The Republican misinformation campaign is running apace. And the public buys it.
Republicans on Capitol Hill think they’ve finally found Barack Obama’s Achilles’ heel: rising public concern about government spending and the federal deficit…
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told POLITICO that GOP candidates in 2010 will almost certainly use the deficit to argue that Democrats own a Washington mess.
“This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration’s and this Democratic leadership’s making,” Cornyn said.
As the Politico article reports:
While Obama’s overall job-approval ratings are up over the past month, a Gallup Poll out this week has a 51 percent majority of Americans disapproving of the president’s efforts to control federal spending and a slim 48 percent to 46 percent disapproving of his handling of the federal deficit.
It looks like the Republicans have a good issue to run on. The problem is it is based on lies.
David Leonhardt has a nice article breaking down the sources of the growth in the budget deficit. Since Leonhardt works for The New York Times rather than USA Today, they didn’t see fit to illustrate his article with a pie chart, but I made one myself:
— “The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing.”
— Second, Bush-era legislation “like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, [that] not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.”
— Third, “Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 [...] 20 percent of the swing.”
— Fourth, “About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February.”
— Fifth, “only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.”
In other words, the very high deficits are not Obama’s fault according to any normal way of assessing political blame.
Do you think Republicans will let facts get in their way?
Tags: Barack Obama and the budget deficit Republicans and the budget deficit, Budget deficit
