The GOP's Big Lie

Sullivan posts a chart on his blog that shows the direction of the national debt under every president since Truman. Note that under both Reagan and Bush II, the debt went up significantly. But during these two terms, Republicans were quite fond of saying, "Deficits Don't Matter." But, of course, as soon as a Democrat files a budget with a deficit, they matter "for our children and grandchildren."

Bruce Bartlett, who basically invented supply-side economics, even repudiates his own concept now, calling for big time tax increases (in the form of a VAT, of course).

But the big lie here is that OBAMA, the juvenile delinquent whose "presidency is graffiti on the walls of American history," created the entire debt himself. Even though he took office during the biggest global economic crisis in nearly 80 years. Even though he inherited two wars. Even though he inherited the TARP program created under Bush. Even though the entire financial sector was deregulated to the point of absurdity while he was still a state senator in Illinois.

No, because Obama signed legislation for health-care reform that was paid for in full and will actually reduce the deficit over time, because he signed legislation that restored rationality to our financial sector and afforded basic protections for consumers, because he signed legislation that provided fiscal stimulus to banks in order to keep them from going under, because he created loan programs to help homeowners with no equity to refinance their mortgages at prevailing, historically low rates (paying standard closing costs, by the way!), because he called for a short-term moratorium on off-shore drilling, because he stupidly pushed for the extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless in our country (about five million people), our entire financial mess is now and has always been Obama's fault. What sane, rational person with a functioning memory (or, at least, an internet connection that allows access to Google) can honestly cop to this assertion? Any takers?