I was afraid to look at the news this morning, lest I see some fresh horror contrived by our “representatives” in DC. Silly me, I should have known they’d have done absolutely nothing. I’m not an economist or anything, so I’m too stupid to understand the complex part of all this stuff. To me (and to most reasonably intelligent and non-insane people, I suspect – in other words, non-teabaggers), it should seem pretty straightforward. You spend money on whatever, and then you have to pay for it. If you run up your credit card balance, you still have to pay the bill. You can say to yourself, “damn, I gotta quit doing that,” but you still have to pay. You don’t just say, “eh, I’ve been spending too much, so I’m not gonna pay, because paying the bills for the shit I already bought is the only way for me to get my spending under control. I don’t have a revenue problem, I have a spending problem.”

Well, I guess you could do that, but then you’d get labeled a deadbeat, and nobody will lend you any money (or, if they do, it’s gonna be at a really high interest rate).

So you do what good little consumer-citizens do: you pay your bills, you pay down your credit card balance if you can, you stop buying shit you don’t need (like shoes, food, and underwear), and, if you can manage it, you “increase revenue” by doing that most American of things that made George W. Bush so proud (because he never had to do it): get a second and/or third job (preferably something at minimum wage so the Walton Family can make more money).

Oh, and if people who can afford it have been sponging off you without paying their fair share, you maybe ask them to chip in just a little bit extra, what with times being tough and all (good luck if they’re rich, though, ‘cuz they don’t think they need to pay for anything – and goddamn it, they just plain resent being asked and quit engaging in class warfare, you socialist bastard!).

I think “regular” people also conflate the “debt” with the “deficit.” I mean, sure you try and keep your debt manageable, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing (be better if people would listen to Jesus – or Allah, for that matter – and not make a profit off of money changing). But it’s not so bad to go into debt to, say, buy a house. Or a car (assuming you can make the payments). And if the water heater goes and you need to put a new one on the old Visa card, well, cold showers really suck (bad enough now, but when the ground water temp gets down to about 45 degrees, fuggedaboutit). So that’s debt.

The deficit, though, that’s not so good. If you make, oh, say, $1,000 a month, and your bills – mortgage, taxes, utilities, food, and minimum credit card payments – are $1,001, you’ve got a deficit. So now you’ve gotta start buying your lattes with the Mastercard and filling up your gas tank with your Visa ($4 a gallon while the oil compaines make billions in profits at your expense – that’s supply and demand, sucker; hey, it’s cheaper than Starbucks coffee).

Your debt goes up, and so does your deficit, unless you get another job or start selling shit (like that iPhone you just had to have because if you don’t have an iPhone, then, well, you don’t have an iPhone) or quit drinking that shitty Starbucks coffee. Or maybe drop your health insurance, ‘cuz you just can’t afford it anymore.

Then your car craps out, and you live out here in “regular” America, so mass transit isn’t really a viable alternative so you’ve gotta fix it if you’re gonna get to your second job on time, and the water heater goes (damnit, I thought I just replaced that thing), and then all the stress catches up to you, and you’re sick all the time ‘cuz you’re exhausted, and not only do you not have health insurance anymore (because universal healthcare is “off the table”), but when that heart attack kicks in, you can’t work, so not only does you debt increase, but your deficit is huge, and the bank that was happy to take your tax money (back when you were working) to get “bailed out” isn’t gonna bail you out, ‘cuz, unlike them, you’re nowhere even close to being too big to fail (hell, you’re too small to even think about – just a bug on the windshield of that juggernaut known as the “free market”).

But you’re a good little teabagger, so John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and Michele Bachmann are all gonna be there to help you.

Right?

Hello?

Rush? Glenn? Grover?

Anybody?