Paul "Saving Medicare by Privatizing it" Ryan said this morning:
This is not a budget, this is a cause….
Those words, spoken this morning when he and his posse of Tea Party freshmen presented their dead-end alternative budget, say it all. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives are not there to govern. They are not there to make and defend tough choices. They are not there to hammer out a deal that would require genuine shared sacrifice. In short, they are not there to deal with reality. They are there as ideologues.
Ryan said it best. Their proposal is not a budget. It is a cause.
I agree with Paul Ryan. What they presented today is not a budget. It is a fairy tale, a wish list, a radical libertarian manifesto, and a religious creed, but it is not a budget.
The Republicans are fond of comparing the federal budget to the budgets of the average American household, so okay. I’ll play.
If my wife and I were to fashion our household budget in the same manner as the recently proposed radical Republican state and federal budgets, it might look something like this:
Expenses:
25% of take home pay for gasoline.
25% for private, religious school for children.
25% for guns, bullets, and burglar alarms.
15% for fences.
8% for prescription drugs.
1% for retirement.
0.5% for long-term medical care.
0.5% for food, clothing, shelter, police and fire protection, and entertainment.
Revenues:
90% from garage sales, couch cushions, selling plasma, aluminum cans, and sending our children out to beg.
9% from four part-time jobs.
1% from rich uncle
Remember those words: “This is not a budget, this is a cause….”
Not yet, but if it would ever get passed, it would be a cause. It would be a cause of unemployment. It would be a cause of disease and premature deaths. It would be a cause of misery, poverty, crime, and class warfare.