Steve Benen calls this “bizarre”

And I agree. That Benen finds this bizarre – that is bizarre.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) probably didn’t realize the impact his remarks would have. The right-wing Arizonan was asked on Fox News how his party would pay for $678 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy, which Republicans are currently demanding. Kyl said what he actually believed: Republicans wouldn’t pay for them, and thinks it’s a mistake to even try. Spending should be paid for, Kyl said, but tax cuts shouldn’t.

Ah, fer cry-eye.

Question: are you recently unemployed? If so, how are you “paying for” your reduced income?

Answer: you’re probably spending less. You probably don’t like it: hey, I don’t blame you. Especially if you’re trying to support a family.

I guess the real question is: why are you unemployed? Let’s assume it’s through no fault of your own. It’s just the economy. The business you worked for downsized.

And why’d they do that? Greed, probably. Right? Oh, no, wait: smaller businesses make less money, so companies don’t fire people out of “greed.” More likely, they had to downsize to stay in business. Because their income is down. And how are they dealing with that? By spending less.

Thus, your unemployment.

Let’s say they decided not to spend less. Then they can go into debt. They can piss off their investors. Eventually, they can go out of business entirely. And then, instead of laying off a few people, they have to fire everybody. Sell their assets at pennies on the dollar. Everybody loses.

Republicans logically want to extend (or make permanent) the Bush tax cuts, because allowing capital gains and other investment taxes to go up – which they will – takes money away from businesses. Those businesses are then less likely to hire, and more likely to fail.

Republicans refuse to acknowledge the phrase “pay for the tax cuts,” because that implies the government giving something to the taxpayers, rather than simply not taking.

See, it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to you. Thus, I have no inherent right to it, should not expect to have it, and have no need to compensate for lacking it.

“Bizarre,” says Steve Benen, displaying as bizarre an “understanding” of economics as anything this side of Paul Krugman

When people like Benen say “pay for,” what they mean is: “balance.” “How will you pay for those tax cuts” means “how will you balance the budget?”

In their static, pie chart, somebody-wins-so-somebody-else-must-lose world, tax cuts only affect government revenues negatively. Always.

Thus, their worldview says, tax cuts put revenues and spending out of balance.

There’s a word for people who so wholeheartedly support President Obama’s how-many-zeroes-is-that deficit spending, and then demand to know how Republicans plan to “pay for” something.

I won’t use that word, of course, because my grandmother sometimes reads this blog. Instead, I’ll use Benen’s word: bizarre.

Memeorandum.

UPDATE – Hey, Krugman, just think of it as more stimulus spending, but without the middleman!