Governor Romney's campaign is built on a scaffold of Big Lies. But the most basic, and egregious, Big Lie of all is the proposition that the rather listless recovery to the worst economic catastrophe this country has seen since the Great Depression, the Trickle Down - Deregulation disaster (aka: Phil Gramms marvelous adventure), has been the fault of the President's policies. This ignores the Repubicans' War on Obama and the reason Ornstein and Mann called the Republican party an "insurgent outlier in American politics" (more on that to come).

On the day of Barack Obama's innauguration, leading members of the Republican party, met and decided they would engage in a campaign of obstruction of everything Obama would try to do. Mitch McConnell famously declared that the top priority of the Republican party was to see that Barack Obama was a one term president. To that end, the Republicans set records for filibustering legislation. They have fought everything Obama tried to do to produce a recovery from the economic disaster they created. They even voted against a deficit reduction commission (in 2009, before Bowles-Simpson) THEY PROPOSED - BECAUSE PRESIDENT OBAMA SUPPORTED IT! (see "Why Washington is tied up in Knots" - Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1966451,00.html and "Do not ask what good we do." Robert Draper).


President Obama's first legislative act to repair and rebuild the economy from the Great Recession, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), was filibustered by the Republicans such that Obama had to agree to downsize the stimulus by converting 38% of it to tax cuts in order to win two Republican votes to get the bill passed. At the outset of a depression, people worried about whether they would have a job in six months will not spend a tax cut, but will save it our use it to pay down their debt. Either way, that portion of the ARRA converted to tax cuts would not be stimulative to the economy. The Republicans knew this. That’s why they demanded a large portion of the stimulus be converted to tax cuts. This resulted in the original stimulus being smaller than it should have been (without the conversion of 38% of the stimulus to tax cuts the stimulus would have been 61% LARGER (1/(1-.38) = 1.61).


In the Budget Battle of 2011 the Republicans threatened to force a closure of the Government if the Democrats didn't agree to cuts to domestic programs. In the Debt Ceiling extension battle, the Republicans threatened to force a U.S. default on its debt if Obama didn't agree to significant cuts in Government programs - in that same fiscal year. These domestic spending cuts lead to states laying off policemen, fireman, teachers and other public servants - adding to the number of already unemployed. The Wall Street Journal published an article which pointed out that if it weren't for cuts to Government domestic programs, the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower than it was at mid-year 2012 ("Unemployment Rate Without Government Cuts: 7.1%", WSJ, May 8, 2012).

The threat of a default on the U.S. debt lead Standard and Poor's to the extraordinary step - never before taken - of downgrading the United States Credit rating. (Standard and Poors cited among the causes for the unprecedented step “political brinksmanship” and public policymaking being “less stable…less predictable”:



The Republican party’s threats of Government default and Government closure have so concerned businesses that they have held off hiring full-time permanent workers, keeping the unemployment rate elevated and restraining the recovery. Businesses have been sitting on a five trillion dollar hoard of cash and have refrained from hiring back more people. Businesses do not want to hire full-time permanent people, only to lay them off in six months. Not knowing how far the Republicans might go to kill the recovery, businesses rather than hiring more people, have been making more use of over-time and contract labor ("The $5 Trillion Stash: U.S. Corporations' Money Hoard Is Bigger Than the GDP of Germany",The Atlantic, July 18, 2012; “Cash-Hoarding Companies Neither Spend Nor Lend, Fouling Economy Further”, Huffington Post, July 12, 2012).

Any appraisal of the success of President Obama’s economic policies that leaves out the fact that these policies prevented the economy from collapsing even further and reaching an unemployment rate of perhaps 11%, or higher, is incomplete and invalid. The Congressional Budget Office report concluded that President Obama’s economic policies, in fact did just that (“Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From October 2009 Through December 2009", CBO, February 23, 2010 and “CBO: Unemployment would have topped 11% without stimulus”, USA Today, 2010-02-23).

The Republican filibustered and prevented President Obama’s American Jobs Act from being passed. Moody’s Analytics concluded this bill would have raised the GDP 2%, increased employment by about 2 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate about 1% (Analysis of the Obama Jobs Plan, Moody's Analytics, Sept 9, 2011). So, a decrease of the unemployment rate of 1% prevented by the Republicans and an increase in the unemployment rate of 1% caused by Republican demands for more domestic spending cuts to preclude a Government Default and Government shutdown had a significant negative impact on the recovery. The total impact of these acts of legislative sabotage is an unemployment rate that is 2% points higher than it would have been had Obama been able to more fully realize his policies of stimulating the economy out of this Republican Trickle Down Deregulation disaster. The cited efforts to sabotage the stimulus notwithstanding, the CBO has concluded that the unemployment rate without the ARRA, would be 3% points higher than it is now.

Now, I would be remiss, if I did not inform you of some sources of information for you to gain a better understanding of what has been going on in Washington the past several years. One is the book by Thomas Mann (The Brookings Institution) and Norman Ornstein (the American Enterprise Institute (note: a conservative group)) entitled: "It's Even Worse than It Looks" wherein they detail the machinations, over the last few years, of the Republican Party which they call an "insurgent outlier". These two scholars of the political scene also wrote an oped in the Washington Post entitled: "Let's just say it: the Republicans are the Problem". Here's an excerpt from that piece(emphasis my own):



Any suggestion that the recovery from the worst economic catastrophe this country has seen since the Great Depression, the Trickle Down - Deregulation disaster, is due to President Obama's policies, is pure Republican Crock-of-%#@&$ propaganda. The Republlicans in their War on Obama have succeeded in preventing the President from fully realizing his policies with the livelihoods of millions of Americans becoming the collateral damage in that war.

Romney has assumed as many positions as a double-jointed streetwalker.

I really can't remember when I have seen anybody change positions with such alacrity or assert the opposite of a position he formerly propounded with such utter tranquility ("Pre-existing conditions?? my plan covers that!" ...Obama thought bubble: "Say WHAAAAT???!!!&quot .
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October 4, 2012

The verdict is in: Mitt Romney handily won last night’s debate, and did what he needed to do to have a fighting chance at winning the election. But what he didn’t do, predictably, was tell the truth.

Romney’s debate performance was chock full of lies, recalling his running mate’s address to the GOP convention, which was also chock full of lies. Hopefully, just as Ryan’s address was dissected and debunked by some media outlets, Romney’s claims are as well, so the debate can move to substantive issues instead of stylistic ones.

Here are ten of Romney’s fact-challenged claims from last night:
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Romney: "If the president’s reelected, Obamacare will be fully installed. ... You’re going to see health premiums go up by some $2,500 per family"

Filings from Connecticut’s two largest health insurers, which both applied for double-digit rate increases this year, show that the insurance companies are not driving up their prices because Obamacare is leading them to do so. Rather, the rate increases are due to increasingly expensive health costs that are unaffected by the implementation of the health care law:

But the overwhelming reason for the rate increase requests is rising medical costs, the filings by Anthem, Aetna and ConnectiCare say. The companies say this is mainly because providers are raising their prices and patients are getting more care.

“People are accessing more services and hospitals, doctors and labs are charging us more,” Aetna spokeswoman Susan Millerick said.

The costs associated with the Affordable Care Act account for only a tiny fraction of the requested increases — less than 1 percent. These amounts cover the costs of the preventative women’s care benefits and the changes in cost sharing, said Paul Lombardo, the actuary for the state Insurance Department who reviews the rate increase requests.

While health care spending did rise at double the rate of inflation in 2010, a report by the Health Care Cost Institute confirms Connecticut’s findings and concludes the rising prices are due to the health costs that crept up during the recession. In fact, Obamacare will help address this very issue. The health care reform law represents part of the solution — not the problem, as Republicans claim — as it seeks to help make health insurance more affordable by reforming payment models, reducing payments to hospitals, and prioritizing quality of care.

This plan would extend the 2001-03 tax cuts,

reduce individual income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate taxation of investment income of most taxpayers (including individuals earning less than $100,000, and married couples earning less than $200,000), eliminate the estate tax, reduce the corporate income tax rate, and repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and the high-income taxes enacted in 2010’s health-reform legislation.1 We estimate that these components would reduce revenues by $456 billion in 2015 relative to a current policy baseline.2 According to statements by Governor Romney and his advisors, the remainder of the plan will include policies to offset this revenue loss, although there are no details on how that would be achieved.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney repeated charges that President Barack Obama's health care law will kill jobs -- a claim at odds with Congressional Budget Office projections and the effects of Romney's own health care law in Massachusetts.

"I just don't know how the president could have come into office, facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, an economic crisis at the -- at the kitchen table, and spend his energy and passion for two years fighting for Obamacare instead of fighting for jobs for the American people. It has killed jobs," Romney said.

The Congressional Budget Office disagrees, FactCheck.org noted in June. According to the nonpartisan agency's estimates, health care reform will reduce the workforce by 0.5 percent. That's mostly because people would choose to retire early or work fewer hours, FactCheck.org reported.

If the national experience under Obamacare mirrors what happened in Massachusetts under Romney's similar health care law, job losses won't be a major issue. Employment trends in Massachusetts since Romneycare took effect have mirrored national trends, concluded a report issued by the Urban Institute in June. "The evidence from Massachusetts would suggest that national health reform does not imply job loss and stymied economic growth," said the report.
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