Bob Cesca points to this line from Newt Gingrich:

GINGRICH: “When I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets.”

As Bob points out, we only had two, not four balanced budgets.

But there is something else here that has been eating away at me. More and more the right is trying to make it out that Newt was the sole man responsible for the balanced budget. They won’t mention President Clinton and that it involved negotiations. Somehow the Speaker of the House has become the budget writer for the United States under these people.

So why haven’t we had one since? In the 14 years since the time Newt refers to ten of those years we had a Republican Speaker. Neither Dennis Hastert nor John Boehner have produced a balanced budget. During most of Hastert’s term we also had a Republican controlled Senate and White House. Why no balanced budget?

I’m not going to get on Newt for lying. We know this is a man that has a hard time ever telling the truth. What does get me is how many people on the right buy into this line of bullshit. To those people they need to ask themselves this; if the Speaker is the man who balances the budget and that is what we need right now, then why isn’t Newt running for Congress? I think we all know the answer to that….