GOP Releases Full Alternative Budget

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House Republicans released the full version of their alternative budget plan on Wednesday after critics called their March 26 release vague and lacking hard numbers.

When the first version of the Republicans' alternative to the Obama administration's budget was released, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quipped, "It took me several minutes to read it."

He also dismissed the budget as coming from "the party of 'no new ideas.'"

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who drafted the GOP proposal, says he is alarmed at how much the Obama administration plans to spend. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, he said that Democrats "are attempting to bring about the third and final great wave of progressivism, building on top of the New Deal and the Great Society.

He added that if the president's budget passes, "it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European."

To prevent this from happening, the alternative budget proposal seeks to undo most of the stimulus spending and to freeze discretionary spending on domestic programs, which the proposal describes as "a host of spending programs that will do nothing to help our economy recover."

Ryan also wants to make the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent and simplify the tax code. Under his plan, couples would pay 10 percent tax on their first $100,000 of income and 25 percent after that. (The cutoff would be $50,000 for singles.) Capital gains taxes would drop down to 15 percent. Corporate taxes would be cut as well.

The proposal would give states greater control over Medicaid and Medicare programs, which would be overhauled for people under 55.

Critics of the proposal said that the plan will give tax breaks to the rich without helping poor and middle-class Americans.

"If you expected a GOP alternative to the failed policies of the past that got our country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, then I have two words for you: April Fools," said Kenneth Baer, an Obama administration communications director, according to CNN.

The budget alternative is largely a symbolic gesture, as the proposal does not stand a chance of passing in the Democratically-controlled Congress. It was released in part to counter Democratic charges that Republicans are knocking their proposals but not offering alternatives.