Some conservatives see all these fact-laden critiques of our various GOP manufactroversies (see Ryan, Paul) and wonder where are the Democratic plans to solve the financial crisis? ( I have been asked this, quite vehemently, myself.) 

The informed reply goes something like this:

The crisis isn’t real.  It’s been fabricated by the neo-liberal politicians whose goal is to eliminate all taxes on rich people and bust structures like unions that afford the non-hyper-wealthy with some leverage in the American political economy.  It.  Isn’t.  Real.  You’re blaming the wrong people.  To the extent that I accept arguments that we do need to cut spending (and I do, by the way – read on), whatever problems we do actually have are the direct result of Republican taxation policies. 

So, for the sake of argument let’s say America has a serious financial problem.  How would I solve it?  Well, I’m no economist, but here are some ideas:

Once we’ve done these things, then let’s see where we are. 

I know, I’m just a simple country boy.  And I didn’t major in math by any stretch.  But it looks to me like this plan has us up over a trillion dollars in five years (maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how we parse item #4). 

From where I sit, it just doesn’t seem right to go after the little guy first just so we can make sure that Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and the Koch brothers can have a tax cut.