GOP Offers Alternative Budget

When Barack Obama et al. were proposing their budget for 2009, Republicans naysayed but failed to propose an alternative, earning them the reputation as “the party of no.” Now GOP leaders have come forward with their own budget—and it’s starkly different from the one being debated in the House and Senate. Some of its main elements are large tax cuts, a radical simplification of the tax code, and an overhaul of Medicare. The proposal has no chance of becoming law, but it does help establish Republicans’ role in the debate. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of the proposal, calls the Obama plan “little more than a thinly veiled attempt by Washington to spend its way into prosperity, tax its way into tax relief, and borrow its way into debt reduction.”