The GOP unveiled their budget "with numbers" today. I gave version 1.0 a fair shake last week so I don't feel bad calling it what it is: utterly incoherent. A round-up from the blogs:
Publius:
As we already knew (because it was the one specific detail in the last “budget”), the plan has a massive tax cut for the wealthy – lowering the highest marginal rate to 25%. Higher-earning taxpayers can, however, voluntarily opt to pay the old higher rate. Here’s the kicker – the GOP’s deficit assumptions assume that everyone will opt for the older higher rates.
Drum:
That's it? Seriously? They claim Social Security is going bankrupt and their proposal is to reduce PIA by 0.25% per year starting in 2036? This takes gutlessness to a whole new level.
Conor Clarke on the below graph:
As near as I can tell, Paul Ryan and his staff just took the CBO projections that ended in 2019 and drew a random line, extending upward at about a 45 degree angle, until 2080. There's no real attempt to make it look scientific.
John Marshall:
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.
Freddoso trying to stay positive:
This graph, featured in a House Republican press conference this morning, whets my appetite for some real numbers, which will be forthcoming tomorrow. You'll notice that it projects out to 2080, which is a bit far for my taste. It's bad enough to look at Obama's budget through 2019.
I must say, it looks like any opposition to Obama is going to have to come from the moderate democrats. The current GOP has become about as irrelevant as AOL.
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