NYT: House Conservatives Prepare Austere Alternative Budget

[Rose Siding]

With Congress heading into a politically perilous budget season, influential House conservatives plan this week to propose an austere alternative spending plan that would pare more than $650 billion over five years, balance the budget and drastically shrink three cabinet agencies.

The legislation, part of a push by some Republicans to re-establish themselves as champions of fiscal restraint, was taking shape as President Bush struck a similar theme on Monday by asking Congress to grant him line-item veto power to eliminate federal spending that he might judge wasteful.
...
But House conservative leaders would go far beyond the president's own budget proposal, illustrating the difficulty the White House and the Republican leadership have had in persuading the caucus to speak with one voice on the matter.

Senior aides say the conservatives' plan would wring about $350 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs and save $300 billion partly through a major reorganization of the Education, Commerce and Energy Departments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/politics/07spend.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[kurth]

1. Quit invading other countries and giving money to corporations

Withdraw from Iraq. Repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Impose a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. Eliminate the price protection guarantee for the drug companies in the Medicare drug bill. Etc. Etc.

What a bunch of hypocrites.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Screw the proles. Cut their rations. Tax breaks for Have Mores." - BushCo

The Republicon plan for revitalizing America

[bluestateguy]

3. They want to balance the budget? Fine. Here's my plan.

End the war in Iraq. Bring all troops home in 3 months.

Rescind the Bush tax cuts that go to the wealthiest 2%, and simply go back to tax levels of the year 2000. Everybody else can keep their tax cuts.

Problem solved.

[Hardrada]

4. This was the whole plan all along.

[Sawkrates]

5. Sure, let the Republicans say they'll cut Medicare in an election year

...On top of the botched perscription drug benefit that'll go over real well with seniors.

[truthisfreedom]

6. ahh, the old "let 'em die in pain and agony" approach. eliminate dignity

completely... leave the old high and dry, broke, broken, and in horror.

[Hardrada]

7. I am starting to understand now why the Bolsheviks

felt they had to drive out the entire Romanov dynasty and annihilate the Imperial Council and the aristocracy.