Sunday, April 05, 2009
Republicans no longer offer serious ideas
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Heading back to the debate in Appalachia
- Redistricting process must be taken from pols
- A shutdown remains a very real possibility
- U.S. Navy Vets case argues for campaign limits
From the RoundTable blog
After a disastrously humiliating attempt to counter their image as "The Party of No" by unveiling an alternative to President Obama's budget that turned out to be wholly lacking in specifics, Republicans tried again Wednesday with a slightly more detailed proposal.
The details did nothing to counter the growing suspicion that Republicans are no longer interested in offering serious ideas for governing.
In a nutshell, here's what they proposed: Keep all of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Offer the option for even more tax cuts for the wealthy. Privatize Medicare. Freeze nondefense federal spending for five years.
Did you wonder what that "offer the option for even more tax cuts for the wealthy" was about? This is the proposal that nails just how divorced from reality the Republican Party has become.
Essentially, the GOP is proposing an alternate, simplified tax system that would top out at a 25 percent rate on income over $100,000. The current system has a top rate of 35 percent.
This is where it gets bizarre: The alternate system would be optional. If you wanted to pay taxes under the current system you could. So a wealthy taxpayer could choose between a marginal 35 percent tax rate or a marginal 25 percent tax rate.
And this is where it gets irresponsible: When calculating their budget's impact on the deficit, Republicans assume that everyone will voluntarily pay the higher rate.
Of course.
Under the more realistic assumption that taxpayers would choose to pay less if given the option, revenue would decline by about $300 billion a year, according to the Center for Economic Policy Research, meaning the Republicans are actually offering up permanent budget deficits of around $800 billion a year.
This from a party that once prided itself on fiscal conservatism.
This "budget" is clearly the work of a political party that knows its ideas will never actually be implemented, freeing it from inconvenient necessities such as realistic assumptions and responsible spending plans.
The original, 18-page release -- quite rightly laughed off the stage -- was not a budget at all. It was a list of often contradictory aspirational goals.
But the addition of specifics didn't help the Republican cause at all, serving instead only to clarify the intellectual bankruptcy of the party. (More than one observer noted that the budget was fittingly unveiled on April Fool's Day.)
Speaking of April fools, another sign of the GOP's declining relevance could be found in the introduction by Rep. Michelle Bachman, RMinn., of a proposed constitutional amendment to bar the administration from replacing the dollar with a global currency.
This reactionary bit of nonsense appears to stem from Bachman's complete misunderstanding of China's call for replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency. This was not a proposal for a "One World Order" global currency as Bachman rather hysterically (in both meanings of the word) assumed.
Rather it was a reaction to fears that Washington could erode the value of the savings China and many other nations now hold in American dollars with potentially inflationary policies designed to kick-start the economy.
As Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias pointed out, "This isn't something Congress can ban -- it's a decision by foreign countries about what they do with their reserves."
That didn't stop Bachman from seizing on the notion of a global currency, though, or finding more than 30 co-sponsors (all Republicans) for her constitutional amendment that seeks to save the dollar from a nonexistent threat.
Don't get me wrong. Democrats have their wingnuts, too. But, for whatever reasons, the wingnuts on the right appear to have gained near complete control of the Republican Party.
It's a disturbing development. A rational opposition party is good for democracy and can help restrain the tendency of the majority party toward ideological excess.
In its current form, the GOP will not be able to serve that function.
Unfortunately, even respected Republicans seem blind to how far off the reservation the party has wandered.
"In the recent past, the Republican Party failed to offer the nation an inspiring vision and a concrete plan to tackle our problems with innovative and principled solutions," wrote Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a Wall Street Journal commentary published the day their budget was released. "We do not intend to repeat that mistake."
Too late.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
