Republicans Have a Better 'Plan': Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, a Budget with Imaginary Numbers, & Some Boffo Charts!

Damozel

Buck Naked Politics

March 27, 2009

It's like the GOP is going out of its way to become a caricature of itself. Dave Weigl (Behold, Charts!):

An anonymous official quoted in Politico’s story on the House GOP budget plans said, “We need to hold something up and say, ‘Here are our charts. Here are our graphs. It’s real.”

So that's what they did: Unleash Hilarious ‘Road To Recovery’ Plan On Embarrassed Public. And we in the public especially like their health care graphic. It is choice.

Et...voila! Health care solved!

John Cole, on the subject of GOP seppuku:

That must have taken a lot of work to get together. They had to have spent at least… minutes. So why did they rush out in front of cameras to make fools of themselves?...

Pretty clearly, this debacle today was a result of this line from President Obama the other night at the fundraiser:...

And to a bunch of the critics out there, I’ve already said, show me your budget. (Laughter.) Show me what you want to do. (Applause.) And I’m happy to have that debate—because I believe in the vision of the Democratic Party. (Applause.) I believe in a vision that helps people help themselves. And I believe that in the end, the best way to bring down our deficit is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that led to the false prosperity and massive debts that we’ve seen. It’s a budget that leads to broad economic growth, moves us from an era of borrow and spend to save and invest....

...[T]he reason they ‘need’ to just throw out something, anything, is because they know they got bitch-slapped.

Ripley: "That's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!"

Yep, good times and awesomeness are just around the corner (

Wonkette:

Check out all the neat charts in this plan like the one above, explaining (with pickshers) how the Republicans will use magical powers (War) to transform a possibly black homeless welfare bum into a cleaned-up white professional in the thriving sector of residential real estate development. Other innovative ideas include lowering the top income tax rate by 10% from current Bush levels, yelling at Jimmy Carter for trying to give houses to the blacks in 1977 and thereby causing the current depression, and this sentence: “Republicans believe the best antidote for market turmoil is certainty and economic growth.”

Ezra Klein:

Bush, famously, described his first budget by saying, "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." Indeed it was, and did. This isn't. There are no numbers. Let me repeat that: The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend....

It's true. Taylor Marsh:

[S]omething happened on the way from the calculator. No numbers. That’s right, none....

Beoher invited a bunch of reporters over to see the Republican response to Obama’s budget, but they didn’t include any numbers, none at all.

It’s hard to believe these people get paid for this.

Apparently, some Republicans weren't too happy about this rush of the leadership to make fools of them all. Phoenix Woman notes:

Here’s something that you will never see on most evening TV news shows, or in most of the places where most Americans get their news — a story of Republicans in disarray:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) objected to an abbreviated alternative budget “blueprint” released today — but were told by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) they needed to back the plan, according to several Republican sources.

“In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan,” said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.

“I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas,” the person added.

Yes, we're all still waiting to hear those "serious" "ideas." Tax cuts for everyone! Er...everyone who still has an income. They'll all go right out and start up small businesses or something, I guess.

Jon at Yes, Let's Talk About This:

[T]he drubbing they are now receiving for the vacuity of their “plan” was completely and entirely avoidable and indeed, should have been avoided. In the meantime, the result has reinforced the notion that the Republicans are not a party to be taken seriously.

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