Well, the Republicans finally got their resident budget wunderkind to come up with something to show us. The jockeying over continuing resolutions is ongoing, thought perhaps not past Friday and I’m sure Boehner thinks this makes them look serious and courageous. The problem for them is that actual people have taken a look at it and determined it is more fantasy than Harry Potter (not to mention much, much less entertaining).
On the one hand, Ryan ran the budget by some “analysts” who, coincidentally, just happen to fully back the entire thing. As National Journal reports, the Heritage Foundation, a rabidly free-market think tank, makes some pretty jaw-dropping claims about what the budget would do for the country. Among the most incredible:
“The unemployment rate will plunge by 2.5 percentage points. The still-sinking housing market will roar back in a brand new boom. The federal government will collect $100 billion more in income tax revenues than it otherwise would have. And that’s just in the first year. By 2015, the forecasters say, unemployment will fall to 4 percent. By 2021, it will be a nearly unprecedented 2.8 percent.”
Sure. And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it jumped. As Political Wire notes, the unemployment hasn’t been that low since 1953 ( a period that also saw our highest union membership, oddly enough).
Yet what really takes Ryan’s proposal over the line from un-serious governing into magical candyland is the way be which he plans to achieve these numbers: slash federal spending (though he doesn’t explain how), eliminate medicare and medicaid and give every living thing in sight another tax cut.
There’s just no stopping the GOP.
