The GOP's pretend budget

AT LEAST the graphic designers put some thought into the budget plan released by US House Republicans last week. The 19-page document features attractive typography, and it uses simple lines and circles to link concepts such as "increases energy exploration" with images of solar panels.

The ideas end there. Despite its billing as an alternative to President Obama's spending proposal, the plan - dubbed "The Republican Road to Recovery" - fails at the basic function of a budget: to spell out where money should go.

Whatever its merits, Obama's budget makes clear how quickly he intends to move on healthcare and renewable energy, and how he would pay for it. The House Republicans, instead of proposing any numbers, offer a vaporous collection of Sunday gab-show talking points.

The plan features complaints about the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community Reinvestment Act, and other Republican betes noires. The authors do call for cutting a variety of taxes, and say no taxpayer should ever pay more than now. They would fill the resulting budget gap with cliches: "enacting common-sense reforms," "weeding out waste, fraud, and abuse."

The GOP answer to the economic crisis is to blame government meddling in the markets, as if Barney Frank made banks invest trillions of dollars in foolish credit-default swaps. The GOP plan blithely vows to end bailouts, arguing that "if losses are socialized, it is likely that profits will soon be as well." Read that again: Republicans dislike bailouts for fear of creeping socialism - not because taxpayers are paying dearly for the mistakes of reckless plutocrats.

Republican leaders must have recognized the lameness of the document, because they're promising more details this week. It's up to them to show - with hard numbers - that they have a better way to deal with the nation's troubles within its current fiscal constraints. So far, they've offered nothing more than pretty graphics and wild rhetoric.