The Fed can’t help you. The Obama Administration doesn’t even feel your pain. The Congress hates you. But, it’s your fault if you can’t get to the sunny side of the street to join their only real constituents.

Politico’s editors, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen, have gathered all of the GOP’s most disingenuous talking points and turned them into a set of campaign slogans for Republicans, which they then publish as news analysis. In the process, they confirm once again that when talking about the economy, the D.C.’s pool boys are two of the dumbest reporters in Washington.

So, make the President do it! Make him solve the problem and avoid a default! That is the best thing that progressives in Congress can do now to save the economy and begin to kill the current austerity mania that will destroy the futures of our children and Grandchildren.

What kind of unserious child thinks increasing revenues could help lower the debt?

The US will reach its borrowing limit in less than two weeks, under normal circumstances. Since nobody expects Congress to come to their senses and pass a bill to allow the country to pay what it has promised, the Treasury Department has decided to start maneuvering to avoid default. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner believes he can hold out until around August 2nd.

Today the Congress returned to session for a month in which the Treasury Department is expected to reach the debt limit. They may be able to take extraordinary measures to keep under the limit for a while, but it’s likely that under normal conditions, the limit will be reached this month. Joe Biden will open a discussion between the parties on how to get a vote passed to increase the limit this week.

The statement here is that reduced government spending causes slower growth. Well, we know that the 2011 budget cuts spending in the next two quarters. And we know that all Republicans and not a few Democrats want to attach some major spending cuts to the debt limit vote, which needs to take place in the next couple months. So there no doubt that we will see lower federal spending as far as the eye can see. And Austan Goolsbee is saying here that reductions of government spending at the federal level slow down the economy, given the state it’s in right now.

What Mason doesn’t realize is that Galtian producer class colossi work in those corporate boardrooms, and they can shrug off debt ratios like so many gnats. Only the sniveling government – which by the way sucks at the government teat, has anybody noticed that? – has a problem with debt.

As James Fallows points out, S&P is basically making a guess, no more informed or uninformed than any observer of politics. No modeling went into this threatened downgrade. “They’re saying they have an opinion on the state of Congressional-White house dealings on the budget,” writes Fallows. “Fine. Go on a talk show or start a blog.”

It’s all very precious. An entity funded by the big banks makes a judgment (which shouldn’t be seen apart from their other discredited judgments) about the debt. The party most allied with the big banks uses that judgment to demand that their preferred policy, which doesn’t reduce the national debt for THIRTY YEARS, must be enacted immediately. Incidentally, that preferred policy reduces taxes on the rich, including the rich executives at the big banks.