Can we get some grown-ups to talk about economic recovery, please ...

Some believe that state revenues must increase to stimulate the economy. Some suggest we stimulate the economy by increasing government spending and regulating businesses to ensure a stable marketplace. Others maintain that raising taxes during tough economic times would bring in revenues needed to maintain a stable government. All these beliefs lead to one overarching philosophy of utopian socialism, an economic system based on equal outcomes, not equal opportunity. These "solutions" all lead to a government takeover of private businesses and government control over the free-market system.

Um, what?

Listen, I'm in favor of passing Graves's bill, but this is the most bizarre philosophical argument I've ever seen. And, of course, by 'bizarre' I mean fundamentally wrong. Merely raising taxes isn't tantamount to socialism, particularly when it's in respone to funding the services the state already provides.

Or, as Matthew Yglesias argued ...

Speaking personally, five years ago I would have said socialism is a system in which the government owns many important firms and I would have said that it’s a bad idea. More recently this has actually come to pass (GM, Citigroup) but simultaneously the right has taken to calling the basic idea of having taxes pay for public services as “socialism.” And if that’s what socialism is, then I’m for it. That said, at the end of the day there’s really no tension between the view that there should be taxes—high taxes, even—to finance generous provision of public services and the view that we should have a basically capitalist economic system where private investors own firms and operate them in an effort to make profits.

That's about right. Today's Republican views use of taxpayer money to fund any public service as socialism, which, obviously is in contrast to the actual definition of the political philosophy.