Republican Lies

Here is a bit from a very straightforward post by Paul Krugman on his NY Times blog:

The Bush Deficit Bamboozle

OK, even by contemporary standards, this is rich: the official Republican stance is now apparently that Bush left behind a budget that was in pretty good shape. Mitch McConnell:

The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.
They really do think that we’re idiots.

So, that 3.2 percent number comes from here (pdf). Where’s the bamboozle? Let me count the ways.

First, they’re hoping that you won’t know that standard budget data is presented for fiscal years, which start on October 1 of the previous calendar year. So this isn’t the “last year of the Bush administration” — they’ve conveniently lopped off everything that happened post-Lehman — TARP and all.

Second, they’re hoping you won’t look at what was happening quarter by quarter. Here’s net federal borrowing as a percentage of GDP, quarter by quarter, since 2007:

Go read the whole post to see the graph and get more details of how the Republicans are lying. Plus get the links embedded in Krugman's post.

His conclusion is what makes me despair:

I’d like to think that the raw dishonesty of this latest Bush defense would be obvious to everyone. But after the past decade, I’ve stopped believing such things. They think we’re idiots — and they may be right.

The Republicans think the electorate is full of idiots. And everything I see says they are right. The puts me into a black mood of despair. These liars have destroyed the economy and not only are they laughing all the way to the bank with their Wall Street buddies, they are laughing at the electorate and fully expect to get back in power in November. Incredible!

Why do I care... I live in Canada? Well, the Canadian economy has big chunk of it tied up in US-Canada trade and as the US goes down, it sucks down Canada with it. I want a healthy US so that Canada can be healthy. But I watch with despair as the Republican "wrecking crew" destroys the US.

That reminds me, a very good book to read is Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule:



While you are at it, go read this post by Paul Krugman where he explains why this recession is a "postmodern" recession.

If I were abandoned on a desert island, the one thing I would want would be access to Krugman's NY Times writings. The guy is phenomenal. He gets things right years and years before anybody else. He writes beautifully. And he puts up with the fact that the mainstream press ignores him despite the fact that he knows what he is talking about (and has the Nobel prize hardware to prove it). Instead the media keeps going to the same idiots who never see the cliff we about to go over, and when we go over it, they go back to these same idiots to have it "explained" who we could have gone over it and how we couldn't have seen it coming. (Recognize something here about how the Republicans operate?) Krugman is vilified by the right wing press. They hate the fact that he gets things right. But the good news for the Republicans is that the mainstream press generally ignores Krugman so they can chase after the ill-informed, the mis-informed, and the scheming liars who want to dis-inform.