Don't be their budget patsy!

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio: "Every family in America has to balance their budget. Washington should, too."

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.: "You know, every family in America understands the necessity of a balanced budget."

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.: "This is how every family tries to live in good times and in bad. Your government should do the same." ...NPR

Wait a minute!  Wait a minute!  Do  you guys know anything about economics?  You keep saying that!  But there's nothing in the family budget that's similar to the nation's budget! Have you  even thought about it?  What's your game here?

Well, we know what the game is.   The idea is to "appeal" to the Great American Family to go along with a Republican con game: using budget threats to eliminate government programs they don't like while trying to sound like your kindly (albeit misinformed) dad.

Don't let them sucker you anymore.  About the only thing the US budget and the American family's budget has in common is debt. 

Joseph Minarik, research director at the Committee for Economic Development in Washington, D.C., was chief economist in President Clinton's budget office. "It's not clear that American families are as virtuous as some people would like to believe," he says.

And although congressional Republicans talk about balancing the budget as an obvious goal, Minarik says "balanced budgets are actually quite unusual."

How unusual?

"Since 1969, the United States has had a total of five balanced budgets. Four of them were the last years of the Clinton administration," he says.

So family budgets and the federal budget do have some things in common. ...NPR

But that's where the comparison ends.  Really.  Once you get any deeper than that (and NPR provides a very good summary of the average family budget), you wind up with the impression that Republicans either don't know anything about economics or don't want you do know anything about what they're up to.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin is a conservative economist -- one of those reliable talking heads you see in "fair and balanced" interviews right across the media spectrum.  So if you're still doubtful about killing the parallel between the budgets of the federal government and the American family, worry no more.

"The truth is, the federal government doesn't have a single budget," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who is now president of the American Action Forum.

Budgets are planning documents. He says in the best of circumstances, the House and Senate agree on one, and then the White House has its own. The president's budget isn't even out yet. And just like the Dennison budget — where the ski lift tickets trumped the numbers penciled in the folder — the federal budgets don't have the force of law.

So if the federal government were a family, "Mom, Dad and the kid each make a plan and off they go and do it," Holtz-Eakin says. "And at the end of the year, they sit down and say, 'Wow, that didn't work out so well. Let's try it again next year.' "

Which is likely what Congress and the president will do again a year from now. ...NPR

___

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman has been looking at the same Republican mythology's appearance in a new poll.

Some people are apparently shocked by a new poll suggesting, not just that voters want a balanced budget, but that they believe that balancing the budget would create jobs.

But this is nothing new. Early in the crisis, I pointed to polls from the 1930s:

Gallup Poll [December, 1935]

Do you think it necessary at this time to balance the budget and start reducing the national debt?

70% Yes
30 No

Gallup Poll [May, 1936]

Are the acts of the present Administration helping or hindering recovery?

55% Helping
45 Hindering

Gallup Poll (AIPO) [November, 1936]

DO YOU THINK IT NECESSARY FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION TO BALANCE THE BUDGET? 65% YES 28 NO 7 NO ANSWER  

The key point, however, is that when FDR tried to give voters what they thought they wanted, he plunged the economy back into recession, and paid a heavy political price.

Comments

[Richard W. Crews]

I don't think I can put this into proper words, but there must be a simple way to explain this household/gov comparison.
A family makes $50K/yr and puts 10% down on $200K house. Don't they have a family/natl debt? Isn't that dept 360% of GDP? ($180 owed vs $50K income.)
Perhaps the payment is hard, a higher than normal or comfortable percentage of income, but isn't it OK to expect a raise in the future?
Or that inflation can lower the impact of the payment while having the low interest payments well into the future payments?

[PW]

But our government (which is to say "people we chose to represent us")has a)the choice of taxing us to refill the coffers, and b) the ability to print money to cover the debt with the same goal and similar means. It also has a wide range of revenue sources like oil and lumber leases and on and on just for a start. Lots more... I wish my family had all those resources, but it doesn't -- and it makes no sense to think of the two kinds of budgets as comparable.

[Richard W. Crews]

yes, yes, but that's not my message (to US!). We need to show in simple terms WHY the comparison is bad 0 not just state it.
My attempts were to show that the very basis is wrong : households willingly assume huge debts. Households think revenue ( future pay raises) are a worthy reliance. And tool to solution.
Households are lured(?) by low interest rates.

All these ideas or activities are opposite of what conservatives hold as truths. THIS is what needs to be explained and destroyed in simple language.

[PW]

1) When did the far right ever listen to the other side of the debate? ever use logic? or simple language?

2) Go to the link in the post and read more.