Artwork via SMEAR CAMPAIGN
BY MIKE WALSH Romney and Ryan have lied their way through this campaign season so brazenly, effortlessly, and unabashedly, it’s tough to identify their top 10 lies, but let’s give it a shot:
10. Romney bragged during the debates that he worked in a bi-partisan manner with the Democrats who controlled the Massachusetts state house while he was governor of that state. Oh really!? It has since come to light that Romney defines bipartisanship as 800 vetoes by Romney, 750 of which were overridden by the state legislature. That’s not bipartisanship, that’s partisan warfare.
9. That Romney is a moderate. Romney famously and awkwardly boasted last spring that he was “severely conservative.” Now he expects the public to believe that he’s a moderate, after spending a year adopting every cruel and destructive tea party position. No rational person would buy such deception.
8. Romney, 10/29, Toledo, Ohio: “Jeep is thinking of moving all production to China.” All the fact checking sites have demonstrated that this is a bald-faced lie. Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne also released a press release stating that that Romney’s claim is false. But Romney has continued telling this lie to deflect attention from his November 2008 New York Times op-ed, Let Detroit Go Bankrupt, which doesn’t play well in critical swing state Ohio. By the way, the Washington Post reports that Chrysler had its best September sales in five years and that its third-quarter profit was up 80 percent over 2011. Since 2009, Chrysler has hired more than 7,000 workers in the United States. So Romney was just plain wrong about the auto industry bailout. Or he had another reason to want the auto industry to go bankrupt—so Bain Capital could siphon money from GM. Romney deserves to lose Ohio for that hypocrisy and cynicism alone.
7. That he will reduce the deficit. Romney wants to reduce taxes across the board by 20%, eliminate the estate tax (which will benefit his children greatly), lower corporate income taxes, and raise the military budget, yet he and Ryan still state with a straight face that they’ll reduce the deficit. No matter how many times those two jackasses repeat that nonsense, the math still doesn’t add up, as many commentators and non-partisan organizations have pointed out.
Romney also claims that “six studies” prove that his tax plan will reduce the deficit. But it turns out that four were blog posts or op-eds and two of the alleged studies were by a Romney campaign advisor, and none of them actually make sense. So Romney lies about his plan and then he blatantly lies about the verification of the plan. He’s the liar-in-chief! This leads to our next big lie…
6. That Romney and Ryan are concerned about the deficit. If they were so concerned, why would they propose programs that will increase the deficit? They are nothing but spokesmen for the wealthy elite, and once elected, they’ll work tirelessly to cut taxes for the wealthy. The proof is in Ryan’s various budget plans, which Romney has endorsed. If Romney and Ryan really cared about lowering the deficit, would they be adamantly opposed to increasing taxes to reduce that debt? You wouldn’t unless your statements about cutting the deficit were horseshit. Even Ronald Reagan, the Gipper, raised taxes 11 times.
5. That the deficit is Obama’s fault. False. The events that caused the deficit took place before Obama took office and are mostly the result of decisions made by the GOP during the Bush administration. The largest causes of the debt are the financial meltdown and resulting recession (which started in 2007 under W), the Bush/GOP tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the unfunded wars (one of which was based on 935 lies by the Bush administration), the Medicare drug benefit, and Bush’s 2008 stimulus. All of these expenditures took place during the Bush administration and were unfunded.
4. That Obamacare will siphon over $700 billion from Medicare. The part that Romney deceitfully forgets to mention is that the reduction comes from waste and over-payments, not from a reduction in benefits, and healthcare providers agreed to the cuts. Ryan has the same $700 billion in Medicare payment cuts in his budget, but the hypocrisy of complaining about a cut to a program you actually want to end apparently never entered the boy wonder’s mind. And Romney promises to restore the $700 billion in waste and over payments during his first day in office. Sweet!
3. That the Obama stimulus plan didn’t work. The Republicans have repeated this nonsense so often over the past three years, you’d think they knew what they’re talking about. But blowhards like Romney and Ryan don’t know more than real-life economists who have actually studied the Obama stimulus and base their conclusions on actual evidence. Most economists point out that the stimulus saved up to 3 million jobs. None claim, as the Republicans do so often, that the stimulus failed.
Romney and Ryan conveniently forget to mention George Bush’s 2008 stimulus. That plan gave $600 to every tax payer, which cost the treasury about $700 billion, but as we know, it did nothing to stop the recession. So Bush’s stimulus wasted a great deal of money, whereas OBAMA’S STIMULUS ENDED THE GREAT RECESSION. Don’t believe me? Look at the job growth stats of the past few years.
The country was losing 750,000 jobs per month when Obama took office. Eight months after the stimulus was passed, and we’ve seen 31 straight months of positive job growth.
And let’s not forget the stimulus proposed by the Senate Republicans in early 2009, a massive $3 trillion tax cut, mostly benefiting the wealthy. Two things we can say for sure about that GOP plan: it would have greatly enriched the rich and greatly increased the deficit.
By the way, after the financial meltdown of 2008, Romney was in favor of a stimulus program based on government spending. The hypocrisy never ends with Mitty-boy.
2. That cutting taxes will increase employment. FALSE, FALSE, FALSE. There is no historical correlation between lower taxes and job creation. We had higher tax rates during the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and had much higher job creation rates than we did with lower tax rates during the past 10 years. Bush Jr. and the GOP cut trillions in taxes in 2001 and 2003 and boasted that the cuts would create jobs, but not one net new job was created during the 8-year Bush administration. That’s a record of success that Romney evidently wants to emulate. And the number 1 lie from the Romney/Ryan campaign–drum roll, please…
1. That Romney and Ryan want to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. However, every budget plan they put forth guts, privatizes, and turns those programs into unrecognizable voucher systems that cost seniors more money. Ryan’s latest budget plan, which was endorsed by Romney, basically does away with Medicaid, which provides healthcare to the poor, so he can provide tax breaks for the wealthy. For them to put their mothers on stage and state that they “will protect and preserve Medicare” is a cynical joke, and no one should believe them. The Romney/Ryan campaign is essentially an attack by the wealthy on the New Deal. If Romney/Ryan made one reasonable proposal to limit Medicare and Social Security payments based on wealth and need of the recipient to extend the life of those programs, most Americans would probably go along with them, and they’d probably be elected. But when they couple draconian cuts for the poor and aged with tax cuts for the wealthy, they reveal themselves as frauds, and they deserve to lose the election for that one big lie alone. The scary part is, this country has a habit of electing liars to the White House. You’d think that we’d learn from our mistakes.