She did it again...
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Oh joy, Sarah Palin has once again inserted her palm into the national political discourse. Her, yesterday, on Fox News Sunday:
PALIN: My palm isn’t large enough to have written all my notes down on what this tax increase, what it will result in.... Democrats are poised to cause the largest tax increase in U.S. history, it’s a tax increase of $3.8 trillion in the next ten years and it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax. Small businesses, especially, will be hit hardest. Small businesses account for roughly 70 percent of our job creation in this country. So raising taxes on these employers is the worst thing that can happen.
WALLACE: Can I ask you, what do you have written on your hand?
PALIN: $3.8 trillion in the next ten years, so I have didn’t say $3.7 trillion and get dinged by the liberals saying I didn’t know what I was talking about.
As Think Progress points out, Palin's palm obscured the truth:
- For better or for worse, nobody is talking about allowing all of the tax cuts to expire, but even if they were allowed to expire, it would reduce the deficit by $3.1 trillion over the next ten years, not $3.8 trillion.
- The only question on the table is whether to allow the expiration of Bush's tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% of Americans -- who earn over $250,000 per year. That would save on the order of $700 billion over ten years without hurting the economy.
On the substance of the matter, Palin gets a fail, but for style points, perhaps she does deserve a little bit of credit. Here's why: by presenting her palms as the fountain of truth (and by sticking to Fox), Sarah Palin has cleverly given herself a way to avoid answering any really hard questions about the hypocrisy of claiming fiscal responsibility while fighting for tax cuts for people who don't need them.
If you have to defend the GOP economic platform, ignoring substance and sticking to style isn't the dumbest move in the world. If you're going to support absurd, self-contradictory policies, why would you want to answer questions about them? If you do, and you're honest, bad things will happen. For example, earlier today Eric Cantor -- while on MSNBC -- admitted the GOP position (Palin's position) on the tax cuts will "dig the hole deeper" on the federal budget deficit.
GUTHRIE: I just was wondering if you had a — if you had any dispute with the notion that it does exacerbate the deficit picture.
CANTOR: What I — what I said in the beginning is, um, if you have less revenues coming into the federal government, and more expenditures, what does that add up to? Certainly you're gonna dig the hole deeper.
In retrospect, don't you think he'd rather have talked about his palms?
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