“It’s Yer Money”

“It’s Yer Money”

by digby

The Republicans are all over the TV and in the papers arguing that tax cuts have nothing to do with the deficit because the deficit is a problem that can only be fixed with spending cuts. Now this should sound stupid even to people who aren’t following politics, but I’m afraid that it’s going to get traction if they keep saying it and the Democrats don’t come up with a good retort.

Here’s Bachman speaking gibberish:

BACHMANN: It’s curious to me that they say there’s a cost involved when people are allowed to keep their own money. And they’re talking about Americans being able to keep $700 billion of their own money. The cost is to the Treasury, but really it’s a cost out of the American peoples’ pockets. So that’s a definition of terms.

The real cost will be in the outlay of unemployment benefits and in the reduction to the treasury in the Social Security taxes.

Deficit hawk Judd Gregg was a little bit more elegant yesterday when he was questioned by Andrea Mitchell about the the millionaires’ tax cuts impact on the deficit when he just simply replied, “it’s their money” and characterized the problem as “too much spending” not too much taxing. I suspect that an awful lot of people are going to buy this absurd argument because it builds on an old theme that they recognize.

Maybe the Democrats should turn the GOP’s stupid “family budget” trope back on them and say that the Republicans believe that every family should let their main breadwinner spend most of his money on a fancy and expensive cars while the rest of them live on Top Ramen and soda crackers — because “it’s his money.”

It’s stupid too,of course, but if nothing else it might retires the idiotic “family budget” metaphor.

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