Stupid Party

House Conservatives Weigh in With the Most Ridiculous Budget Yet

While the House Republican budget proposal would cut deeper than the Senate Republican proposal, the House conservative proposal would go much further than both.

House Republicans envisioned a budget that would cut spending by $5.5 trillion over a decade while balancing the budget in ten years, but if that is a fantasy then I don't know what to call the House conservative budget.

The House conservative budget would cut spending by over $7 trillion, increase defense spending, and impose a much bigger tax cut for the rich than the House Republican budget, but conservatives imagine themselves balancing the budget in just five years. Somehow.

In fiscal year 2016, it would give the Pentagon a $570 billion base budget, much more than the $523 billion the Pentagon would have under the House GOP budget. [...]

The RSC blueprint would lower non-defense discretionary spending for domestic programs next year to $405 billion, $88 billion below the baseline set by the 2011 deal. [...]

Between 2016 and 2025, the budget would reduce “unnecessary mandatory spending” by $1.7 trillion. This amount excludes cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

To understand how insane it would be to lower discretionary spending by $88 billion in a single year, consider that cutting SNAP (food stamps) by $40 billion over ten years resulted in an immediate, massive cut to benefits for millions of people.

To say that the budget would cut mandatory spending by $1.7 trillion but exclude Medicare and Medicaid is a misnomer because the conservative budget would convert Medicare into a glorified coupon system and Medicaid into a block grant system. Both would amount to a massive cut in benefits.

Regardless, cutting $1.7 trillion from other programs would effectively obliterate them.

The House conservative budget also includes massive tax cuts for the rich.

The conservative budget seeks the same sort of reforms to the tax code embraced by previous Ryan budgets, but dropped this year by Price – like installing two individual tax brackets instead of the current seven, and reducing the top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent.

It would also roll back tax increases won by President Obama, such as the hike to the top dividend rate from 15 percent to 20 percent.

How does one do all of these things, from cutting taxes to repealing all of Obamacare, while balancing the budget in just five years?

Even after taking a flame-thrower to our entire system of government, healthcare and social safety, the numbers still wouldn't add up.

This proposal was produced by the House Republican Study Committee which implies that they, you know, studied it.

I'm not convinced.

We can find a certain amount of humor in these ridiculous proposals, but it's also important to remember that if the Republican party controlled the White House, the only thing that would stop them from implementing most if not all of their plans would be Senate Democrats and a filibuster.

Retaining the White House in 2016 will be just as important as it ever has been as the mainstream Republican party moves further to the right.