White House spokesman Jay Carney trotted out some pretty obvious whoppers the other morning on Air Force One.
“Do not buy into the b.s. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness,” he said.
Carney read aloud from a column claiming that the “Obama spending binge never happened” — that federal spending is rising at the slowest rate since the 1950s.
“The president has demonstrated significant fiscal restraint and acted with great fiscal responsibility,” Carney added.
With a straight face, too.
Now, keep in mind that Obama’s record $3.8 trillion budget for 2013 is so ridiculous that it was unanimously rejected by the House and (Democratic-run) Senate.
And don’t forget that Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt since taking office.
It barely even matters that the stats “proving” Obama’s thriftiness are utterly misleading — that money spent by Obama is wrongly attributed to President George W. Bush; that the argument rests on baseline budget numbers that hide real-life, mushrooming costs.
Statistics can be massaged every which way, and there’s nothing shocking in that. But Carney’s crock was utterly shameful.
It’s one thing to spend the country into the poorhouse. It’s another thing to lie about it — yet even that’s to be expected.
What’s reprehensible is how O & Co. have savagely attacked anyone who actually tries to right the economy.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has suggested cuts and entitlement reforms that would cut deficits by trillions. But rather than address the proposal on the merits, Obama has smeared the plan as “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.”
Those attacks continued Wednesday aboard Air Force One. “If only Republicans in Congress would agree to take [a] balanced approach,” Carney lamented.
It’s a neat trick — the White House blasts Republicans for trying to rein in spending, and then the White House takes credit for pretending to keep spending down.
That’s like stealing cake and eating it, too — but it’s a lie any way you slice it.