GOP’s new moral monstrosity: Trickle-down lies enrich the 1 percent, as wing-nuts assert control

Republican extremists have outlined two demented budgets loaded with phony numbers. Why won't Democrats fight back?

Bill Curry

Republicans in Congress proposed their budgets this week. You don’t want to know about them, yet there are things you should know. You should know, for instance, that what I just wrote isn’t true: No actual budgets were proposed this week. A budget details what you plan to do, how much it costs and how you plan to pay for it. The Republican “budgets” do none of that. They’re like Captain Jack Sparrow’s pirate’s code — “more what you call just guidelines” — and really, not even that.

Republicans say any such criticism is unjust, that in the chutes-and-ladders game of federal finances, budget committees don’t write budgets. Oddly enough, it’s true. Budget resolutions merely set standards for later processes known as authorization and appropriation. You’ll be glad to hear I’m not writing about those today, except to say members of Congress who prattle on about government duplication might ask why authorization and appropriations committees can’t set their own standards.