Commentary on Michele Bachman's response to the SOTU address.

"Two years ago, when Barack Obama became our president, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering $10.6 trillion. We wondered whether the president would cut spending, reduce the deficit and implement real job-creating policies."

Bachmann here, apparently thinks that spending cuts = job growth. Not sure on what planet that works, but so far, Ireland has only worsened, not improved, after a series of massive budget cuts to meet E.U. requirements. Considering that Obama's stimulus plan wasn't enacted for another month and that most of the spending did not occur until the Summer of 2009, it's curious why she would use January 2009 as a basis for her comparisons.

"Unfortunately, the president's strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money. The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8%. Not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4%. It hasn't been lower for 20 straight months. While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs."

First off, the stimulus bill was under $800 billion. Secondly, if you combine with the latter Cash for Clunkers program and all other stimulative efforts, the price tag is still under $900 billion. Now obviously, it was using borrowed money: total GDP = total GDP. If you cut federal spending in one area so that you can spend it in another, you have zero impact on GDP. Yes, as she says, unemployment continued to go up, but a curious thing happened along the way: GDP grew. In fact, the GDP began to improve after bottoming out in Q4-2008, and we've had 6 straight quarters of GDP growth.  How'd that growth happen?  People started spending money earned from federal spending, and that money continued to circulate throughout the economy.

"After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money that we don't have. But instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt. It was unlike anything we've ever seen before in the history of the country."

Of those 9,000 earmarks, mind you, about 40% were from Republicans themselves. Now, what she's not telling you, is that if you take the Army of Corps projects out of the numbers, these earmarks constituted less than 1%.  As they say, one person's pork is another person's constituency asking for help.  Curious though, that she doesn't mention that the total cost of earmarks for 2009, was less than it was in 1994.  In fact, under the Republican controlled Congress and White House, in 2006 there were about 10,000 earmarks worth over $29B!!!  Wait for it....in 2008, Michele Bachmann was partly responsible for sponsoring or co-sponsoring $3.8 million in earmarks.  She was for earmarks before she was against them.

"Well, deficits were unacceptably high under President Bush, but they exploded under President Obama's direction, growing the national debt by an astounding $3.1 trillion."

This is the same thing Paul Ryan said, and it's a misrepresentation of the truth.  If you took a straight line and assumed zero growth in federal receipts (normally this number would naturally grow as people earn more income), then the US lost over $406 billion alone, from taxes over the past 3 years, with the bulk of the loss occurring in 2009.  If you subtract the one-time costs of the stimulus and other related programs, your total budget increase was $1.8 trillion over two years.  If no other increases other than that biannual $1.8 trillion were to occur, it would still be on par with the 50% increase in 6 years under George Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress.  Of course, no one expects federal receipts to remain flat the next four years, so even if Congress increased spending, the federal debt would increase no faster than those years under complete Republican control.

"The president could stop the EPA from imposing a job-destroying cap-and-trade system."

 Cap and Trade requires Congressional approval to create this program.  The EPA itself can regulate greenhouse gases, not create a Cap and Trade program.  You would think a member of Congress would know this.

"For two years, President Obama made promises, just like the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still we have high unemployment, devalued housing prices, and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing."

This cracks me up.  Free market advocates would instruct Michele that devalued housing prices and sky-rocketing gasoline prices are part of supply and demand.  By intervening, the President would upset free markets, and create bubbles.  Which side is Michele on, anyway?

"The president could support a balanced budget amendment. The president could agree to an energy policy that increases American energy production and reduces our dependence on foreign oil."

Okay, I guess we'll just ignore the fact that it was Republicans that killed PayGo rules, and that under George Bush, oil prices shot up to above $140/barrel, even while Republicans did nothing.

"The president could also turn back some of the 132 regulations put in place in the last two years, many of which will cost our economy $100 million or more."

Michele's on a roll now.  That $100 million is 0.00007% of annual US GDP.  If every one of those 132 regulations actually cost $100 million each, that's still just 0.09% of GDP.  That's a rounding error.

"We need to start making things again in this country, and we can do that by reducing the tax and regulatory burden on job-creators. America will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Think about that. Look no further to see why jobs are moving overseas."

I just feel sorry for her at this point.  No one moves jobs overseas because of taxes; they move jobs overseas because the cost of labor is much higher here than in China, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.  Corporate taxes make up an incredibly small amount of the total cost of business.  For example, Apple's last quarterly statement showed revenue costs to be $16.4 billion, while taxes were $1.96B.  Would you really move because you could cut your income tax by 50%, or because you could cut your revenue costs by 25%?  Michele apparently never took economics.

I don't know what to say, really.  Sad?