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Clinton began to ' lie, deny and stick to it ', with " No one escapes time and age. Republicans age just like Democrats ". This might have been the only true statement he made all day? The President pitched his Mediscare over-haul, on the heels of a fictitious declaration of some new bloated budget surplus figures. I just can't believe the way Clinton can throw the half-truths and down right lies around and still keep a straight face. Well, I guess that is truely why the people elected him El Presidente.
Clinton continued to bite his lip and said, " We have the money to do this. This is simply a matter of choice ". He is right about this, but didn't he make a promise to save all the budget surplus for the Social Security Trust Fund. Okay, so either my memory is faulty or he made another one of those campaign-promise-like declarations that he never intended to go through with ( I mean, come on, everyone in the audience knew it was one of those Slick Willie promises that he has no intention of keeping; so shut up, okay? ).
The President basically proposed that the United States government start pushing prescription drugs; and at the shockingly small price-tag of only a 10-year cost of 118 billion dollars to the government ( the US taxpayer ). Hey, so this would only be Clinton breaking a promise on not touching the surplus until Social Security was saved, and the announcement of another proposed liberal Democrat entitlement; simple stuff really. But the whole thing hinged on Clinton cooking the budget surplus books to get the numbers he could manipulate to his liking.
Clinton had his OMB office cook up some numbers trying to predict what the country will be doing fifteen years from now and announcing we could afford to pay " for the entire package and buttress Medicare against the coming wave of Baby Boom retirements by designating, over the next 15 years, 794 billion dollars in expected federal budget surpluses ". The two key words here are " 794 billion dollars " and the ever popular, " expected ". I mean, man I can hardly get a grasp on how the stock market may go up or down on the short term, and will Allen Greenspan raise interest rates next quarter; so how can anyone even semi-accurately predict what is going to be happening economically, two decades from now?
The answer is, they can't, and Clinton's numbers don't stand up to the sniff test.
The White House calculated a 333 billion dollar 10-year surplus increase, but the more non-partisan CBO ( Congressional Budget Office ) puts that number at only 170 billion dollars over the same ten-year time period. Look man, we are talking half; okay? You maybe could argue these numbers, but the difference is not even close! The total CBO projections show about 960 billion dollars in non-Social Security surpluses over the next 10 years, around 120 billion dollars less than Clinton's announced estimate of over a trillion. One must always remember that Congress passes it's appropriations bills based on these CBO estimates and not the politically motivated White House OMB " guestimates ".
Why can't Clinton quit playing word games and finally put the country first, ahead of his own selfish ambitions?
- Bongo ( Sign-up for more liberal Democrat entitlements { the endangered insects list }? )
