No, The Federal Budget Is Not Like Your Family's Budget

I just got back from Thailand. I was traveling for 26 hours. I went the wrong way 'round-- through Doha instead of someplace normal on the way like Shanghai or Hong Kong. So it took 26 hours. I'm beat. For anyone wondering why I go to Thailand so often... easy: I take an awful to of medics and some of it is very expensive-- even with insurance. One that treats neuropathy costs $4,000 a month. But I get it in Thailand for $600 a month. But everything is inexpensive like that. (Plus I love Thailand, so it's a pleasure. Still... I bought months worth of stuff this time.)

Anyway, while I was flying over India or somewhere, a post I wrote in advance came up, Destroying America's Social Contract-- Will Paul Ryan's Dream Come True?. A few people I had asked to help me out with it e-mailed me while I was flying. I added the first one I saw as an update, Pavlina Tcherneva's. She's a brilliant economist and I was so thrilled to get that feedback from her. So here it is again, along with comments from an old friend and two new ones-- Alan Grayson, Scott Wallace and Amy Vilela. All three are running for Congress this year/ First Pavlina again:

"The political establishment has convinced the American public that a balanced budget is the fiscally responsible thing to do. Nothing can be further from the truth. Every dollar that the government taxes (i.e., takes away from US families and firms) and that is not returned back to the economy via government spending is a lost dollar to the economy. In other words, surpluses drain money from the private sector while deficits add dollars to it. Now Republicans understand this very well. The large tax cuts will produce deficits which will in turn fill someone's coffers, but they prefer to fill the coffers of the wealthiest families. Once they've done that, they demand that the budget be balanced on the backs of middle income families, by cutting programs and entitlements, that benefit the majority of households. It is perfectly sensible to demand greater government deficit spending. But the responsible thing to do is to demand that this kind of government spending is done for the public purpose and in a way that supports the incomes of the vast majority of families, not the select few."

Do you know who Scott Wallace is? He's know as Scott Wallace but his full name is Henry Scott Wallace. His grandfather was the greatest vice president America ever had. Got it now? Henry Wallace, who served under FDR from 1941 through 1945. He has his own fascinating story of course, but we'll save that for another day. His grandson is running for Congress in the new first district of Pennsylvania, basically Bucks County. Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court de-gerrymandered it a couple of months ago it was PA-08, Brian Fitzpatrick's district. Under the new boundaries Hillary would have won 49.1% to 47.1% and the district is much more competitive now. There's no reason why Scott won't be the new congressman come next January. "Republicans knowingly lied that their trillion and a half dollars in unfunded tax cuts would be free, due to "economic growth," he wrote while I was flying back. "Not a single reputable economist agreed. They planned all along to use the exploding deficit as an excuse to cut life-or-death programs for regular people-- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Destroying entitlement programs has been their Holy Grail for decades. And now they can taste it. Every single Republican owns this callousness, this devotion to the 1% over the 99%. Now let's make them pay for it." Sounds like our kind of congressman, right?

Amy Vilella, out in Nevada does too. She's running in the north Las Vegas district Ruben Kihuen is giving up. It's a pretty blue bastion and if Amy gets through the primary, she'll be another solid progressive in Congress next year. And she's real smart: "As someone who has spent her entire career in finance, as an executive level accountant, the notion that the federal government's budget can be compared to a household budget is absurd. The federal government prints its own currency and levies taxes, payable only in that same currency. For starters, that's not how our families operate, but beyond that, the idea that American households do not spend more than they bring in is simply not true. In fact, our entire financial system is predicated on the fact that Americans do the majority of their spending-- especially for major purchases, like homes, cars, and higher education-- via credit. Debt, for better or worse, fuels American consumerism, and many of these so-called fiscal conservatives have been the ones pushing financialization into every facet of our lives. A balanced budget amendment is not about fiscal responsibility; it's about gutting the public sector and eliminating as many of the vital social programs that poor, working, and middle class Americans depend on."

And Grayson? Well even if I didn't mention whose quote this was, you might have been able to guess by the tenor and the rhythm: "Ayn Rand, and her humorless and pious court jester Paul Ryan, have done more to rationalize sociopathic behavior than anyone since Beelzebub. No, selfishness is not a virtue. Selflessness is the virtue. If you’re going to insist that selfishness is a virtue, then why leave out arrogance, anger, laziness, stupidity, cowardice, dishonesty and the ever-popular gluttony?" I CAN NOT wait to see Grayson back in Congress, making Republicans cringe and feel ashamed again!