Deadbeat Daddy Party
by digby
My very favorite unctuous Republican phony, Mike Pence, was dispatched to explain why we must take from the Peter’s disabled niece to pay for Paul’s unemployment insurance, but we don’t have to “pay” for Rush Limbaugh and Paris Hilton’s tax cuts. It’s not an easy argument to make, but he tried valiantly:
“Republicans, me included, have supported numerous extensions of unemployment benefits and we’re anxious to do so again,” the Indiana Republican told interviewer Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “The deficit this year is a trillion dollars for the second year in a row … The American people have had it with runaway federal spending, deficits and debt, and they want to see men and women in Washington, D.C. make the hard choices…” Fox’s Wallace said he understood the Republicans’ argument that the unemployment benefits be “paid for” — but why not also “pay for” a reauthorization of the tax cuts, which will cost $678 billion? “The reality is that as you study — when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth, they expand the economy, they expand tax revenue,” Pence said. “The point is we’ve got to get this economy moving again and we can’t go back to the tax-and-spend policies of the Democrats or the tax-cut-and-spend policies of the prior administration.”
He’s lying about the effect of Bush’s tax cuts, but that’s just par for the course.
These people are always illustrating government economic policy by comparing it to the average household. So let’s think about this concept in those terms.
We’ll call the government the “Sam” family. And this family is in debt because Mr Sam decided to quit his high paying job as a Hedge Fund manager during the good years but they all spent like there was no tomorrow. Then the economy crashed and they lost a lot of their equity in their house and Mrs Sam got her hours cut back. They had to borrow from their dwindling 401K and Mrs Sam went back to school part time to learn some new skills so she could get a better job. But she needs another year or so before that can pay off.
Meanwhile, Mr Sam insists that everyone go on a diet, sell their possessions, their bodies, whatever it takes, but under no circumstances will he ever go back to work. In fact, he blames everyone in the family but himself for the mess they are in and wants them to pay for him to take a long vacation in Miami so he can stop listening to their whining. He insists that he’s doing his part by tipping the poolboys.
Mr Sam, of course, is a Republican.
And Mike Pence is a jerk.
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