Meanwhile in other news - Reagan budget director whacks Ryan....again

From ABC's This Week yesterday;

FREELAND: You worked for Ronald Reagan. Do you think the American economy — so you’re, like, a red-blooded capitalist — could it sustain higher taxes than it has now?

STOCKMAN: Absolutely. In 1982, we were looking at the jaws of the worst recession since the 1930s. We overdid it in 1981, cut taxes too much. We came back with a big deficit reduction plan in 1982. Unemployment’s at 10 percent, the economy is in dire shape, and we raise taxes by 1.2 percent of GDP, which would be $150 billion a year right now — not 10 years down the road — but right now.

Stockman also criticized the Ryan plan, claiming the bigger problem right now is a revenue problem, rather than a spending problem, reminding viewers that the Ryan plan doesn't cut one cent from the budget over the next three years and will only achieve a balanced budget in 2041 assuming their rosy predictions even work out.

All but two Republicans in the House voted for the Ryan plan, yet despite this many still are still absolutely opposed to raiding the debt limit. Michelle Bachmann, one of the more prominent House members and a putative Presidential candidate has a novel idea vfror solving the problem. She suggests we jut start taking all incoming Federal money and use it to keep paying the debt, that way. voila, no need to raise the dept ceiling and everything will be just peachy.

Republicans love to relate the Federal budget to the average family. Let's say Family 'A' has a monthly income of $5,000 and like many, they still have a mortgage and a heavy stack of credit card bills. On a good month they're treading water, other months they eating into to the remaining available credit on their cards and they've even taken out a couple of retail chain credit cards to stretch their debt.

Michelle Bachmann is their financial adviser which means they're already in deep shit. They follow her advice and divert almost all their income to paying down their debt. Their lights get turned off, they lose their health insurance, they go without food, their cars get repossessed but dammit they're making progress on reducing their debt. The analogy doesn't quite fit but its close enough and Bachmann is considered a legitimate candidate for President.

The again her ideas look almost sane compared to Trump who's policy seems to be to take everyone's oil and sit down with the rest of the world powers and ell them shut the fuck up and listen.