An alternative to the Ryan budget

So I was browsing through the comment section of intrade's page on Obama's reelection, partly for amusement.  There is a very intelligent commenter, supak, who schools the assorted wingnuts and Gary Johnson diehards that seem to haunt the list.  

The topic of the day, of course, is Paul Ryan, and there are all sorts of delicious tidbits such as this quote:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

But what impelled me to share here was supak's mention of Rep. Raúl Grijalva's (or the Congressional Progressive Caucus's) proposal to balance the budget. I haven't found a diary about it this year, though it rates a mention in Meteor Blades'column about a philosophically similar Bernie Sanders budget.

It occurs to me that now is a good opportunity to tweet and otherwise pass on a proposal that balances the budget without causing further pain to the poor and the middle class. Here's a summary of the summary given on the front page:

[The People's] Budget Eliminates the Deficit and Raises a $31 Billion Surplus In Ten Years Our budget protects Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and responsibly eliminates the deficit by targeting its main drivers: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession.

• Trains teachers and restores schools; rebuilds roads and bridges and ensures that users help pay for them
  
• Invests in job creation, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing and R&D programs
  
• Ends the recently passed upper-income tax cuts and lets Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of 2012
  
• Extends tax credits for the middle class, families, and students
  
• Creates new tax brackets that range from 45% starting at $1 million to 49% for $1 billion or more
  
• Implements a progressive estate tax
  
• Eliminates corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies; closes loopholes for multinational corporations
  

You've heard it all before.  But it's nicely encapsulated in this document, and it could get some traction if we use the Ryan budget as a "teachable moment."