So it's come down to this. On Saturday, David Stockman, the legendary Reagan budget chief who presided over the Gipper's supply-side tax cuts, announced that the "debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts." The next day, the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who famously helped sell the 2001 Bush tax cuts to Congress, declared them simply "disastrous."

Sadly, Stockman and Greenspan are just about the only voices in the Republican Party speaking the truth about the fiscal devastation wrought by the expiring Bush tax cuts. After all, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, only to double again during the tenure of George W. Bush. And as it turns out, the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy accounted for almost half the budget deficits during his presidency and, if made permanent, would contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession - combined. Of course, you'd never know it listening to the leaders of GOP.

And that's just the beginning. Here, then, are 10 Republican Lies about the Bush tax cuts:

• Lie #1: Democrats Plan Across the Board Tax Hikes on January 1st
• Lie #2: Democrats Want a $3.8 Trillion Tax Increase
• Lie #3: Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves
• Lie #4: The Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Add to the Deficit
• Lie #5: Expiring High Income Tax Cuts Will Hurt Small Business
• Lie #6: The Estate Tax Devastates Small Businesses and Family Farms
• Lie #7: The Bush Tax Cuts Helped All Americans
• Lie #8. Extending Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy is the Best Way to Stimulate the Economy
• Lie #9. Bush Tax Cuts Produced 52 Straight Months of Job Growth
• Lie #10: The Rich Pay Too Much in Taxes Already

For the details, data and charts for each, continue reading after the break.

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So it comes down to this. Republicans believe they can turn bullshit into gold. Despite the inescapable conclusion of history, theory and empirical evidence to the contrary, Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, John Boehner, Tom Coburn, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison and other Republican alchemists continue to insist that cutting taxes increases government revenue and thereby reduces the deficit. Of course, even though the tax cut claim is laughably false, conservative ideology requires that it must true. Otherwise, the Republicans have just been giving money to rich people.

To be sure, the high priests of the Republican Party have been singing from same hymnal. House Minority Leader John Boehner reintroduced this immaculate deception last month, wrongly protesting that the Bush tax cuts did not contribute to the torrent of red ink swamping the Treasury:

"It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago."

"We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes."

On Sunday, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the second ranking Senate Republican made the same point another way, telling Chris Wallace of Fox News, "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Aborted Obama Commerce nominee Judd Gregg (R-NH) soon chimed in, declaring "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset." For his part, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost." And on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained how tax cuts magically turn red ink black:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

Which is sadly right. Arthur Laffer's supply-side snake oil has been Republican orthodoxy ever since Jude Wanniski sketched Laffer's curve on a cocktail napkin.

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This campaign season can be summed up by one interview on conservative talk radio last August. It was with Iowa Straw Poll-sweeper Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, in which she proclaimed: “What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.”

Yes, Bachmann warned us of a foreign boogieman rising … one that’s been dead for over 20 years.

Boo!

But warning of a zombie nation feasting on the metaphorical brains of the U.S. is consistent with a party now completely untethered from basic American history, science or any other evidence-based practice: The GOP is now a party standing proudly on a pro-fiction platform.

Yes, in their party, as an aide to Senator Jon Kyl put it last year, whatever they say is “not intended to be a factual statement” but to illustrate a point.

For example, this week Mitt Romney brought a Michigan tea party audience to tears recalling the 50th anniversary of the American automobile event he attended as a child … even though it took place months before he was born.

Former Senator Rick Santorum asserts public schools are an “anachronism” of the industrialized era as the reason they should be privatized. He said at the CNN debate last week: “Not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business and put it back to the local and into the community.” Just when millions of Americans have lost their homes comes a candidate in favor of home schooling.

Public schools are arguably what made us a country. The colonies had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time. In James D. Hart’s “The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste” published in 1950, he notes that in 1650 New England there were laws requiring “reading and writing schools.” Education was thought to thwart Satan at that time (note to Santorum there). Hart goes on to include a popular ditty of the era: “From public schools shall general knowledge flow, For ‘tis the people’s sacred right to know.”

Also, the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was (gasp) publically educated.

Santorum, as a pro-fiction candidate, also dismisses colleges as “indoctrination mills.” One man’s indoctrination is another man’s accreditation to work in the sciences.

The four candidates still vying for the nomination are pro-fiction to the core: Somehow the President who okayed the assassination of Osama bin Laden, sent drone attacks into Libya and kept Gitmo open is an apologetic pansy – soft on our enemies. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants and spent more money protecting the border than any of his predecessors – but he’s ignoring the issue of illegal immigration. Romney keeps on promising if elected he’ll make the military so powerful no other country would dare attack us even though we have the biggest military in the world. Gingrich who says if given any power he’ll send U.S. Marshalls to compel radical judges to explain their rulings, deems “the pill” to be the epitome of radical government overreach. Taxes? Too high even though they’re historically low (especially during war time). Tax cuts? A pay-for-themselves panacea even though the Bush Tax Cuts didn’t pan out.

Challenge their narrative and brace for the ad hominem attacks. You only believe this because you’re at least one of the following: liberal, socialist, unemployed, commie sympathizer, elite, dupe, European, journalist, gun hater, Muslim, Obama-bot, or (my favorite from my inbox) silly little girl.

Because in fiction you must create an enemy or there’s no story.

The pro-fiction party will tell you their ideas will lower gas prices, cut the deficit, end poverty, cut the size of government and make everybody super free by allowing the states to decide which rights to take away.

No matter how completely impossible – no matter how divorced from evidence or precedence – the GOP will continue to make claims not to be factual – but just to illustrate a point. Possibly that you should vote for them.

The Soviet Union must be watching this race right now and just laughing their heads off.

Among the predictable differences between the Democratic and Republican members of the so-called debt super committee is this: Democrats propose to increase revenue by raising taxes, while Republicans want to increase revenue by cutting taxes. You read that right. After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again thanks in large part to supply-side tax cuts that gutted the U.S. Treasury, Congressional Republicans are once again peddling the GOP's biggest fraud that "you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."

On Wednesday, super committee Democrats offered an initial proposal delivering an estimated $3 trillion in debt reduction by 2021. But since roughly half that figure would come from new tax revenue largely produced by modest rate hikes on the wealthiest Americans, Republicans instantly dismissed the Democratic plan. House Speaker John Boehner said it wasn't "serious." As one GOP aide put it, "It is ridiculous, nothing more than political posturing."

Instead, Republican debt panel members put forward their own plan the next day. And as the Washington Post explained, the GOP proposal went from the ridiculous to the sublime:

Republicans, instead, have offered more than $2 trillion in savings over 10 years, highlighted by nearly $700 billion in spending reductions to Medicare and Medicaid. According to lawmakers and aides familiar with the GOP proposal, it includes an offer of more than $600 billion in savings from new tax revenue. But the two sides are in deep dispute because Republicans want to count these increased receipts based on the expectation of surging economic growth -- a standard that neutral budget observers have declined to use in the past.

If that "magic asterisk" sounds familiar, it should. The tried and untrue talking point that tax cuts spur economic growth so rapid that revenues exceed what they otherwise would have been was the formula for the mountains of debt produced by Reagan and Bush.

As Reagan's OMB chief David Stockman learned the hard way, Arthur Laffer's supply-side snake oil may have been Republican orthodoxy ever since Jude Wanniski sketched Laffer's curve on a cocktail napkin, but it also happened to be catastrophically wrong.

As most analysts predicted at the time, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting debt. Even his OMB alchemist Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios" and "future savings to be identified."

Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder that, three decades after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

And that magical thinking - that "tax cuts pay for themselves" and "tax cuts raise revenue" and "tax cuts don't need to be offset" - dominates what passes for thinking by the Republicans' born-again deficit hawks.

For example, take GOP debt super committee panelist and second ranking Senate Republican Jon Kyl.

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That all six of the Republicans selected to the Congressional debt reduction "Super Committee" are signers of Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge is hardly surprising. But the choice of Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, is an especially fitting one for the GOP. After all, Kyl didn't merely define a generation of Republican talking points when he explained earlier this year that his was "not intended to be a factual statement." As it turns out, from regurgitating bogus claims that "tax cuts pay for themselves" and spur "job creators" to his war on the estate tax, Jon Kyl has long been a leading fabricator of GOP tax cut myths. And when it comes to super lies on taxes, his fellow Republican super committeemen are not far behind.

In June, the second ranking Senate Republican joined House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in walking out of debt reduction talks led by Vice President Biden because of their refusal to accept even a dime of new tax revenue. As Jon Kyl explained last summer (starting around the 1:20 mark above), tax cuts don't increase the national debt:

"You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

Kyl's was just the latest repackaging of President Bush's long ago debunked claim that "you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison parroted that line, "Every major tax cut we've had in history has created more revenue." Then House Minority Leader John Boehner agreed, insisting last June that the Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with the depleted U.S. Treasury, "It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago." For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to defend Kyl's fuzzy math:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

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I had to listen to this clip of Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, who joined Eric Cantor earlier last week and bailed on the debt-ceiling negotiation, several times to convince myself that I was actually hearing what I thought I heard and just how completely bizarre Kyl's understanding of economics truly is. Does he think that this is in any way persuasive towards the Ryan budget plan? In what universe?

KYL: Right, but just take the Ryan budget. It’s supposed to be the most radical thing. Okay, over ten years, the Ryan budget adds $5 trillion dollars to our national debt. We would have ten straight years of roughly $500 billion in increased debt. So the radical cuts that some people are talking about and that the chairman warns against, are simply not a part of the Republican plan. Once you begin to turn down the long term spending, which is what the Ryan budget does, then you get back to a point where we’re only spending 20% of our economy, of the GDP. Today, we’re spending 25%. The Obama budget never gets below 23, but that’s what the Ryan budget does. Obama would add $12 billion over that same period of time to our debt

Well, first of all, the Ryan budget plan is radical because it ends the social contract that has allowed America to prosper for eighty years by ending Medicare as we know it. But does Kyl actually think it softens the blow because it adds FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt? Where is that vaunted GOP fiscal responsibility? And that's in comparison to Obama's budget, which allows seniors to keep Medicare AND only adds to the debt by a relatively measly $12 billion. (Even though the fact is that's not true).

Sorry, but what Kyl blabbered on about (and Wallace let him) *is* precisely a seriously radical idea of how to fix this economy, in that it won't fix anything.

Or maybe since Bernanke's warning that spending cuts in the near term were dangerous for the weak recovery was too obtuse for him to understand, Kyl needs a more remedial explanation of the economy.

THE GOP/RYAN BUDGET PLAN IS WILL HURT THIS COUNTRY, ECONOMICALLY, FISCALLY, EMOTIONALLY, PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY BECAUSE IT IS A FUNDAMENTALLY UN-AMERICAN PLAN.

Any questions, Kyl?

Oh noes! The War On Christmas takes a slightly bizarre variation as first Sen. Jon Kyl and then Sen. Jim DeMint complain that it's just not right to make them vote on the START treaty during the Christmas season. I mean, what will Baby Jesus think?

To Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's suggestion that the Senate come back the week after Christmas isn't just a way to complete a busy lame duck agenda -- but an attack on people of the Christian faith.

"It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out," Kyl said today, "frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff."

Not one to miss this opportunity to proclaim his Christian superiority against those mean little heathen Democrats, Jim DeMint quickly jumped on to the "Who Cares About Nukes?" sleigh:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) called Democrats' push to force through an arms control treaty and an omnibus spending bill right before Christmas "sacrilegious," and warned he'd draw the process out to wage his objections.

"You can't jam a major arms control treaty right before Christmas," he told POLITICO. "What's going on here is just wrong. This is the most sacred holiday for Christians. They did the same thing last year - they kept everybody here until (Christmas Eve) to force something down everybody's throat. I think Americans are sick of this."

I think Americans are definitely sick of something, but making Republicans work during the latter half of December is not one of them. Maybe they should be grateful they have a job at all. Way too many Americans don't during this sacred holiday, and nothing the Republicans are doing will make that better.

As Democratic strategist Karen Finney tweets:

So the Demint/(Kyl) position on START is that a peace treaty is inconsistent with Judeo-Christian values during the season of peace.

Exactly. And just because it's the holiest of holidays and voting for critical peace treaties would be sacrilegious, doesn't mean that it's not prime fundraising time.

This Christmas, preserve that blessing by giving them the same gift your parents and grandparents gave you: the gift of Christmas future. By making a contribution to the Republican National Committee, you'll be providing the resources that we need to continue to protect the America you know and love. You'll also be ensuring that your children and grandchildren will be able to give future generations the same Christmas you've given them.

And at that, Baby Jesus wept.

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Those Dred Scott Republicans who want to do away with the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship are sure being ever so helpful when it comes to reforming our immigration laws.

They won't approve any plan creating a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so immigrants who are here illegally because, according to Republicans, that's "amnesty." Of course, they also agree that we can't round up and deport 12 million people. But any plan with a citizenship path -- regardless of how many penalties you throw at the immigrants, including heavy fines -- means Republicans will denounce it as "amnesty."

And what do they propose to fix the problem? Why, amend the Constitution, of course. Why, what could be simpler?

And the best part is: Their proposal to amend the 14th Amendment to throw out birthright citizenship wouldn't even solve an identifiable problem -- except a fake "anchor baby" scare that exists only in the fevered imaginations of paranoid white nativists.

Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats understand this. So do some conservatives. And so yesterday Reid replied to the senators like Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl, who think "anchor babies" are a major threat facing the nation, by reading from an op-ed by onetime Reagan/Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:

The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States" for a reason. They wished to directly repudiate the Dred Scott decision, which said that citizenship could be granted or denied by political caprice.

They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship -- birth -- that was not subject to politics. Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle: To be an American citizen, you don't have to please a majority, you just have to be born here.

Reid then paraphrased Gerson by observing of his Republican colleagues, "They've either taken leave of their senses or their principles.

As you can see in the video above, even some Fox News anchors and reporters are not so certain it's such a sound idea.

But the best part of all this is, as we explained when Russell Pearce proposed such a law for Arizona, the entire enterprise is predicated on the notion that, as Pearce put it, we'll never solve the problem of illegal immigration if we don't cut off the great big incentive of having "anchor babies" here.

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The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an "open letter" to the President, Congress, and the American people which contains its blueprint for our political future. It lays out the current Republican playbook in stark terms, and it reads like the battle plan for those alien spaceships from Independence Day: Drain the resources, take everything from the population, strip the land to a husk... and then presumably sail away in mile-long spaceships toward the next targeted planet.

What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness. There will be another example of this corporate-driven mindset this week, possibly even today, when all but a handful of Republican Senators vote against a moderate set of curbs on Wall Street excesses. The Democratic Party may disappoint its supporters from time to time, but it seems that Republicans never do -- once you accept the fact that its real "supporters" are the mega-businesses represented by the Chamber of Commerce. Some of the delegates who chanted "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP Convention are staring out their windows at oil-soaked beaches, while others have gone broke in an economy ruined by Wall Street gambling. That won't stop the Politics of Plunder. (Come to think of it, "drill, baby, drill" would have been a perfect motto for those spaceships.)

To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises. Any CEO of a smaller company who's pressured by one of the Chamber's sales representatives to join, as I was in my business life, is being asked to subsidize policies that will benefit the Chamber's mega-donors -- often at her or his own expense. The Chamber's letter serves those mega-interests well, and we can expect most Republicans to follow it in lockstep, no doubt with cheering crowds pumped up for the same old chants and a few new ones.

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Who knew Fox News Sunday mashes up so well with Monty Python? (via yours truly) It's always a trip to see what Jon Kyl gets away with on Fox News Sunday. That said, I'm looking forward even more to seeing what everyone else will NOT get away with on Meet The Press, given that Rachel Maddow is on the panel this morning:

The Chris Matthews Show: Panel with Joe Klein, Time magazine; Trish Regan, CNBC; Katty Kay, BBC; Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune.

Meet the Press: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Panel: David Brooks, New York Times; former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.); Ed Gillespie; Rachel Maddow.

ABC's This Week: White House advisor David Axelrod; Rep. Arizona immigration law: Brian Bilbray (R-Ca.); Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.). Panel: Ron Brownstein; Ruth Marcus; the Washington Post; Reihan Salam, National Review; George Will.

Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); David Axelrod, White House Senior Adviser.

What's catching your eyes and ears this morning?