The Republican Party released their minority party counter-budget this week. At least, that’s what they are calling it; 19 pages of budget “principles,” but not a single detail. House Minority Leader John Boehner promises the details of the plan next week, on April 1st.
Is this some sort of April Fools joke? It sure seems like it – here are their proposals:
- a HUGE tax break for the wealthy.
- Drill, baby, drill.
That’s pretty much it. No ideas that we haven’t already heard, and rejected. The mockery going on about this empty piece of propaganda is nearly universal. I’m pretty amazed that they would release such a steaming load. And apparently, the GOP is in such disarray that they are fighting amongst themselves in ways that only the Democratic Party used to do! What a strange and wonderful reversal of fortunes.
“In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan,” said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.
“I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas,” the person added.
“It’s categorically untrue,” said Pence spokesman Matt Lloyd. “Cantor as well as Ryan and the rest of the leadership have been part of this process for weeks. They not only signed off on it, but their staffs helped edit it.”
Ryan told POLITICO that he didn’t feel thrown under any buses and downplayed the disagreement.
“The problem is that somewhere along the line, someone got the mistaken impression that we were going to roll out a budget alternative today,” he said. “What we all signed off on was a preview—the real [alternative] is coming next week.”
I kind of feel sorry for them. April Fools!
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