, what we do without you? Snark!

      • Peggy Sue

        No, beachnan. All snark aside, we are “not” a small people. There are more of us [ordinary people] than there are of them [the politicians]. The trick is finding our common cause.

        There’s a wave growing out on the horizon. It’s growing in strength with each and every day. And when it gets ready to break? Washington better be ready for the swell.

        • viking

          Amen!

  • daisyjane

    The biggest problem with Krugman’s analysis of the Obama plan is this: no matter how much he might wish for BIG Hoover Dam style projects, those were done in a different time. We were not hauling around entitlement payments required by law to be paid (Social Sec., Medicare, etc.) to the tune of about 59 TRILLION dollars. That is on top of whatever debt this president or any other dumps on us.

    Obama’s economic ignorance is showing, I’m afraid. He’s put tax increases for energy, healthcare, and who knows what else out there in the future. And giving our dim bulb Geithner powers over privately held companies that are almost certainly unconstitutional.

    No investor in their right mind would invest one single penny in this unstable market with such an economic nitwit at the helm. And one with a penchant to scratch his redistributionist itch, as well.

  • Diana L. C.

    I don’t trust most politicians of any stripe with my money. But then, I’ve never had much of it. I was not and am still not (yet? crossing my fingers) affected too much by all of this. I wasn’t in the past recessions either. I’ve never had anything but a solid job and a month-by-month budget with retirement goals. And, it’s because I have never done much with Wall Street at all. I’ve lived a simple life, not ever worrying about having too many possessions, spending my money most lavishly if at all on my living responsibilities–i.e., my children and animal companions–and keeping my head down hoping for times to change.

    That’s what I do now because I have no idea at all about how to fix the state of finances in the world. I just hope that people with real world sensibilities take control. The thing is that I’ve been in “academia” much of my life; and the other thing is that I know when “academia” takes over solving problems, we’re working mostly on untested theory, not proven results. That is the reason, I fear, we’ve gone so astray recently–lots of theory, no real world experience.

    I believe I am not really stating my feelings well here, just that my only sense of getting through this is to lie low myself.

  • ME

    I don’t know why the government is seen to be immune to basic economic principles (its like believing they’re immune to gravity)….over-leveraging is what got us into this global economic crisis and the gov. doing more of the same is an extreme disaster pending.

    No one ever got rich over-spending or over leveraging themselves on a consistent basis…ever! Its what got us into it!!!

    The only way out of this is to let the problem unfurl and reach equilibrium…the only thing Gov should be doing is making sure loop holes and injustices are addressed so that similar things don’t happen again. If that means a longer recession so be it..sure is better than the disappearance of this country and its principles.

    Experts like Geithner, Greespan, and the likes are the creeps that got us into this…they sure can’t get us out…as usual only American people and ingenuity can do that…and reverance to the constitution (since heading this document is the only thing that has and will give the world and us confidence in this country’s future).