As we noted earlier, amongst its myriad other problems, the budget that Republicans proposed today involves a five year spending freeze that would directly counteract the economic stimulus package. In fact, the GOP budget explicitly calls for the “repeal of ‘stimulus’ funding beyond this year, excluding unemployment insurance.”

MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer questioned Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) about this, asking “if you are cutting your tax revenue and cutting spending, how is that going to stimulate the economy?” Shadegg’s response was that drilling for oil offshore and in ANWR would be stimulus enough:

SHADEGG: Well there are lots of ways to stimulate the economy without spending money. [...] For example, a group of us proposed the “no cost stimulus” bill a few weeks ago, in which we said if we would streamline many of the regulations that are slowing down for example a lot of the industrial work that could occur in this country, if we would streamline some of the regulations and expedite some of the processing of environmental challenges so we could be drilling off of our coast or drilling in ANWR…

BREWER: So your answer here is to allow damage to the environment, in order to create jobs?

Watch it:

The “no cost stimulus” Shadegg is referring to was a plan to create jobs “by opening up additional coastal areas for oil drilling and stripping oil companies of federal regulations.” As Steve Benen noted, “it’s almost as if [Rep. Paul] Ryan and his Republican colleagues are trying to destroy the economy.”

Indeed, the Republicans have proposed a stimulus killing spending freeze, while counting on a continuation of the Bush-Cheney energy disaster to fill the GDP gap. It’s an alternative that relies on supply-side tax cuts to spur economic growth, even though we’ve just emerged from an era of supply-side cuts that delivered the fewest job opportunities since the business cycle from August 1957 to April 1960, and the slowest job growth on record for those ages 25-54. In light of this, is it even worth calling their budget an “alternative” at all?

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) have a $250 billion proposal to cut estate taxes for the children of multi-millionaires even more than George W. Bush already did, and it’s attracting a disturbing amount of support.

Their $250 billion proposal would raise the estate tax exemption from $7 million to $10 million per-couple and lower the top rate from 45% to 35%.

While opponents of the estate tax claim rolling it back protects small farms and businesses, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that “only 0.2 percent of the additional cost of the proposal, relative to [the Obama proposal], would go toward tax cuts for small businesses and farms.”

The rest of the cost, approximately $249.5 billion, would go to the inheritors of estates worth over $7 million. Paris Hilton, get excited.

Let’s make one thing clear: the estate tax affects a vanishingly small number of American families. Under President Barack Obama’s budget, over 99.7% of people who pass away wouldn’t pay a dime.

Apparently, however, this isn’t enough for some Senators, who would gut revenues needed for investments in health care, education and energy in order to reward the inheritors of massive estates with $249.5 billion.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Republicans in Congress finally unveiled their final alternative to President Barack Obama’s budget today, and we certainly hope it’s an April Fools Joke.

Unsurprisingly, it contains an extension of the Bush tax cuts and a massively expensive set of tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations.

These tax cuts would cut the top three tax brackets to 25% and cut capital gains taxes to zero through 2010. As we showed previously, this would cut an average CEO’s taxes by $1.5 million in 2009 and 2010. After 2010, capital gains taxes would return to 15%, but the average CEO would continue to save over $550,000 every year in taxes from lower taxes on earned income.

This temporary reduction in the capital gains tax rate is particularly pernicious as it would likely have exactly the opposite effect Ryan claims it would have. Ryan says it would “create an incentive for risk-taking and investment.” Actually, it would do just the opposite: encourage wealthy people to cash out of their holdings, discouraging new long-term investing (right at a time when we need it most) but providing a sweet windfall for the wealthy investor class.

As John Fout of The Street explained when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proposed a similar temporary capital gains rate cut during the presidential campaign, it would “encourage investors to make one-time sales to capture lower capital gains and increased tax write-offs. Such equities sales would facilitate capital flight.”

The conservative budget would enact a severe anti-stimulus, and block much-needed public investments in order to fund tax cuts for wealthy people in a way that would hurt the economy. Sounds like more of the same to us.

Today, House Republicans plan to bring their official “alternative budget” to the floor, which will supposedly flesh out some of the details lacking from the “budget” that they presented last week. Of course, the plan still revolves around the radical tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) (who wrote the legislation) has previously advocated.

However, the GOP has also added a new wrinkle: paying for the tax cuts with a five-year spending freeze on all non-defense and veteran’s health care funding. As Ryan explained on MSNBC:

We are cutting spending starting this year. We are saying let’s cut spending right now. Let’s cut spending in the out years.

These provisions clearly impressed MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who asked Chris Matthews “does [Ryan] make a bit of sense there?” Matthews, though, was having none of it:

No, because it sounds very much like Hoover. This is a doctrine which was tried in 1932 and failed. In a period of international deflation, the worst thing you can do is join in the deflation by cutting spending.

Watch it:

Evidently, the GOP believes that Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-AL) two year spending freeze and Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) three year freeze were not crazy enough, and thus, have settled on a five year freeze. The budget basically confirms that the Republican strategy is to negate the stimulus, while betting economic recovery will occur thanks to an abundance of supply-side tax cuts.

As we’ve noted before, the stimulus package’s main purpose is to close the GDP gap by spurring spending by households, government and the private sector. A spending freeze would blunt this, while also allowing inflation to eat away at vital funding for programs like Head Start and Pell Grants.

As USA Today reported today, “early federal stimulus money appears to be hitting its target, paying for new projects and creating jobs.” But Republicans would rather scrap that, to embrace a Neo-Hoover, anti-stimulus plan that doesn’t “make a bit of sense” at all.