Dana, I love your writing, but I have to take you to task for this post. There are PLENTY of details in the Republican "budget" "plan". And there are numbers too! Real numbers! So many that I couldn't fit them here!I've read Steve's post, and I am weeping. You will, too:
Read 'em and weep: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/27/91658/3389
Right out of the gate, 5 of those 19 alleged "pages" are actually content-free title pages. So before we even get started, that's only 14 pages; a big difference, I would say, when setting expectations of how many actual numbers are in there. And those fourteen pages had to make room for eight (8) pictures of Tinkertoys(tm), leaving room for only about 12 pages of content. It's just like the left to try and raise expectaions falsely on Republican proposals.
There most certainly are graphs. Three of 'em. They reverse the traditional color scheme and use blue for Republican numbers and red for the Democrats'. That's important, because the graph on Page 7 clearly points out the Nixon recession, the Reagan recession, and the financial impact of the Bush wars. If we'd shown those parts in red, people might be misled into thinking that Republicans had something to do with them. The graph on page 16 clearly points out that former president Bush/43 did not spend any money on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which frankly is the way we want him to be remembered. And the graph on Page 5, even though we tried to crop off the really bad bits, does point out which recent president (cough43cough) has done the most to "grow the size of government".
And, let me be clear about this, THERE ARE NUMBERS. Twenty-eight (28) of them, by my count. And these are numbers that are easy to understand: 26 of them are actually the numbers from the Obama budget, included to show how bad they are. The other two are the number of barrels of oil we think might be in ANWR, if all those fucking lefties, polar bears, and caribou would just get out of the way and let us start drilling.
Maxima mea culpa. I should have known better than to trust all those damned reality-worshipping librul blogs. I mean, obviously, the Cons aren't going to present a budget without numbers or graphs. In this case, they have numbers and graphs, so it's obviously a very thorough budget indeed. Wow.
Thank you for setting me straight, Steve. I owe you one.
Dana,
ReplyDeleteAs a former budget analyst at both the county and state levels, I can assure you that what the GOP distributed the other day IS NOT a budget.
A real budget projects revenues and expenditures into the future. It outlines programs, their costs and how you plan on paying for them. What those gomers issued was a bad joke, not even worthy to be called a Plan.
Anyone who still believes that the right has any ideas, is an idiot.
It reminds me of the "evacuation plan" for New Orleans before Katrina. A lot of platitudes and handwaving but very short on actual details. You know, "planny" stuff.
ReplyDeleteDana, you're darn right you're called out. And you're kind to return the favor.
ReplyDeletePaul, you make the point more concisely than I could. Shorter response to the Republican "budget": sorry, wrong noun.
To the unfortunately named George W: spot on. This is not a first offense for the Repub's. Perhaps an mass evacuation plan *should* be detailed enough to mention things like "geez, maybe we should get some buses or something".
Peace, all...