And not just “lies” but “nasty conservative lies”, in to the bargain. The list, compiled by Dave Johnson runs to 8 items which must, apparently, be set straight in order to save the Democrats by November 2nd. Here with the lies:
1. President Obama tripled the deficit.
Johnson notes that President Obama became President on January 20th, 2009 and that this was, gasp!, after the 2009 fiscal year had started. Presidents, you see, are not to be held accountable for things they were not 100% in on from the get-go. And so, Obama gets a pass until the start of fiscal year 2010 on October 1st, 2009. This would be a credible assertion if, on the other hand, the left didn’t loudly charged President Bush with both the 2001 economic downturn and the 9/11 attacks, both of which occurred prior to the magical date of October 1st, 2001, when Bush became responsible for all and sundry.
It is true that Obama is not entirely responsible for the fiscal year 2009 deficit – but he is 100% responsible for the 2010 deficit (nearly as large) and the upcoming 2011 deficit (which looks to be larger than 2010). While we may, in kindness, give Obama a pass for 2009 (though he did his fair share of piling up new spending before the year was out), the fact that he has made no effective moves to return the deficit to 2008 or lower levels places a great deal of responsibility on Obama for tripling the deficit.
UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: I’d like to add something about Johnson’s claim that Obama cannot take blame for anything in FY2009… What cannot be ignored in this assessment are the bailouts and stimulus bills passed in 2009 by the Democratic Congress and signed by Obama. Johnson would have a hard time blaming Bush for that.
2. President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
This would be a nasty lie needing of debunking if anyone had actually made the charge. We don’t charge Obama with raising taxes but with failure to act on retaining the current tax rates. Because Obama offered no leadership on this issue, it may be that he presides over the largest tax increase in American history come January 1st.
3. President Obama bailed out the banks.
Johnson notes that the TARP law was passed under the Bush Administration. He fails to note that it was a Democrat-controlled Congress which voted for it and it was almost entirely administered on Obama’s watch…and there are many accusations of mismanagement. The more important thing here is that the financial system has failed, and all Obama and Co can think to do is throw a bit more money at it, while making some quite pointless changes in banking regulation which will in no way limit the banks’ ability to screw up the economy one more time. The people are of the opinion that “too big to fail” is wrong – Obama doesn’t agree, and thus he’s failing the people on this issue.
4. The stimulus didn’t work.
Basing himself upon CBO guesstimates, Johnson asserts that the stimulus “raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs”. Using the phrase “raised employment” is a clever way to dodge around such absurdities as “saved or created”. The fact is that there are, quite simply, fewer people working in the United States here in October of 2010 than there were in January of 2009. If government stimulus worked, then we would have at least as many working today as we had then. Period. End of story.
5. Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
This is to skewer another thing conservatives aren’t saying. Its not a cause/effect relationship in that if a business gets a tax cut it immediately puts out a “help wanted” ad. Its a matter of that by freeing up funds for private investment, businesses will see opportunities to expand and consumers will have more disposable income to spend. The hiring would come very quickly upon reduced taxes, but not the day after they are enacted. What is most crushing on business right now, at any rate, isn’t so much the tax rate but the gigantic level of uncertainty – they don’t know what taxes and regulations Obama will lay on them, so they are cautiously holding on to whatever they’ve got in order to weather the storm.
6. Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Actually, it costs quite a lot more than that, though Johnson is holding to the ObamaCare spin used to force passage that it will reduce the deficit by $138 billion. This is a fabrication which even the Democrats have dropped – a set of accounting gimmicks (most notably front-loading the taxes and back-loading the expenditures) was used to get CBO scoring showing a net-reduction of spending. Real scoring putting together 10 years of spending with ten years of taxes shows a net increased deficit of $1 trillion; and that is if everything works as well as designed, which it won’t because it is run by the same sorts of incompetents who give us the Department of Motor Vehicles.
7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Johnson actually has the nerve to state that there are trillions of dollars in the “trust fund”; forgetting to mention that the trust fund only contains IOU’s from the federal government. In other words, once SS goes negative (which it did this year), then we’ll have to start taking money out of general fund revenue to cover the shortfall. This state of affairs – spending more money than you take in – is called being “broke”. And it was caused by the fact that people are living longer while having fewer babies and this means, surprise!, there are fewer people to pay in to the system. In other words, it works just like a Ponzi scheme (a scheme in which the first people “in” get big payouts by those brought in later, but eventually you run out of enough new people to give the sort of return you gave to the earlier groups of people).
8. Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Which is not what we say – we say, “government spending takes money out of the private economy”. Its not that the money doesn’t get spent, but that it is money which cannot now be spent by the private economy, which is vastly more efficient at spending money than government, which has no mechanism to ensure good performance other than the easily distracted oversight of President and Congress. Johnson brings out the old, liberal canard that we on the right don’t seem to understand that roads and bridges get built by government spending and that this helps the private economy. And this is true – but it ignores the fact that of the more than $3 trillion we’re going to spend this next year, only a tiny percentage will go to things as useful as roads and bridges (and this is especially true when even some of the roads and bridges are not particularly needed…we’ve got a super-highway between Harry Reid’s house in Searchlight and Laughlin, Nevada. It makes for a quick trip, but one cannot think of any particular need for that much road in that empty area).
If these are the lies – and nasty lies – which, debunked, will save the Democrats, then they really are doomed. They are mostly, of course, just liberal talking points about conservatives – and are, themselves, lies, half truths or just plain stupid. The problem of the United States, here in 2010, is that we’re flat broke. We’re really in the soup – and we need to get our spending under control. If we don’t fix that, then we’re going to have an economic collapse which will make the Great Depression seem like a picnic. Lots of issues are agitating the public, but they all revolve around this (very correct) conviction that if we don’t reign in government, we’re in for a world of hurt. Obama and his Democrats actually want to pile on even more spending and government than they have so far – and thus the impending blow out on November 2nd.
Cross Posted at Noonan for Nevada
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