Republican "Road to Recovery" Looks More Like A Middle School Science Textbook Than a Budget

March 31, 2009 @ 9:00 PM

This is what we’ve all been waiting for. After weeks of wailing about how President Barack Obama’s budget “spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much,” the House Republican Leadership, including Minority Leader John Boehner (left) and California’s own Kevin McCarthy and David Dreier, are finally out with a “road to recovery” that promises “less government, lower taxes and economic prosperity.”

The Republican plan looks strangely like a middle school science textbook, with its interconnected molecules and feel good boilerplate like “controls debt,” “creates jobs” and “lowers taxes,” especially the last one: lowering taxes. The GOP loves to lower taxes and their plan does so quite a bit, lowering marginal tax rates for those earning under $100,000 to 10 percent and 25 percent for those earning more. Of course, being the fiscal conservatives that they are, the Republicans surely crunched the numbers to make sure the lower taxes, less debt, more jobs formula is mathematically possible, right?

Well, not quite. In fact, the GOP plan does not contain any budget line items at all. But rest assured, “cutting waste, fraud and abuse” and enacting “common-sense reforms” will solve the problem. Some items on the Republican chopping block include the enormously popular and bipartisan Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And the party that had no problem spending untold billions on no-bid contracts in Iraq is now having fits over a modest request from the State Department to help rebuild the Gaza Strip, a proposal supported by Republican and Bush-holder Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

On health care, Republicans “will be on the side of quality versus mediocrity, affordability versus unsustainable debt, and freedom of care versus bureaucrats in control. And we will be on the side of patients, doctors and the American people.” Reports also indicate that Republicans are for unicorns roaming the land and celestial choirs that sing spontaneously. Most people would agree that quality and affordability are important, but the Republicans propose having Americans go at-it-alone by buying insurance in the national private market, a race-to-the-bottom that empowers fly-by-night plans in low-regulation states and lowers the quality of care.

Republicans also bemoan the absence of windmills. Do they find fault in a lack of public investment, opposition from oil and gas companies or failure to make renewable energy a priority? Of course not. Instead, it’s time to pull an old trick from the Republican playbook and blame the Kennedys! According to their research, Ted Kennedy once opposed a windmill because it was being proposed “where I sail” in Cape Cod. Congressman Patrick Kennedy made similar arguments against a windmill in Rhode Island. I’m sure the entire family would be delighted to know that they have single-handedly resisted the windmills Republicans are just so passionate about.

Perhaps the most important insight of this plan is the purported culprit of the current financial crisis: too much regulation. According to the blueprint, the current downturn is “the result of decades of misguided policies that interfered with the free-market.” The problem, according to our GOP friends, is a law passed in 1977 that made it easier for low-income Americans to get loans. Apparently, if the government had just stayed out of it, banks would not have made risky loans at all. But this assertion is refuted by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a self-described conservative Republican, who told Congress last year: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

The Republicans make a decent point about the dangers of inflation in their “keep cost of living down” section. That’s a fine stand to take, but it does nothing to address the deflationary spiral that we’re in now.

As the loyal opposition, the national GOP has a legitimate role to play in shaping America’s economic future. But let’s call this “Road to Recovery” out for what it is: a collection of half-baked sound-bites, broken promises and a sad excuse for policymaking.