So, the Republicans in Congress unveiled their “detailed” alternative to Obama’s budget today. How detailed, you ask? Seventeen whole pages of detail! That’s how much!

All scoffing aside on how pitifully meager the fake “budget” proposal was (many in the mainstream media were openly laughing at the document today), there was a really frightening sentence in there that is sending chills up my spine:

“Republicans propose a simple and fair tax code with a marginal tax rate for income up to $100,000 of 10 percent and 25 percent for any income thereafter.”

Steve Benen calls this out for the terrifying nonsense that it is:

No, seriously, that’s the plan… So, Bush/Cheney lowered the top rate from 39.6% to 35%, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars and helped create the largest budget deficits in American history. Now, the very same GOP lawmakers want to send the top rate from 35% to 25%, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, all in the name of deficit reduction.

How much would this cost? The “detailed budget” doesn’t say.

What it would do to the deficit? The “detailed budget” doesn’t say.

What would Republicans cut to pay for this massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans? The “detailed budget” doesn’t say.

How much would Republicans raise or spend over all? The “detailed budget” doesn’t say.

The Republican Party is quickly progressing from shamefully pitiful to downright horrifying. If this is the best they can come up with, I shudder to think what the next few years have in store for us.

Update: Here’s White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the Republican non-plan:

“There’s one more picture of a windmill than there are charts of numbers. And there’s exactly one picture of a windmill.”

And, the DNC’s Hari Sevugan:

“After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP budget.”

Update 2: The Republicans’ inexorable descent into madness continues to remind me of this fantastic John Cole quote:

“I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.”

Update 3: An excellent framing of the GOP non-plan from the comments at Balloon Juice:

In short, this is what Sarah Palin would look like if she were a PDF document.

Update 4: And Ezra Klein gets mad props for evoking Twirling! (and orcs!):

The Republican proposal, as you might expect, doesn’t actually have a health care plan. But it does have this: “Republicans will be on the side of quality versus mediocrity, affordability versus unsustainable debt, and freedom of care versus bureaucrats in control. And we will be on the side of patients, doctors, and the American people.” They are also in favor of good things rather than bad things, moving forward rather than going backwards, the hobbits rather than the orcs, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.