fact check

The AP has put out a fact check of President Obama’s claim last night that everything in his jobs program is paid for:

resident Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future - the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals - don't roll it back.

Apparently the Constitution has changed since President Obama took office. I thought that every program laid out by every President since the start of our country was dependent upon a Congress that the President doesn’t control? As matter of fact the Constitution says that and has since day one. Congress is a separate and independent branch of Government. Of course there are times when the President’s party controls both chambers, but that still doesn’t mean the President controls the Congress. That was obvious in 2009-2010, when Republicans launched a record number of filibusters against the democratically controlled Senate.

But even if it isn’t paid for, so what? The trillions of dollars the Bush tax cuts have cost us wasn’t paid for either, yet Republicans still passed them and keep them alive. Where was all the complaining that these had to be paid for? Hell – they are one of the biggest contributors to the national debt.

John McCain blasted off a campaign email last night that stated the following:

During his first year in office, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have amassed a $12.4 trillion deficit that is growing each day.

A trillion dollars a month? Wow that’s amazing for a party that hasn’t accomplished that much due to Republican obstructionism. So we need to mark that as a flat out lie.

But it gets even better. This is from Media Matter’s fact check:

In fact, the FY 2009 deficit, which totaled $1.4 trillion, was already estimated to be $1.2 trillion when Obama came into office and "virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years" are due either to policies implemented under President Bush or to the recession, which began during Bush's tenure, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Now what big policy implemented under Bush would have raised it so much? Maybe TARP – the bank bailout. And yes this would be the very same bank bailout that McCain suspended his campaign to go to Washington and help make sure it passed.

I would much rather see some tea bagger win McCain’s seat than him get sent back for another term. This guy isn’t just a hypocrite – he’s a flat out liar.

(h/t Cesca)