I dare the Democrats to run on this in 2012

**Posted by Phineas

Since Rep. Paul Ryan released his 2012 budget plan, the Democrats have been on the attack, charging that Republicans want to deny medical care to children, starve the elderly and generally bring about the end of the world. You know, the usual reactionary rhetoric they use to avoid adult conversations on serious issues, because they have no ideas of their own.

Well, that will change next week, when the Congressional Progressive Caucus, aka “The Socialist Wing of the (Social) Democratic Party,” will release their own budget plan:

To extend the long-term solvency of Social Security, it would propose dramatically increasing payroll taxes on both the employer and employee side, and funneling the money into even more generous benefits.

Payroll taxes are economically destructive, because they make it more expensive for employers to hire new workers, meaning lower real wages and higher unemployment.

Yet the tax increases wouldn’t end there. The People’s Budget would rescind last year’s tax deal to raise rates on higher income levels, boost taxes on capital gains and dividends, increase the estate tax, institute three “millionaire tax rates,” with the highest reaching 47 percent, tax corporate foreign income, impose a “financial crisis responsibility fee,” and institute a “financial speculation tax.”

Overall, taxes would rise to 22.3 percent of the economy, compared with 18.3 percent under the Ryan proposal.

The plan would also build on Obama’s most notable initiatives. It includes an additional $1.45 trillion in economic stimulus spending. On health care, the plan would add a government-run plan, or “public option,” to Obamacare and have the government negotiate drug prices.

Yet while other parts of government would grow, the defense budget would be gutted. The proposal would “reduce baseline defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces, procurement, and R&D programs.”

I hope they do it, and I hope their party leadership adopts it. Then we’ll at last have an honest argument about the vision the two parties have for the future of America. Go ahead, Democrats, make this plan your own. Let 2012 be a battle between Paul Ryan’s “budget for mature adults who can see the edge of the cliff coming” and the CPC’s “Berkeley Bong Budget.”

I beg you: try to sell the nation another fairy tale.

And I’ll thank you in advance for the Republican landslide in 2012.

via Moe Lane

LINKS: More from QandO

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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