Truth in deficits
Calpundit has a great post on the lengths some people are willing to go to convince us that the Bush 2004 deficit isn't so bad.
Whence indeed? The real question, however, is, can't these guys even be bothered to pretend to tell the truth anymore? Look what Bowyer had to do to get his figures:
- First, the only Clinton budget on his list is from 1993. But the budget for FY1993 was prepared by the GHW Bush administration. We were a third of the way through FY1993 by the time Clinton was inaugurated.
That's enough, really, to show that Bowyer simply doesn't care about making things up if that's what it takes to make his point, but, incredibly, there's more:
- He claims that Clinton's deficits were larger "on average" than Bush's, ignoring the fact that Clinton inherited a deficit from GHW Bush and steadily decreased it, while GW Bush inherited a surplus from Clinton and has steadily squandered it.
- Next he pretends that Bush's deficit is reasonable because "Nations at war borrow money." But the cost of the Iraq war isn't even in the budget yet and the cost of the war on terrorism is small compared to the size of the deficit.
- And finally, he gripes that everyone is focusing obsessively on the 2004 budget, which is patently false. As he himself notes, it's the vast and growing long-term deficits that everyone is really complaining about.
I'm getting really tired of this 'on average' crap. On average, a room of thirty homelss people and Bill Gates is full of multi-millionaires.