It's Spring, Part One

And that means it's budget time in the good ol' U.S. Congress. The Republicans have come up with not one but two proposed budgets, both consisting mainly of mumbo-jumbo, says Paul Krugman:

By now it’s a Republican Party tradition: Every year the party produces a budget that allegedly slashes deficits, but which turns out to contain a trillion-dollar “magic asterisk” — a line that promises huge spending cuts and/or revenue increases, but without explaining where the money is supposed to come from.

But the just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground. Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks: one on spending, one on revenue. And that’s actually an understatement. If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the first decade.

And of course, the cuts are to come from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security (which, strictly speaking, is outside the budget, but it's a long tradition on the right to try to dismantle Social Security, and it plays on Wall Street), food stamps, and whatever else will harm the most vulnerable. Oh, don't forget repealing the ACA, including that taxes that pay for it.* And, of course, there are tax cuts for the upper brackets -- but don't worry: they will let jobs and prosperity trickle down their pants legs. Or something.

* As for health care, the Republicans actually do have an alternative to the ACA:

Guess what they're talking about as the alternative?

[Rep. Paul Ryan's] remarks Thursday offered the most detailed vision yet of the House Republicans’ thinking. Mr. Ryan suggested the GOP caucus was most enthusiastic about allowing states to strip some of the health law’s requirements that insurance plans must provide certain minimum benefits and a requirement that insurers sell to all customers equally regardless of their medical history.

“We think things like community rating and other regulations make insurance needlessly expensive for most people and that there are better more targeted ideas out there to help those with pre-existing conditions get affordable care,” he said. “We just want to give people market freedom and personal freedom so that they can buy what they want.”

The single most important aspect of Obamacare, the one thing that one would assume nobody would try to mess with --- the ban on denying insurance because of a pre-existing condition --- is the main provision they want to get rid of. In other words, they want to make sure that people who are sick are either tied to their insurance companies (with back-breaking premiums that go with that) for life. Or maybe death since a lot of people just won't be able to afford insurance at all so they'll just die.

Back to Alan Grayson's summary of the Republican health-care plan: "Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly."

But I digress:

Now, those are the budgets that are going to get all the attention, because the Republican are Fiscally Responsible. Just ask them. There is, however, a real budget being offered:

Too often neglected in this Beltway brawl is the budget alternative offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The fifth annual CPC alternative — “The People’s Budget: A Raise for America” — is about as close to common sense as Congress gets. And it is honest: Its numbers are carefully laid out and add up. It actually says what it would invest in and how it would pay for it.

Did you notice the part about the numbers adding up? That's not something you're going to find in any Republican budget.

This, of course, is the budget that's going to be ignored by the Very Serious People, because everyone knows that progressives are fiscally irresponsible. That's why we keep having to elect them to office after the Republicans have screwed up the economy again.