Michele Bachmann's failure to understand basic public finance

By Richard K. Barry

Dave Weigle at Slate ran an interesting piece recently about Michele Bachmann's understanding of government finance, or, we should say, her failure to understand it.

Here is Weigle's account of comments made by Bachmann at an event in Iowa:

When Bachmann arrived, she devoted half of her opening statement to the downgrade. The mesage: She could have stopped it.

"For the last two weeks, I led the fight against raising the debt limit," Bachmann said. Increasing the limit "pushed the rating agency over the edge." It was a $2.4 trillion blank check that caused the downgrade.

Make no mistake: The downgrade was Obama's fault: "We were somehow able to get through the Great Depression without a credit downgrade," she said. "Only under this president have we seen a credit downgrade... we are getting that credit rating back. This is to be our goal. That will be our mission.

Is it possible that Bachmann doesn't understand that the downgrade, however unjustified it may have been, occurred because S&P said they were concerned that the U.S. government could find itself unable to pay its bills? And that they might be unable to pay their bills precisely because the debt ceiling might not have been raised?

Is it possible she doesn't get that? And if the answer is yes, this suggests a whole new level of incompetence for this Tea Party darling, if that's possible.

This is on a par with the Wisconsin Tea Party cheering the fact that Democrats have blamed them for the S&P downgrade. In their simple understanding of the world, all we have to do is stop the government from spending money, even its current obligations, and everything will somehow, magically, work out.

I was not around when the United States devised its economic system. I'm pretty sure if I had been I would have suggested some improvements. But this is the system we now have, and I surely would prefer that anyone aspiring to the highest office in the land understand how it works.

It's not much to ask.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)