Say It Over and Over and Over

Oft-repeated Lies are Still Lies

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”   – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832.

I seriously doubt that you could find a single Republican representative or senator who hasn’t repeated the following statement at least three times, in public, in the last year: “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.”

That statement is not true. It is a lie. Saying it over and over again does not make it anything less than a lie, but say it over and over again they do.

Our real financial problem was caused by a long-term campaign by Republicans to dismantle the safeguards enacted after the stock market crash that started the Great Depression. It took them almost seventy years, but they got it done.

As a direct result, unrestrained financial speculation and downright fraud caused our economy to come perilously close to another crash. Only extreme measures to prop up banks and brokerages and insurance companies in the final days of the Bush Administration kept a total collapse from occurring.

And even though such devastation was prevented, the United States of America lost almost half of its wealth in a few hectic weeks. Houses lost value, companies laid off workers, people defaulted on their mortgages and stopped buying non-essential items, retirement savings were devastated, more companies laid off workers or went broke, more mortgages went into foreclosure, and our economy spiraled down toward the abyss.

In the midst of this furor, Barack Obama replaced George Bush, Jr. In order to stop the spiral, he convinced Congress to pass a huge stimulus program.

It worked. The economy gradually quit falling and started on a slow upward slope, but almost half of what we thought we were worth was simply gone, as if it never existed. Actually, it never did exist. It was simply hot air. It was the emperor’s new clothes. It was smoke and mirrors. It was the inevitable result of unregulated speculation. Instead of letting the extra air out of the system a little at a time, we allowed it to blow out like a tire. Our economy was stuck on the side of the road.

If the bailout of the banks, et al, and the stimulus program had not been approved by Congress, we would have had a second Great Depression. That’s what happened after the 1929 crash. Republicans were in power and they didn’t do anything to stop the downward spiral, so it went all the way down. The bankers and stockbrokers and insurance agents would have borne the brunt of it this time, too, and we would have seen a repeat performance of such people jumping out of windows.

But everyone else would have suffered, as well. We wouldn’t have lost 45% of our economy; we would have lost close to 90%. Everyone would have suffered greatly, and strict new regulations on speculation would have been passed unanimously, or close to it.

As it was, such regulations barely squeaked through Congress. The margin in the Senate was one vote. And Republicans are already doing their best to dismantle those safeguards.

People with good jobs lost them and started collecting unemployment. Those people used to pay income tax; now the government was paying them, but not much. Those people stopped buying IPods and Cadillac SUVs and movie tickets and filet mignon and even potato chips. Their money was gone by the time they paid their mortgages and bought basic food.

It should be no surprise that income tax revenues tanked as income tanked. All of a sudden, the United States government had a revenue problem.

President Obama’s response to this situation was to create jobs, restore financial regulation, and reform the health care industry, which used to take about 5% of our gross domestic product but was gobbling up almost 20% while treating its consumers with heartless indifference. He succeeded in these measures but failed to get Congress to end a Bush-era tax cut for those who made over $250,000 a year. That would have produced more revenue than Republicans have tried to cut.

Let’s look at who was hurt by Obama’s actions: the entire financial speculation industry, the health care industry, and the very rich, to name a few.

Let’s look at who contributes to Republican candidates: the entire financial speculation industry, the health care industry, and the very rich, to name a few.

Congress was forced to continue deficit spending in order to maintain approved government programs. This continued to add to the national debt, which had already exploded during the Bush years because his two wars were “off-budget.”

Two years after Obama was elected, the people of the United States asked themselves if they were better off than they had been, determined that they were definitely worse off, and, with characteristic ignorance of what had caused their distress, gave the House of Representatives to the Republicans in a landslide.

The Republicans hammered at the deficit and the debt in that campaign and promised an agenda to reduce unnecessary government spending and to bring the country more jobs. How are they doing with that?

Well, they haven’t created any jobs. Period. As far as cutting spending, they’ve spent lots of time trying to shut down programs they detest, like family planning, infant nutrition, Food Stamps, Medicaid, public broadcasting, and the like, while ignoring the waste within the military behemoth. House Republicans even voted to overturn the health care act, which would take us back to the status quo ante of spiraling costs and patient abuse.

We’re spending too much! they groan. Our children and grandchildren will have to pay our bills! Don’t raise taxes! We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem!

Since Saint Ronald Reagan laid out the talking points thirty years ago the richest of the rich in this country have made obscene gains at the expense of a majority of our people. Many of the latter are people who used to be comfortably middle-class, who paid their taxes and didn’t need Food Stamps or LIHEAP or unemployment. Things aren’t working out very well for them.

Unfortunately, many of those in this situation have little historical awareness. They have chosen to blame Obama and the Democrats for their distress and have run to the welcoming arms of the Republicans, who caused all of this to happen.

Abraham Lincoln said that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but I would add that you can sure fool a lot of them most of the time. I want to scream at these people and tell them that the very people they are voting for are the ones who cut their net worth in half, made them lose their jobs, and are now tilting at windmills in the House.

But I refrain from screaming. I still have faith that they will figure this out for themselves.

You can’t fool all the people all of the time. You can’t fool all the people all of the time. Maybe if I keep repeating it…