I Feel Your Pain II

President Clinton used to give the kind of speech Obama did last night--feeling our pain, promising jobs and prosperity and milk and honey and all that other good stuff. Then he went back to his office and huddled with the Wall Street Boys (and they are mostly boys) and figured out new ways to complete the Reagan Revolution. And where did that get us?

I have to admit that I didn't watch the whole speech. C'mon. No more than 45 minutes, please! But I did see the part where he recited the canard about household budgets and government budgets. Does he think that people are so stupid that they don't know the difference? Are people so stupid that they don't know the difference? If the latter is true, it's time for a brave politician to step up and say, "Folks, no matter how easy it makes government budgeting seem to you, there's little relationship between the government budget and the household budget. Governments and households don't do the same things, they don't have the same priorities, or the same responsibilities. In fact, governments often have to step in and rescue households, particularly in just the kind of crisis we're having now." How hard can that be?

Nor by the way, is the household budget anything like a business. A business exists to make money. That's it. A household exists to support its members. A business lays off workers when it's no longer profitable to keep them. Most households don't send little Johnny out to fend for himself because he's four and won't be able to contribute much for years.