Trouble with the Truth

Just the facts, Ma'am!   

I just visited and read Politifact, as I do periodically, (another way "W" and I are different, I read and have no library, he's essentially functionally illiterate and we built him one) Politifact is a conservative newspaper based fact checker. They rate allegations as true, mostly true, half true,  mostly false, false and (Liar Liar) "Pants on Fire."  Interestingly enough, going back to before the last election, there are five "Pants on Fire" rankings, all of statements by Republicans. Remember, this is a conservative site. The outstanding fact is that 40% of these are by Michelle Bachmann!

This wackaloon just can't open her mouth, it seems, without sticking a pedal appendage in it. Of course, she tells these bald faced lies because of several factors, including the fact  that  a) She's a Tea Party Republican, b) She, like her peers attacks the President on any issue just because she can, and of course, c) The most significant reason, she has the intelligence of a  learning disabled ground sloth.

Here for your edification are her recent quotes and the (Conservative, remember) fact checker's decisions.

1: Bachmann said that "scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer's" were it not for "overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators."

          The 10-year goal may or may not be plausible, but if it’s not, there’s wide agreement that the three factors Bachmann mentioned are not the primary obstacles.  Instead, researchers pointed to stagnant funding and the fact that Alzheimer’s is a particularly tricky disease to research, given its slow and stealthy advances. If Bachmann was looking to score points about bureaucracy and taxation, she has made a particularly poor choice of case study. Bachmann has taken a popular theme and assigned it to a complicated health condition, simply to score political points. The experts say her claim is unfounded. We rate her claim Pants on Fire!

2: Bachmann said that of every "three dollars in food stamps for the needy, seven dollars in salaries and pensions (go to) the bureaucrats who are supposed to be taking care of the poor."

           That is ridiculously off-base. Even the broadest calculation of administrative costs for SNAP tops out at 5 percent of program costs, far below the 70 percent Bachmann claims. And the scholar behind the statistic she appears to have used as support said Bachmann has misquoted his work. Pants on Fire!

The queen of bullshit even manages to make Sarah Palin seem informed, no mean feat!

          Another prodigious lie  by House Speaker Boehner is also rated "Pants on Fire." Boehner would almost be an admirable man if he had any flexibility whatsoever and could stop lying to Americans about policy. here is the lie and the response:

House Speaker John Boehner appeared on Meet the Press on March 3, 2013, and told host David Gregory he and his fellow Republicans have done all they can to break the stalemate over deficit reduction. It’s now up to President Barack Obama and the Democrats, Boehner said.
"We've known about this for 16 months. And yet even today, there's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester," he said. "And over the last 10 months, House Republicans have acted twice to replace the sequester."

reply: It didn't take us long to find the White House plan. We found it on the White House home page by clicking the prominent button that says "SEE THE PLAN!" It leads to a page titled "A Balanced Plan to Avert the Sequester and Reduce the Deficit." The plan cites deficit reduction of the past two years, which has included a $600 billion tax hike on wealthy households and $1.4 trillion in discretionary spending cuts. Going forward, Obama proposes $200 billion in reduced defense spending, new efficiencies in health care that would save another $400 billion, eliminating some agriculture subsidies and reforming the postal service, among other proposals. On the revenue side, the plan calls for closing tax loopholes and limiting deductions to 28 percent for the wealthiest Americans. The White House says the new deficit reductions total $1.3 trillion on top of what’s already been enacted.

On Feb. 26, Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski introduced the American Family Economic Protection Act of 2013, which would cancel the $85.3 billion sequester and replace it over several years with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

          With both of those "plans" easily found in official records and news reports, we asked Boehner’s spokesman Brendan Buck how the speaker could claim that none exists. "A plan must demonstrate it has the ability to pass a chamber of Congress to be worth anything. We’ve twice passed a plan. We’re still waiting for the Senate to pass something, anything," Buck told PolitiFact in an email.
          He’s right that sequester replacement plans have twice passed the House, most recently in December 2012 by the previous Congress. The House plan would replace the defense cuts under sequestration, and find savings in other programs, including food stamps, a public health fund that’s part of Obamacare and other savings totalling $1.4 trillion.

It includes no new revenue, which is the primary point of disagreement with Obama and Democrats. (bold and italics are mine)

But we (Politifact, the Conservative, remember, fact checker) find  his definition of the word "plan" to be ridiculously narrow. Congress often considers "plans" that don't pass either chamber. For example, Boehner was unable to muster the votes to pass his "Plan B" for the fiscal cliff, which Buck himself referred to as "a back-up plan to ensure taxes don't rise on American families."

Our ruling

Boehner said that the White House and Democrats in the Senate have no plan to replace the sequester.

He’s wrong on both counts. Obama has a proposal for replacing sequestration cuts with a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. And Senate Democrats have filed a sequester-replacement bill taking a similar approach.

Pants on Fire!