Demos announce their usual "new" budget plan

What a “surprise!”

The House Democrats introduced a budget plan on Monday. What’s more “surprising” in this sluggish economy are the $1.2 trillion in proposed new taxes and $200 billion in stimulus spending. That would be twice the stimulus spending that Senate Democrats asked for a week ago.

Do any of these politicians look out their office window once in a while?

At almost the exact time, the House Republicans submitted a budget plan for 2014 that actually cuts tax rates and federal spending by approximately $5.7 trillion compared to the Congressional Budget Office baseline, The Hill reports.

How can two parties have such differing visions for America?

As Budget Committee Ranking Democrat Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) put it, “We focus immediately on accelerating the economic recovery, on growing jobs rather than shrinking jobs,” The Hill reports.

Huh?

Rep. Van Hollen contends the House Democratic budget knocks out individual and corporate tax breaks allowing the government to raise an additional $1.2 trillion in revenue over the next ten years. That would include guaranteed accelerated spending on transportation spending, The Hill reports.

He claims it is more spending cuts than tax increases. That is if the $1.5 trillion in cuts approved by the last Congress are included.

Is this what they call doing it all with mirrors? He added that “his budget,” like that of his Senate Democrat colleagues will end nine long years of automatic cuts through the sequester that took effect on March 1, The Hill reports.

Remember, this is the Senate Democrats who haven’t passed a budget to send to the president since Obama has been in the White House.

The usual oversimplification of just how many jobs will be saved was quoted as 750,000 by Van Hollen for this year alone. No clear source for these numbers was provided. But unlike the House Republican budget, which cuts $4.6 trillion in spending along with the sequester cuts over a decade, his idea seems rather fuzzy at best.

For obvious reasons, the House Republicans immediately began criticizing his budget proposal.

As William Allison, the House Budget Committee spokesman said, “The House Democrats’ plan imposes over $1 trillion of taxes on families. “It increases spending by $476 billion. It allows the safety net to unravel and jeopardizes the retirement security of America’s seniors,” he told The Hill.

Furthermore, as Allison continued, “By clinging to the status quo, the House Democrats have doubled down on Obamacare-style cuts to Medicare and even greater tax increases on families. We need a responsible balanced budget, so we can promote a healthier economy and help create jobs.”

Will there ever come a time when the two sides can sit down with credible economists who are bi-partisan to save this country?

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