Markos wrote this afternoon about the consequences of the FAA shutting down (which has already happened) over the GOP taking FAA re-authorization hostage as a part of their extremist anti-union agenda. The GOP says they are trying to save around $16 million per month by cutting funding from several rural airports (most of which are in the districts of very powerful House Democrats).

Ignoring the obvious childishness here that is status quo and even a defining trait of the Republican Party, the FAA collects taxes to fund its operations. With the FAA shutdown, those taxes aren't being collected, even though large parts of the FAA are still running (so that air travel in the United States doesn't stop). Those revenues are not insignificant, we're talking about $30 million per day.

In other words, the GOP is trying to save $16 million per year by adding $30 million per day to the deficit. That's about $930 million per month.

That's not surprising in any way. To the contrary, it's what Republicans have been doing for years. They whine about the size of the budget deficit this year ($1.5 trillion) but demand the Bush tax cuts be permanently extended. Those tax cuts have added $1.7 trillion to the national debt since 2001 and $238 billion this year alone.

Now they demand that FAA union rights be curtailed to save $16 million per month, and shutdown the FAA to get that, which then causes us to add $30 million per day to the deficit.

That kind of hypocrisy is the rare kind that if told to the American people by the corrupt and lazy media, it would immediately change the minds of so many people that 2012 would be a Democratic landslide victory not just for the White House, but all over the nation.