The House GOPers are shameless liars:
Republicans have been been clear that they do not regard deep, looming cuts to defense and domestic programs — the enforcement mechanism at the heart of last year’s debt limit agreement — as a reason to compromise with Democrats and put real tax revenues into the mix of cuts and reforms required to reduce deficits over time.
But in recent weeks they’ve taken things a step further. They’ve disavowed the so-called “sequester” altogether and handed full responsibility for its existence to President Obama — despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of them voted to implement it last August.
“It was the president who came up with the sequester because he didn’t want the debt limit to get in the way of his campaign,” said House Speaker John Boehner at his weekly press availability last week. “Now these cuts are looming and he’s nowhere to be found.”
Not sure how that could be less true. It’s certainly not what Boehner was saying last November.
“I would feel bound by it,” he said. “It was part of the agreement. And so either we succeed or we are in the sequester. The sequester is ugly. Why? Because we don’t want anybody to go there. That’s why we have to succeed.”
And let’s review what Boehner said when the budget deal was passed almost exactly one year ago.
Boehner: I do. When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy.
Of course, we all knew at the time Republicans would never honor the agreement. But I didn’t expect them to pretend they never voted for it. Sadly, fully 27%-40% of the voters will believe them. Not like anyone on the nightly news is going to call the Republicans out for lying about it. And I imagine the official Village fact-checkers are even now madly parsing the statements looking for that one grammatical twist that makes it at least partly true.
BGinCHI
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
John Boehner.
Hold on, I’m still loading.
ETA: My camera, of course. Big fan.
Groucho48
Boehner is twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
JPL
so where is john’s act blue page? Is it better to give to John’s page rather than online directly to the Pres?
ericblair
It’s not clear whether this means sequestration is off the table, although it seems to read like it’s still on. I guess the goopers figure they’d lose this battle. Again. Maybe they’re somewhat capable of learning.
kindness
Spin used to be part of politics. Some where over the last 10 years the Republicans have figured out that their base could care less if they out and out lie to put their message out and that the MSM won’t call them on it.
So here we are.
mdblanche
What the Grim Weeper meant was by waiting until the last minute to agree to a deal, he got to visit the White House often enough to sample 98% of the bottles in the White House liquor cabinet.
@ericblair: I fail to see how sequestration is off the table at this point. They already voted for it. It was already signed into law. The Supercommittee that could have replaced it didn’t. It’s about a year too late to call backsies. Of course, they could always negotiate a new budget agreemen… sorry I can’t finish that thought without laughing.
General Stuck
The entire idea for a super committee with triggers was first put forth by Mitch Mcconnell, in a panic that the House wingnuts were going to cause default and bring down the world economy. As far as the trigger goes, I am sure that was a mutual agreement for incentive for both sides to give some for a deal in the SC.
The moron republicans simply misread Obama’s steel, probly getting their liberal info from FDL and the like. And thought they could rail road Obama into gutting SS and medicare, and them skip free on any tax hikes for wealthy people.
They were playing by 2003 rules, where they had cowed dems into doing what they wanted by hammering them as weak on defense, thinking Obama would not dare to let such big mil cuts happen. But a funny thing happened on the way to the shit house, and they hadn’t kept up with polling to where Obama owned them on national security with voters in the here and now.
And I don’t know what they were thinking adding the cuts to medicare providers as a trigger, since dems had wanted those all along during the ACA debate, and wingers prevented them in early senate negotiations.
Bunch of fucking clowns, that the public gives never ending mulligans to, for lying like used car salesmen. Maybe cause they are white or something, I dunno.
Litlebritdifrnt
My looney local RWNJ radio host, the one who is keen on saying “the government does not create jobs” and “the government is not the solution the government is the problem” had a guest on and both of them had their panties in a wad about the proposed cuts to defense spending. They were talking about how our local area would be decimated with any kind of defense cuts because guess what? The entire area is almost totally dependent on military spending (you know, the government). I just don’t get these people at all.
PeakVT
It’s a post-truth, post-fact world for the Republicans.
Tonal Crow
Shorter Republicans: The Porkulus was a total waste of money. It didn’t create one job. And the military sequestration will JUST KILL OUR ECONOMY, but the domestic sequestration is FAR SHORT of the CUTS we NEED to INVIGORATE the CONFIDENCE FAIRY.
—
Ain’t no bullshit too high….
—
Tag: Mitt Romney is worse than Sarah Palin.
jrg
After Cantor ran against the Dems “cutting Medicare”, nothing surprises me anymore.
The Republican base is, quite simply, stupid as shit. How else would the GOP Pols get away with howling “cut government spending”, then blame Obama when it actually occurs?
Redshift
The Republicans have clearly been taking lessons from Romney in just openly denying reality. They’re responsible both for the defense sequester being included in the deal, and for the failure of the “super committee,” since the GOP members absolute refusal to consider any tax increases is what doomed that path.
Villago Delenda Est
@jrg:
Mr. jrg? Counsel for shit is on line two. Something about defamation.
Tonal Crow
@jrg:
The Republican base long ago became unable to distinguish the propaganda used to sell Republican policy from the policy itself. And thus the propaganda became the policy. And since propaganda need have no relation to reality, neither does Republican policy. It’s all bullshit — words said to persuade others, without regard to whether they’re true, false, unknown, or unknowable.
—
Tag: Romney’s worse than Sarah Palin.
Xecky Gilchrist
@General Stuck: But a funny thing happened on the way to the shit house, and they hadn’t kept up with polling to where Obama owned them on national security with voters in the here and now.
This happens a lot with Redoublechins, doesn’t it. They get that “WE WON AND HISTORY IS OVER WE WIN 4EVAR” thing going and forget to keep an eye on the goddam weather.
The Moar You Know
Consider this a teachable moment. The GOP I know so well has been doing this only since about 1980 or so.
ericblair
@Litlebritdifrnt:
That’s nothing. Listen to wingnut DoD civilians sometime. They’ll bitch about The Government, ask what The Government has ever done for them (besides their GI Bill benefits, retirement bennies, VA healthcare, and their 30+ years of uninterrupted secure employment). Then they’ll bitch about how Government Workers take our tax dollars and do nothing all day, while they…do nothing all day except bitch about Government Workers and other commies. It’s fascinating in a clinical sense.
SenyorDave
But both sides do it. Because a liberal blogger somewhere lied three months ago (at least they purport to be liberal).
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck: Bunch of fucking clowns, that the public gives never ending mulligans to, for lying like used car salesmen. Maybe cause they are white or something, I dunno.
If it’s white it’s right, for the 27%. Especially now that we have a Pigmented-American in the Oval Office, Teh MOstestest Polarizing President uv AWL TIEM!
Interesting side note, polarized sheets do seem to give everything a “tan” when you look through them.
Litlebritdifrnt
@ericblair:
A quick glance at our local Teabaggers and it is obvious that they are all retired military who are now DOD Civilians. Spoke to one the other day, he retired as a Major and now he is about to retire as a civilian. Yet none of them want to pay taxes, funny dat.
Redshift
@General Stuck: It’s faded for now, but the talking point du jour a couple of weeks ago (at least here in VA) was that the huge cuts in defense (all the fault of the Democrats, of course) were going to supposedly destroy something like a million jobs in Virginia. They were almost gleeful with the idea that this would turn the government employees in Northern Virginia against the Democrats. (You may have noticed this in the rhetoric of our “DC” Republican troll — he never mentions DC-area government employees without the verbal tic of adding “most of whom work in defense.”)
This prospect didn’t seem completely implausible, until I realized that they were making the same mistake they keep making with Social Security — assuming everyone is a me-first IGMFY dick like they are.
In actual reality, while people who work for the government may be concerned about their jobs, they’re not self-centered jerks whose vote can be bought by pledging to fund their job whether the government needs it or not. If they were, they would be working somewhere that paid more.
(Not to mention they know that Republicans have been demonizing all government workers for decades, which makes their sudden concern more than a little hollow.)
Culture of Truth
Senator DeMint said that he and other Tea Party-backed lawmakers told Boehner they would support a six-month spending bill to avoid a fight over government funding.
“Republicans don’t want to shut the government down, particularly conservatives,” DeMint said in a July 25 interview.
bwaaaack
Libby Spencer
@The Moar You Know: They’ve been lying for much longer than that, but still, they used to at least try for some tiny vestige of truthiness. Maybe it’s just selective memory but the “not even trying to hide that we’re lying our faces off at all” seems to me to be a fairly recent phenomenon.
Redshift
@jrg:
You’ll notice they never talk about cutting anything specific except programs for poor people. They talk about “overspending,” but when it comes to action, they always talk about cutting taxes to “force” someone else to make spending cuts. They both want to have programs they don’t like get cut, but they also want to be able to either blame the people making the unpopular cuts or blame the people who fail to make them.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Jon Stewart, if you’re listening, here’s your story for tonight or tomorrow.
dmsilev
Now of course remember that just because John Boehner says there’s a deal doesn’t necessarily mean that the maniacs in the House GOP caucus will go along with that.
Redshift
@Libby Spencer: Yeah, that’s why I compared it to Romney. They used to lie a lot, but they used to care about making it plausible. It wasn’t this nonstop stream of saying things that are easily proven false, and daring someone to say something.
The Bush Administration had a reckless disregard for the truth (they BS’ed constantly), but Romney and the current crop seem to be going out of their way to say things they know are false, over and over.
Jay in Oregon
@Culture of Truth:
I suspect that is what the good Senator meant.
Redshift
@dmsilev: I can’t remember; I guess I’ll have to look up the terms. Is this one of those “deals” that they’re supposed to implement, or one that they’ve already voted on and unless they pass something to change it, it will happen.
I thought it was the latter sort, but I’m not sure.
Boots Day
The GOP is running an ad here that blares FOR JOB GROWTH, REDUCE THE DEBT. Exactly how reducing the debt is going to increase job growth is left for the viewer to figure out.
Culture of Truth
FOR JOB GROWTH MAIL DAVID KOCH $1,000 UNMARKED BILLS
Culture of Truth
YEAH YOU
dmsilev
@Redshift: According to the TPM story, the deal is just between the leadership and is just an in-principle agreement rather than fully fleshed out legislation:
There’s still plenty of opportunity for the GOP maniacs to screw things up.
Libby Spencer
@Redshift: Why wouldn’t they? The teevee media either repeats it endlessly for them, or let’s them get on the teevee and endlessly repeat without asking them to clarify the discrepancies. Repeat the lies often enough, they start to sound truthy.
Easy for us politically engaged peeps to forget the majority of the electorate gets all its news from the teevee. And a whole lot of them don’t even watch the news. They form their choices based solely on the freaking ads.
Turgidson
Boehner didn’t have day-to-day operational control of his brain or voice box at the time he made his prior statements. So we must take what he’s saying today as true.
Also, a spokesman for Boehner noted that Boehner retroactively rejected the deal in a letter written yesterday.
TooManyJens
Hell, I’m old enough to remember some folks on the left taking Boehner at face value about this so they could use it as more proof that Obama was the Worst President Ever.
Upper West
This is an easy one for Kessler of the WaPo:
I rate this as “mostly true.” The quote is:
Boehner is not denying that he voted for it. He’s just saying that it was the President “who came up with the sequester.” “Came up with” is a vague term, and unless we have recordings of every conference that led up to the agreement, we really don’t know who “came up with” the sequester. Until we come up with those recordings, we have to take Boehner’s word that Obama “came up with” the Sequester.
As for Dems who are saying that Boehner is, in fact, lying, I give them four pinocchios, based on my very clear explanation above as to why Boehner’s statement that Obama “came up with it” is “mostly true.”
Besides, gobbledygook, Dems lie, ##%%$@, Q.E.D.”
Patricia Kayden
So when Boehner and Repubs inevitably lie, isn’t it up to Pelosi and Dems to call them out on it? I think the Dems need to be more aggressive in fighting back. The media isn’t going to call out the Repubs, if the Dems sit back and allow their lies to go unchallenged.
TooManyJens
@Upper West: I like how Obama “didn’t want the debt limit to get in the way of his campaign,” as opposed to “didn’t want to crash the economy.” Republicans are still pretending that not raising the debt limit would have no real-world consequences, apparently.
TenguPhule
Hey! Apologize to the shit right now! You’ve no call to insult it like that.
TenguPhule
And when they cry out, who is supposed to deliver the message to the world…the media…
Catch 22.
kimp
<strongThe American public is to blame. Short attention span, short memerory, short life. It's all good.
Falmouth
Here in VA I have recently seen several editorials in different papers questioning the Repubs role in the defense cuts and whether they should be held accountable since they voted for it and should have known what could happen. They were the ones who forced the whole fiasco to occur and the credit rating to be downgraded. These were in somewhat conservative papers. Most Repubs though, are too stupid to question whether it might actually be their fault and will never see those.