Our Petulant Child President Lies About Government Spending Again
Over at EconoSpeak, I briefly discussed the latest news about GDP growth and a few details. Yesterday morning, I had to endure a stupid tirade from our Liar-in-Chief:
They have not been able to send a single annual appropriations bill to my desk … Spending is skyrocketing under their leadership – at least proposed spending is skyrocketing under their leadership.
BEA does not count proposed spending. To say spending bills have not passed but spending is skyrocketing is beyond stupid – even for the village idiot we call President. Sorry for the shrill tone but George Bush lied in so many ways – how wait, let’s have Keith Olbermann step up to the microphone:
Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the president‘s petulance against Congress, against Democrats, against anybody else he sees thwarting his own id devolving last week‘s buffoonish door slamming to a level meriting the use of the word tantrum. He has today accused his critics of wasting his time … And by agreement, Mr. Bush means do it his way. By fiscally responsible he means, spend $200 billion and no questions asked on just the coming year in Iraq
Keith had a lot more splicing and dicing of Bush’s lies but the real star goes to Dana Milbank:
Certainly on the merits, it sounds a bit absurd, yes, that the spending bills haven‘t been passed and largely because the Republicans have block them from being passed.
The House passes a bill, the Democrats in the Senate get a few moderate Republicans to support it, but then Mitch McConnell filibusters on behalf of the White House. For the President to blame Congress for the delays is classic Bush BS. But I think Keith Olbermann nailed it when he suggested that Bush wanted more war spending and less spending on health insurance for the working poor. Permit me to expand on this comment with some real world numbers from the BEA:
Government purchases grew by 3.7 percent at annualized rate almost entirely because of defense spending growth. One has to wonder why our neocon President had his temper tantrum yesterday morning.
Comparing 2007QIII figures to 2007QI figures – all in nominal terms on an annualized basis we see that nondefense Federal purchases grew from $311.7 billion to $316.6 billion, while defense purchases grew from $634.8 billion to $672.6 billion. The former represents a 1.6 percent nominal increase over six months or an annualized real increase less than 1 percent. The latter represents a 6 percent nominal increase over six months or an annualized real increase greater than 9 percent. Facts don’t lie even if our President does.