Facts! Damn those tricky facts!

Fact – “something known to be true; truth or reality of something; actual course of events” (source: Microsoft Word online dictionary);

Principles – “Principle – a standard of moral or ethical decision-making” (Source: Microsoft Word online dictionary)

A “Humpty Dumpty” approach to language – as per Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean….”

After two years of Mr. Obama and a Democratic Congress, the following facts are . . .

Not one positive number in two years. Enough is enough. This train is going off a cliff and we need to get off!

Just take the last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history -- over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane. 27 times faster, it would be doing 1,755 MPH!

Then we come to Mr. Obama’s 2012 budget.

On Monday of this week, the Heritage Foundation looked at the rosy predictions on which Mr. Obama based his budget projections, and “factually incorrect” doesn’t begin to cover it:

Having pushed discretionary spending up rapidly in the prior two years, the President proposes to reduce 2012 discretionary spending by 5 percent, though he does so only by virtue of three simple and obvious budget gimmicks:

1. Redefining Pell grants as mandatory spending. Stripped of this gimmick, discretionary spending jumps by $14 billion in 2012.[2]
2. Reclassifying $54 billion of surface transportation spending from discretionary spending to mandatory spending.[3]
3. Spending the peace dividend. The budget proposal includes spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, referred to as “overseas contingency operations,” as discretionary spending and reduces funding for these operations by $38.2 billion in 2012.[4]

Reversing these budget tricks lifts 2012 discretionary spending by $106.2 billion for an overall $31 billion increase in discretionary spending.

Earmarks. Once again, the President has promised to oppose earmarked spending. He also claimed that the 2009 stimulus bill was free of earmarks. One can only hope he is more vigorous in keeping his promise going forward than he was in the past.

Total Spending. Under the President’s budget, total spending would rise 49 percent over the next 10 years of the budget window. Even after inflation, this represents a 30 percent increase in spending.

Taxes. The President continues to play games with the scoring of tax policy. For example:

• He proposes to raise the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent from 15 percent and lists this as a tax cut that reduces revenues by $124 billion over 10 years.
• He proposes to extend the Bush tax cuts for low- and middle-income families and correctly includes this extension in the revenue baseline. But then, breaking with past practice, he leaves the tax relief for upper-income individuals and small businesses out of the baseline and thus conveniently has no reporting of the resulting tax hike.
• He proposes to prevent the Alternative Minimum Tax from rising in 2013, and then in classic Washington style proposes $321 billion in new tax hikes to offset the cost of not raising taxes.

Debt. Under the President’s budget, despite the proposed tax hikes, publicly held debt (net of financial assets) rises from $9.5 trillion in the current year to $16.7 trillion by 2021.

In other words, Obama’s budgets don’t actually cut overall spending at all. Spending rises by 30% in real terms over the ten-year projections, and publicly-held debt (which excludes that held by the Social Security Administration) rises by 57% in the same period. Instead of limiting mandatory spending, Obama attempts to hide discretionary spending by transferring pet areas of spending into the mandatory category. It’s a three-card Monty attempt to distract from Obama’s agenda of continued federal spending and regulatory adventurism while claiming fiscal responsibility.

How many times does a politician get to repeat an easily disprovable “factually incorrect” statement before it can be called a lie?

Sources:

1.  U.S. Energy Information Administration;
2. Wall Street Journal;
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics;
4. Census Bureau;
5. USDA;
6. U.S. Dept. of Labor;
7. FHFA;
8. Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller;
9. RealtyTrac;
10. Heritage Foundation and WSJ;
11. The Conference Board;
12. FDIC;
13. Federal Reserve;
14. U.S. Treasury