Clinically Insane?

In an exchange on CNN today with Monica "not yet gellin'" Yellin, Saxby Chambliss, Republican Senator from the unfortunate state of Georgia, uttered the following:

Yellin: Senator Chamblis do you believe that Senate Republicans will agree to a [debt reduction] package that includes any sort of tax changes?

Chambliss: Well, the fact of the matter is that you can't solve this debt problem just with reductions in discretionary spending. You can't solve it just by attacking and reforming entitlements. You've got to look at the revenue side also.

What we are looking at proposing is actually a reduction in corporate rates and personal individual income tax rates, which will put more money in people's pockets and we're going to do that with the reduction in tax expenditures. Every time we've done that in years past whether it was under President Reagan or president Bush we have seen revenues increase. And we've got to have an increase in revenues if we are going to retire this debt... revenues have to be on the table if we're serious about attacking that debt.

(Emphasis is the Editor's.) So Saxby's "serious" approach to reducing the deficit is by reducing tax rates for at least his corporate owners, the idea being the old, hoary Republican fantasy that decreasing taxes increases revenues. This old lie has been disproven so many times, it should be included in the DSM IV as an indication of clinical insanity. It's clearly a break from reality.

This old lie is so prevalent, however, that Yellin didn't even catch it. Instead, she called it a "big concession" by Republicans. Her break from reality is almost as clean as Chambliss'.

Actually, the simpler explanation is that Chambliss is a Republican hack paid by his betters to push tax cuts for them. Yellin? Maybe she's playing for the same team.