The Democrats in Congress have decided abdicate their responsibilities (so what else is new?) and skip a budget resolution for this year. They are undoubtedly terrified of what the gross numbers would look like in the headlines.

The Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House conservatives, I’m happy to say, has come out with their own ideas for the budget over the next 10 years. While all 10-year projections are based on a host of assumptions and thus have dubious predictive value, to put it mildly, the difference between the RSC’s projections and the President’s, shown in a chart, is striking. The Republican ideas would get us back to a balanced budget; the President’s, to a sea of red ink such as we have never experienced.

None of this requires deep sacrifices on the part of powerful interest groups. It calls for no change, for instance, in Social Security. It would continue the Bush tax cuts, which Obama wants to eliminate, beyond the end of this year. It would permanently fix the Alternative Minimum Tax that threatens to gobble up the incomes of an ever-larger part of the middle class.

What it does do is simply require the government not to continue its spendthrift ways. To exert, in other words, some of the budget discipline that almost every family and every corporation and non-profit in the country has to exert. What a concept!

Republicans would do well to hand this proposed budget out at every rally and campaign stop. All the Democrats can hand out is a piece of paper saying “Trust us, we’re working on it.”