Federal budgets are NOT like household budgets. Despite what Sarah Palin would have you believe

Earlier today Sarah Palin posted this misleading video on her ghostwritten Facebook page.

Underneath she had RAM write this out for her:

I say it IS time we furlough the political consultants, the permanent political class, and the politicos who've been part of the problem that got us into this mess. Politicians, listen to your mother... or at least listen to these moms... 

Now admittedly this idea of listening to our moms is something that sounds like it should be right, but of course, and we should know this simply because it is an idea Palin endorses, it is not right. 

This courtesy of the LA Times:  

Decisions about the federal budget are fundamentally different from those of individual households, because policymakers need to account for how their choices affect the economy as a whole. It is more appropriate to liken government budget deficits to prescription medicine. Just as medication can be helpful to a sick patient, deficits can aid a failing economy. 

The U.S. economy slumped largely because of a reduction in spending by households and businesses. For households, this was a reasonable response to declining property values, job losses and insecurity. Likewise, it made sense for firms to cut back on investment as their customers spent less. If the federal government were to act this way, though, it would reinforce the decline in economic activity, not alleviate it. 

To stabilize the economy, the federal government needs to counterbalance the swings in consumer and business expenditures by moving in the opposite direction. When consumers and firms cut back, government can help replace the lost economic activity through direct spending (on infrastructure projects, for example) and through indirect means, such as tax cuts, which increase households' disposable income. 

This idea of "counter-cyclical" policy was the basic principle behind the tax cuts and spending in the stimulus bill of early 2009, as well as the one-year payroll tax cut agreed to as part of the budget deal at the end of 2010. Though the stimulus proved inadequate in scale, it helped reduce the depth of the downturn. Without it, the unemployment rate in 2010 would have been between 0.7 and 1.7 percentage points higher, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That is, the economy has been lousy, but it would have been considerably worse without government action.

The problem with these idiots talking about "common sense solutions" is that if the answers to these complicated issues were really attainable through "common sense"  they would be solved overnight, or never become a problem in the first place, and everybody would be in perfect agreement with how to handle them. Of course such is not the case.

However my REAL bitch about Palin and the other Right Wing nutjobs suddenly freaking out over debts, deficits, and budgets, is that they were completely silent during the Bush years, when the government was spending money hand over fist, while also cutting the taxes that helped fund the government, which of course created the situation that they are now lamenting.

It is impossible to take ANY of these people seriously if they stand idly by while the pyromaniac sets the house on fire and then scream and insult the firemen for not putting it out quickly enough.

By the way the producer of this video is an organization called Bankrupting America, and it is run by a woman named Gretchen Hamel. This is what FactCheck.org dug up about her and her organization:

Public Notice (Now Bankrupting America. Hmm why the name change do you think?)is a group headed by Gretchen Hamel, who has a long history of working for Republicans. She was a press assistant for former GOP Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, then press secretary to GOP Rep. John Carter of Texas and later for the House Republican Conference. She was deputy assistant U.S. trade representative during the final years of the Bush administration. 

This group describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization." Hamel insists that the organization is "an education advocacy group" and not a "political group." Unlike some "super PACs" and overtly partisan groups, it does not attack specific candidates. But it does echo Republican campaign themes and attacks federal spending programs identified with Democrats. 

So this group is yet another thinly veiled Republican propaganda outlet dedicated to spreading misinformation in order to fool the low hanging fruit.

So of course Palin is working with them.