What Took Them So Long? (The April Fools!)

Key Features of the Alternate Budget Proposal put forth today by the Republicans as an April Fool’s Day joke include:

Tax cuts
A simplified income-tax system
A freeze on domestic spending
The persistence of market-based health-care
A repeal of most of the spending in Barack Obama’s recently passed economic stimulus bill*

It Comes as No Surpise that we get the same old, tired stuff....

The Proposal Is a “Thinly Veiled Plan” to impose a Republican-tax-cut, more-of-the-same economy on those Americans who lack the benefit of million-dollar bonuses and severance packages.

It Begs the Overriding Question:

Why Did They Wait So Long?

The Republican Party Controlled the Entire National Government from January 2001 until January 2007. All three branches of government. The White House. Both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court majority.

If Ever a Political Party Wanted a Chance to test its theories, that was the time.

Instead, for More Than Six Years, the Republican Party chose to do something else.

And Whatever Else It Was That They Did, it didn’t work.

What Stood in Their Way (giving them the benefit of the doubt) was:

Terror!

During That Time, Nothing Else but “terror” mattered, and nothing could have stopped them from imposing their theories on the rest of us. Instead, they demurred. They delayed. They deferred. They......did something else.

No One Likes What They Did. Not American citizens and not the rest of the world. We and the rest of the world are ready for change.

But Now Here They Go Again. And what are the Republicans’ two messages?

First: Cut Taxes! Cut Domestic Spending that directly benefits American citizens.

And Second:

Terror!

The Republicans Are Terrified. They are terrified of deficit spending, as if they have a monopoly on this fear. They are terrified of government health care, such as the VA and the health care that Congress gets.

Here Is Some Insight for the Republicans and their fears:

We Are All Afraid Right Now.

We Are Afraid of Big Spending. We, too, fear trillion-dollar deficits, and debt that may fall on the backs of our children. We fear for our jobs and our mortgages, our hospital bills and our old age.

But We Will Not Be Enslaved by our fears.

America Remains
“the Home of the Brave”

What Separates Republicans from the Rest of Us is that the rest of us face our fears and go forward, as we always have before.

But the Republicans, with Six Full Years to Test Their Theories, chose cowardice. They chose to wallow in fear. They de-regulated like crazy, and they insulted the rest of the world and they waged war where they chose, and they spent our money like there was no tomorrow.

Today’s Americans Face Our Fears for Tomorrow:

Now it Is up to the American Taxpayer to pay for twenty-eight years of Republican-led indebtedness.

We Choose Courage Over the Empty Promises of Terrified Republicans. Yes, we are afraid—as much of losing our jobs and our houses as we are of trillion-dollar deficits. But we face the future with courage.

America Will Prevail, as we always have in the face of great adversity. Left with the debacle of the Republican Era, we turn our eyes forward, to the next horizon.

And So to the Republicans and Their “New,” Old Ideas, we say, “thanks, but no thanks.”

We See This Budget Proposal of Failed Ideology, and we say:

April Fools!

__________

*You can read the AP feature story, courtesy of Yahoo, which serves as our source, at:
“Republicans propose big tax cuts, spending curbs.” See also the article on Paul Ryan’s statement from The Wall Street Journal: “The GOP's Alternative Budget.”