Saturday, May 07, 2005

Senator Harry Reid Abuses Truth

When Harry Reid opens his mouth to talk, Truth cringes, staggers, falls, and ultimately resigns itself to the coming death blow.

News of Reid calling President Bush a "loser" has been circulating since an article appeared yesterday in the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Such rhetoric should come as no surprise now, as the man who replaced the obnoxious Tom Daschle with promises to work with the President and Republicans in the Senate has long since proved himself a hopeless obstructionist.

Frankly, I'm more bothered by his claim in the story that the President is "driving the country into bankruptcy" -- referring to the budget deficit, the story adds helpfully.

In the fourty years prior to 2000, budget deficits as a percentage of GDP have exceeded the average of the Bush budget years (2002-2004) sixteen times. The high-water mark of 2004 was exceeded ten times during the same period. In other words, the world may be coming to an end, as Democrats suggest for everything but their entitlement programs, but it isn't because the budget deficits are driving us to bankruptcy. In the early and mid-1980's, at the beginning of the longest economic boom our country has ever seen, we had persistent federal budget deficits significantly higher than we have now.

Allowing President Bush to make progress in the war on terror, entitlement reform, and tax reform would present political risks to elected Democrats and their useful idiots that they aren't brave enough to face honorably.