Larry Mishel and Rep. Jan Schakowsky on the Economic Policy Institutes’ blog:

The annual federal budget debate typically doesn’t excite many folks outside the Washington beltway.  And with good reason—the Republican budget process is intended to lull the public to sleep by staying short on details and long on damaging provisions that will hurt low-income and middle-class families.

But folks should pay attention to the debate because budgets have consequences—and if done right, they can truly move our country forward. The “People’s Budget,” which we both helped prepare, is a bold and responsible alternative to the Republican plans that take from working families while giving more to corporations and the wealthy.

The GOP budgets proposed in Congress would cut about $5 trillion over the next decade. The overwhelming burden would fall on programs that boost working families: education, Medicare and Medicaid, college aid, job training, medical research and rebuilding roads and bridges. Tens of millions of Americans would lose health insurance and millions more would lose food stamps or be priced out of college.

Republicans push these devastating cuts as a path to a balanced budget. But their budgets have been widely panned by experts as being based on “magic asterisks.” While they’re comfortable putting the squeeze on working families who will be most affected by these cuts in benefits and services, they refuse to ask corporations and the wealthy to contribute one thin dime to the effort. In fact, not one tax loophole is closed by their budgets.

Instead, the House GOP’s proposed budget would give bigger tax cuts to the wealthy, blowing a $1 trillion-plus hole in the budget over the next decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Not surprisingly, neither Republican budget details their top priority: tax reform that would result in an even bigger giveaway. That’s because the public doesn’t support their wish list and because their numbers don’t add up….

In stark contrast, the “People’s Budget: A Raise for America”—authored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus with assistance from the Economic Policy Institute Policy Center—invests in our nation in a robust, straightforward way. It would create millions of- jobs, repair our crumbling roads and bridges, make college affordable, improve our schools and other community services, and get us to full employment in two years….

Budgets are about choices. Republicans have chosen in their budgets to further enrich the wealthy and corporations at the expense of workers, children, veterans, seniors—the whole broad American family. In contrast, the People’s Budget gives all of us a reason to mobilize around a vision for our future that will expand opportunities for everyday Americans.

Related, Paul Krugman, Liberals, Conservatives, and Jobs:

…there was a lot of mud-slinging when I pointed out last summer that California’s economy — which conservatives said was doomed by tax increases and generally liberal policies — was in fact experiencing an impressive recovery….

Why does this sort of thing bother conservatives so much? Well, it’s an essential part of their belief structure that they have a secret sauce that lets them deliver job growth that liberals can’t….

…what you learn from both national experience and the California story is that you can raise taxes on the rich and expand access to health care without killing the economy.

Republicans… [feel the] need to claim that Reaganomics produced all the job growth of the 80s, just as they used to claim that Bush’s “ownership society” was responsible for any and all good news in the 2000s. That’s why they’re desperately trying to claim that the economic recovery now underway is an illusion.

They can’t handle the truth.