The House Progressive Caucus has released a budget proposal that would end the Bush tax cuts, raise marginal rates further on the wealthy, tax capital gains as ordinary income, raise the FICA cap, rev up the estate tax, raise corporate taxes, tax financial transactions, cut military spending, add a public option to the Affordable Care Act, enhance Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices, and invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy, broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D.
Wow.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman promotes this plan as
the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget, [snip] unlike the Ryan plan, which was just right-wing orthodoxy with an added dose of magical thinking
Cornell University economist Robert Frank had this to say:
The progressive budget proposal is of course an enormous improvement over the bizarre Ryan budget, which for all its chest thumping about facing up to the hard choices, does nothing — absolutely nothing — to reduce long-run deficits.
So this bang-up budget, which is realistic, would preserve our social programs, balance the budget in 10 years, create jobs, promote clean energy, and call for shared sacrifice will dominate the media coverage and totally change the nature of the "conversation".
Right?