Reeling in the Real

According to two big business sources, the kind that GOPers would normally like to claim and quote, the immediate cuts in the federal budget that the Republican House passed would devastate the American economy. First Goldman Sachs said these cuts would stifle growth. Now Moody's chief economist reports than the GOPer cuts would cost 700,000 jobs.

But we're still talking about faith-based economics in GOPerland, a combination of wishful thinking, no thinking, and strings being pulled by some fossil fuel billionaires. Besides, those mere numbers flash across the screen with the same importance as Charlie Sheen's latest screed, or the latest revelation from Lady Gaga. And they disappear even more quickly. Information revolution!

They get all the attention of some other recent findings: that the financial bailout, whatever else it cost, didn't cost the taxpayers very much at all and saved the world from the Greatest Depression. Or that GM going into profit so quickly in 2010 is one more piece of evidence that the Obama administration's loans to the U.S. auto companies really, really worked. Or (as noted here before) the growing evidence that the Obama Recovery Act really worked in generating jobs and investing in growth industries for the future.

What does "real" mean these days? Whatever it does or doesn't mean in our pathetic political discourse, it means real consequences for real people.