Road to Nowhere

Republicans Unveil Alternative Budget that Looks Strangely Familiar

I will begin by admitting that I was not the first to think of the correlation, but it is so fitting that it is worth repeating - maybe at length. Do some of these diagrams in the Budget Proposal from the Republicans released today look a little like the underpants gnomes business model. And isn't it missing a little bit of the details like an explanation for how, or really, any numbers at all?

The Republican Road to Recovery is a very pretty document with nicely laid-out fonts and pretty charts with cute children and 'alternative energy' photos neatly cropped inside randomly arranged and sized circles. However, its lack of substance both in terms of numbers and in terms of charts that actually explain anything is astounding. I think the charts in the "budget proposal" are actually meant as an extended index throughout the document so that if you are foolish enough to think it is an actual budget, you can have an aid in keeping up with where in the document you are actually reading. Seriously, the bubbles are actually just the headings in most places. Except for when they are blue bubbles. As far as I can tell, if the bubble is blue, it means, "NOT!"

So what is this proposed budget and what does it mean? In many ways, it reads like a platform guide for a political party. As though the budget is running for office and the Republicans' have outlined its policy stances. Yet those policy stances, as is true of many politicians, have no numbers and no real expected consequences attached to them. The Republican Road to Recovery then, in short, is bloated rhetoric. How surprising.

Yet there are some very interesting passages that play out in the "budget," pointing fingers at the Democratic majority and President Obama are trying to slip one by the people by passing the currently proposed budget. Some of my favorite include:

Universal Health Care vs. Universal Access - the kind of access of course that comes with getting a tax rebate for purchasing health insurance from an existing company. But the real kind of health reform that is needed in this country, the kind that is more likely to come through universal health care, comes in the form of real change in the system - not giving people enough money to promulgate the currently failing regime. We need health care that focuses on preventative health, and we need insurance companies that act with the patients' best interest in mind, rather than bottom lines, which is why our system will not work until we are working with nonprofit health insurance.

Fuel Costs vs. Alternative Energy - the Republican plan as outlined in the budget (keep in mind again that this is the budget and not talking points) involves increasing drilling in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. Of course, alternative energy is not a viable source - its given a whole paragraph under energy policy - because the Democrats don't like windmills in their "own backyard" and nuclear power is being blocked by the Democrats. Since the 1970's there have been a couple of times when the Republicans have had enough people "in power" to open a nuke plant. If it was so important to your energy policy, why not do it then?

Financial Crisis - my favorite part, "Instead of continuing to bail out Wall Street and nationalizing the financial system, Republicans want to ensure that this crisis never occurs again...Our plan would first perform a thorough stress test to determine whether a financial institution is healthy, troubled, or insolvent. For troubled firms, some portion of the firm’s toxic assets would be insured, but such insurance would be self-financed by the industry itself in the form of premiums. For insolvent firms, either the FDIC or a Resolution Trust Corporation-type entity would restructure these firms in receivership by selling off their assets and liabilities, reappointing private management, while protecting depositors." Doesn't this sound an awful lot like something Geithner just set as the plan?

So where did this "budget" come from? Well, first of all, to be fair, this is a blueprint. Yes, this is not the actually Republican Alternative Budget, but a blueprint toward recovery. But apparently, this is the rushed response to a question from Obama as to where the Republican alternative to the budget was. I guess Republicans are not the "party of No," they are the party of "holy crap we have to get something out before we look like we haven't been doing anything, does anyone know how to design a brochure that we can put out to explain what our grievances with the current budget proposal are?"

The Road to Recovery is more like the Road to "why we don't like the budget as it is."

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Today's Political Thought
The 90% excise tax has been dropped as a maneuver to deal with the AIG bonuses. What will come next in the Financial Institution Fiasco?