Paul Krugman writes that there really is a bold serious courageous budget plan that (unike Paul Ryan’s plan) actually could balance the budget by 2021. It is a plan put forward by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, According to Krugman, among other things this plan would substantially raise taxes on the wealthy, modestly raise taxes on the middle class, raise the Social Security cap, and cut spending mostly out of the defense budget.

I don’t think a modest tax increase on the middle class is politically tenable right now — it probably will have to happen eventually — but the rest is likely to be acceptable to most voters, seems to me.

The difference between the Progressive Caucus budget and the Repubican Ryan budget is that the Progressive Caucus budget is primarily about decreasing the deficit. The Ryan budget, on the other hand, is a proposal to dismantle what’s left of the New Deal and Great Society and otherwise shred the social contract that sustains middle class life in America — disguised as a budget proposal.

Elsewhere — Steve Benen writes there are plans afoot by Democrats to bring up the Ryan Budget for a vote on the floor of the Senate to force Republican senators to go on record for or against it.

For all their knee-jerk obsequiousness to the interests of the rich, teabaggers themselves generally don’t understand the financial sector and how economies actually function. Now they’re all fixated on cutting government spending, and some of them seriously think not raising the debt ceiling would be a good thing. [Update: Ron Paul, for example. Note that one of his commenters seems to think that if the debt ceiling is not raised the U.S. would be freed from debt.]

Right now Washington seems to be locked in a game of chicken. Republicans are threatening to not pass a debt ceiling raise unless they get more spending concessions from the Democrats. The White House so far is holding tough, apparently in the belief that there are enough not-crazy Republicans that the debt ceiling will be raised.

So I had to laugh when I read this commentary by Bruce Bartlett, of all people —

As the almost inevitable debt default is perhaps only weeks away, Wall Street types are finally becoming nervous. They should have known that supporting a bunch of not-too-bright, ignorant Tea Party members to Congress was not going to work out well. I tried to warn them. Following is an article I published last year warning people just how crazy these people are and some references to the debt limit/default issue. BB

What follows is some commentary he wrote last year about how those crazy people are about to trigger “the biggest debt crisis we have seen since Alexander Hamilton was Treasury secretary.”

Following up the recent commenter who repeated the oft-told lie that wealthy people carry most of the tax burden — Paul Krugman addresses this on his blog today, in a post called “Zombie Tax Lies.” If you figure all taxes — income, FICA, state taxes, etc. — the percentage of the total tax burden is remarkably un-progressive —

Bar Graph by Citizens for Tax Justice

Again, the blue bar shows percentage of income, and the gray bar shows what percentage of the total tax burden is paid by that income group. For more data, see Citizens for Tax Justice.

And isn’t it remarkable that when the zombies want to talk about the budget deficit and what’s causing it, they talk about Social Security and Medicare and how they have to be cut, even though the Social Security program isn’t on the budget.

But when they want to talk about who pays the most taxes, for some reason FICA taxes don’t count. But FICA taxes are not progressive at all. Everybody pays the same rate for income up to $106,800, and income above that isn’t taxed at all. Since FICA taxes don’t count as taxes in the minds of the wealthy, you’d think they wouldn’t argue about having that cap lifted, would you?

And talk about taxes being a burden to small business– if you are employed, the employer pays a portion of the total FICA tax. As a self-employed person, I pay the entire FICA tax, called the “self-employment tax.” It’s a real bite.

Anyway — for your viewing pleasure — here’s another zombie congressman, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, being skewered by actual thinking persons who know what they’re talking about —

Get this —

The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.

Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address.

In other words, before they can receive health care benefits Congress (begrudgingly) voted to give them last year, their personal data must go to the FBI to be sure they aren’t terrorists.

It defies reason that a terrorist would have taken part in the rescue and recovery work and then spent the past ten years being a law-abiding citizen in the U.S. The provision’s advocates point out that funds are available also for people who lived and worked in the vicinity who are suffering health problems from breathing the air (that the EPA insisted was not dangerous at the time). But it also defies reason that such a person would be more likely to be a terrorist than anyone else receiving federal benefits of any sort.

You’ll remember that House Republicans didn’t want to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law at all, and only did so after Jon Stewart made fun of them about it. But apparently they were so resentful about having to appropriate health care money to the one-time heroes of 9/11 that they had to toss in this petty insult.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately (see the last post, for example) about taxes driving away wealthy people. If we raise taxes on the rich to what they were during the Clinton Administration, apparently the poor dears will get the vapors and move away, and then where will we be? Because we all know that wealthy people are our benefactors and give us jobs.

You might have seen a video that was making the rounds a few days ago, which I can’t find now. A bagger woman ranted at a Green Party candidate that if you tax the rich they’d all move away, and then where would we be? She was a volunteer serf.

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal reports on a study done in New Jersey showing that a state tax increase on income above $500,000, which was imposed in 2004, didn’t cause a mass exodus of rich people from New Jersey. The millionaire population increased, in fact.

And the point is that the well-off want to live where they want to live, and if some of ’em want to live in New Jersey — it takes all kinds, I guess — they will live there.

I am living in a county with the second-highest property taxes in the country. The “tax burden” in New York state is among the highest in the country. The high tax burden has been in place for a long time, yet extremely wealthy people continue to live here, and I’m not seeing them move to Texas or Mississippi or Somalia. That’s because they want to live here. It’s expensive to live here, but it’s still considered a “desirable” area by the well-to-do, which is why it’s expensive to live here. The retirees tend to relocate to places like Vero Beach and Hilton Head, but that’s more because of climate than taxes.

Raising federal taxes on the wealthy is unlikely to drive many of them away from the U.S., for the simple reason there aren’t many civilized places they could go where they wouldn’t be taxed just as much if not more. Yes, they might be able to find a spot on some tropical island, but if they want to live where lots of stuff is going on — where there are parties and culture and shopping and snooty schools and five-star restaurants — that’s not going to work.

Rep. Lou Barletta, Republican from Pennsylvania, got an earful at a recent town hall meeting in his district. The meeting seems to have devolved into a shouting match between a lady who challenged the congressman’s recent vote for the Ryan budget and some baggers who screamed at her to shut up. You can watch the video and read a partial transcript here.

The Congressman got a word in occasionally. At one point (and this is not in the transcript) he said that jobs were going overseas because U.S. businesses paid the highest taxes in the world. That’s a lie in so many ways it’s pitiful. The U.S. has among the lowest taxes of industrialized democracies, Taxes are at a historic low, in fact. And some corporations are barely paying taxes at all.

I guess the Congressman didn’t mean that to be a factual statement.

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post on the Republican presidential candidate field. Jeff Zeleny at the New York Times and Michael Crowley at Time both write about the “Huntsman test,” which boils down to two questions — can a candidate the Republican base likes win the general election? Can a viable general election candidate win a Republican nomination?

Yes, that’s the same question asked two ways. In talking about the “Huntsman test,” they’re pointing to potential candidate Jon Huntsman, who represents the sort of candidate who might do well with moderate voters, and asking if someone that moderate could possibly be nominated.

Michael Crowley writes of Huntsman’s potential candidacy,

The first goal is to return the GOP back to pure conservative orthodoxy; this is the Tea Party mantra in a nutshell. The second is to defeat Barack Obama at all costs. I realize there are people who think that one naturally leads to the next. But there are more people–including most of the Republican Party establishment–who think that nominating a Tea Party hero/heroine will replicate Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell debacle on a national scale.

A Huntsman campaign might force Republican voters to decide between the two propositions. As Zeleny notes, his record is full of heresies–from gay rights to global warming to calling Barack Obama a “remarkable leader.” (You can also add conservative crankiness over his spending record as Utah governor to the list.) Jennifer Rubin thinks that Huntsman doesn’t even “pass the laugh test” with conservative voters, and that talk of his candidacy is a case of liberal-media wish fulfillment.

It’s hard to say whether Huntsman himself could ever catch on as a candidate, but the point is that he represents the type of candidate who could appeal to a broad enough spectrum of voters to actually win a national election. But it’s unlikely such a candidate could be nominated, and if he were nominated, it’s unlikely the baggers would work up enthusiasm for his candidacy. To a hard-core bagger, a moderate Republican is no different from a Democrat.

This is not to say that they won’t vote for the white guy over the black guy. But don’t expect them to show up at his rallies or donate money to his candidacy. And low-information voters often don’t bother to vote at all unless they are riled up about something.

Republicans have a shot a beating Barack Obama only if they have a candidate they can rally around and support with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm builds a bandwagon effect that can swing the mushy middle. If Republicans are conflicted about their guy, it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the mushies to dump the incumbent.

A lot depends on what the economy is doing next year and whether the issues surrounding the Ryan budget can be kept on the front burner. If the economy slows again, I think President Obama could be vulnerable to one of the “Fairfax Five” (Barbour, Daniels, Huntsman, Pawlenty and Romney). A close election could well come down to which side has the most enthusiasm.