SOTU Reaction

A reader writes:

It's funny how you interpreted "that's how budgeting works". That comment scared me to death to think that we have a president who had just outlined how he was going to spend like crazy in 2010 (as he did in 2009) with the "promise" to freeze spending in 2011. That scares the hell out of me. That is NOT how budgeting works. It's not how it works in my home or my business. Sure, he'll freeze spending after all the handouts he's been dishing out the last year.

Typical "conservative" reaction. First of all, that is how budgeting works on a government level. You create a budget that takes effect in the following fiscal year. It doesn't work like that in households or small businesses in most cases because we are more agile than any governmental body. We can turn on a dime. In big businesses, like the one I work for, some things can be stopped immediately, like shutting off payroll for a ton of employees, but other things, like strategic moves, are rarely incorporated into a current budget without causing disruption in other places that might not tolerate it.

And it's also typical of non-thinking Republicans to call TARP bailout money a "handout." I'm pretty sure that Obama did not want to bail out those who spent money to help McCain win the White House using money from taxpayers who voted for him. It wasn't good politically; it was necessary. It's just hard for me to fathom how people think that letting AIG or Citi fail would somehow be good economic sense. That's non-thinking; that's uneducated regurgitation of Fox News/Republican National Committee talking points, that make no sense at all, that aren't grounded in anything real.

I just shake my head.