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Sarah Palin Confuses Bush Tax Cuts with TARP

Sarah Palin was on Fox News’ Freedom Watch yesterday with Andrew Napolitano (“the Judge”) to discuss the utter badness of Obama’s stimulus package (not to be confused or repudiated with his “cajones”, people— keep it clean, we leave the vulgar stuff to Sister Sarah). So Sarah was tossin’ around those buzz words like “feds bribin’ the states” and she was feelin’ pretty good. Sarah loves being the attack dog and it looked like she was in her element…..

Until the Judge asked her if she was upset about the Bush stimulus package and TARP. This is where poor Sarah teetered and fell right off her talking points into the great abyss of Things She Doesn’t Understand.

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In the world of Things She Doesn’t Understand, where we already knew she was confused about the difference between tax cuts and spending cuts (per the palm notes), it’s also, too possible to build upon this level of epic fail and still be allowed to talk on the tee-vee about….oh, anything.

While I listened to Sarah’s answer, the entire world spun on its axis. There is simply no way she said that. No way she doesn’t understand THIS much. It can’t be. And you know, my faith in her isn’t that high to start out with, so when I’m shocked, things are bad.

At about 9 and a half minutes into the video, when the Judge asks her if she was upset with Republicans over the Bush stimulus packages, she replies:

“Well you have to remember though that the Bush stimulus package had a couple of components, and a big component was the tax cuts introduced in 2001 and 2003. Whereas Obama’s stimulus package which is going to do a tremendous amount more harm to our economy to our world than what Bush’s stimulus package did. Obama’s stimulus package is focusing on government growth, overreach, and more regulation.”

SCREEEEEECH. Wait, whaaat?

Replay: “…..the Bush stimulus package had a coupla components and a big component was the tax cuts that were introduced in 2001 and 2003…..”

Yes, she really said that. Watch here:

And honestly, I know it’s Fox, but shame on the Judge for letting her get away with this huge, monumental misinformation campaign.

See, this is one of those times when I can’t believe how much Republicans must hate this country. How could they be thinking of running this person as President? How could they have run her as Vice President? It’s one thing to not understand the complexity of economic theory; many of our elected officials don’t. But to not understand the most basic things like what a stimulus package is and is not, that is simply unfathomable.

I don’t even know where I should begin with this one. It seems as if I must first establish that the earth is round. And then maybe slowly establish that stimulus packages are implemented when the economy is bad, hence the name, “stimulus”. And lastly, even more slowly establish that Bush did not implement any kind of stimulus package until 2008….you know, when it became obvious even to the Republicans that the economy was getting bad.

In case there are any Sarah Palin fans reading this, I’ll include a link of Bush signing the bill here. The first Bush stimulus package was a 168 billion dollar tax rebate package, signed into law Feb 13, 2008. The second stimulus Bush signed into law was the 700 billion dollar TARP.

Now, please note that he has a sign beneath his lectern declaring that these tax rebates (essentially tax cuts) will boost the economy. We all now know they didn’t work, so even if Palin had not been wrong about what a stimulus package is or when it happened, her answer was still wrong.

According to US Economy.com:

“Tax rebates may not be the most efficient way to stimulate the economy. The biggest impact is made by increases in unemployment benefits, which produced about $1.73 in demand for every dollar spent, according to the Economy.com study.

Perhaps most important, the tax cuts weren’t balanced by a decrease in government spending. This led to a $500 billion budget deficit. By the time Bush left office, the Federal debt was already $10 trillion. This contributed downward pressure on the dollar, which leads to higher oil prices and inflation over the long run.”

Palin’s obliviousness to basic current events is astounding. The first Bush stimulus was signed 6 months before Palin ran for Vice President of this country and the second was signed as she was running for Vice President. Certainly she would have been briefed on TARP as a candidate, and yet confusing the Bush tax cuts with one of Bush’s stimulus packages is a glaring tell that she has no idea what she’s talking about. And by no idea, I mean literally, she has no idea what she is talking about. This is the person the Republicans want to run for President and she doesn’t know what a stimulus package is. Forget being able to debate the very real questions about what kind of stimulus works and why.

How is it possible for her to defend the Bush stimulus packages by saying they included the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003? She doesn’t even know when he signed either stimulus into being. She doesn’t even know when a stimulus package is used, which would have told her that using anything from 2001 or 2003 to justify said stimulus was wrong. In other words, if she knew what a stimulus package were, she would have known she couldn’t use tax cuts from 2001 as a rebuttal.

This is where I need to apologize for defending Palin as not being stupid. I have long held forth that while she was willfully ignorant, she was not stupid. It seems I may have been in error. This jumbled mess of buzz words might fly with the Fox crowd, but in the real world, this is quite simply unacceptable.

Palin clearly has no idea what stimulus packages Bush signed, so why is anyone listening to her attacks on the current administrations efforts to bail us out of the Bush economic collapse?

Why? Make it stop. Please. Before the dumbing down of America is irrevocable.