Friday’s debate in St. Louis was littered with some of Bush’s all-time greatest misstatements of fact. There were a handful of odd slips of the tongue, such as his reference to “rumors on the Internets,” which reportedly got the press room chuckling, but many more demonstrable, objective, Grade A whoppers. The president acted as if he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the truth.
There were also a few bizarre comments, such as his confusion over the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court case, his “plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million” (without saying filling in the appropriate noun), his “want some wood?” silliness, and his assertion that stem cell research is the “destruction of life,” which he’s against, and limited public research into stem cell research, which he’s for.
But, once again, Bush’s detachment from the truth reached new depths Friday night, as the president lied about almost every area of public policy. Here’s the Top 10 list of my favorite Bush whoppers from the second debate, though there are plenty more where these came from (i.e., the transcript).
Whopper #1: “Of course, we’re going to find Osama bin Laden. We’ve already got 75 percent of his people.”
Utter and complete nonsense. Bush keeps repeating this made-up number, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not true. As an official with the 9/11 Commission said, this is a number “pulled out of somebody’s orifice.”
Whopper #2: “Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies.”
It’s the kind of comment that makes me worry about Bush’s sanity. And our collective safety with him in the Oval Office.
Whopper #3: “Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it’s less than 1 percent, because we’re working together to try to bring this deficit under control.”
A breathtaking lie. He hasn’t cut non-defense discretionary spending; he’s increased it — his spending his triple the level of the Clinton administration. Moreover, Bush has the highest level of non-defense discretionary spending of any of the last six presidents.
Whopper #4: “[Kerry] voted 98 times to raise taxes. I mean, these aren’t make-up figures.”
As luck would have it, these are made-up figures.
Whopper #5: “[M]y opponent’s right, we need good intelligence. It’s also a curious thing for him to say since right after 1993 he voted to cut the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion.”
Bush is still peddling this garbage? Kerry proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget in 1995 (about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years) dealing exclusively with unspent money. At the same time, congressional Republicans voted for a $3.8 billion cut to the same budget. Indeed, Peter Goss, Bush’s hand-picked CIA director, wanted an even bigger cut to the same intelligence budget. By Bush’s logic, congressional Republicans and his own director of central intelligence are against “good intelligence.”
Whopper #6: “When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn’t kill you. And that’s why the FDA and that’s why the surgeon general are looking very carefully to make sure it can be done in a safe way.”
The FDA has already looked at this. Indeed, his own FDA chairman announced three years ago that it would cost just $58 million a year to establish a safe reimportation system that would then save seniors billions a year on medicine. (Not bad for a policy that could save American families billions of dollars a year.) Bush has fought reimportation anyway.
Whopper #7: “[T]he National Journal named Senator Kennedy the most liberal senator of all.”
First of all, Bush should know his opponent’s last name isn’t Kennedy. Secondly, and more importantly, the National Journal claim is patently absurd. Even Charles Green, the publication’s editor, has called the attack “misleading — or just plain wrong,”
Whopper #8: “The quality of the air’s cleaner since I’ve been the president.”
This whopper, which Bush said twice during the debate, is only true if you go out of your way to exclude greenhouses gases as pollution.
Whopper #9: “My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves.”
Anyone with a pulse and an IQ above 30 knows that isn’t what Kerry said, but the president, who presumably has both a pulse and a reasonably humble IQ keeps saying it anyway.
Whopper #10: “Sanctions were not working…. That’s what the Duelfer report showed.”
Bush is just lying blatantly and hoping Americans won’t know the difference. The Duelfer report actually says the exact opposite and concludes that sanctions were working to contain Saddam Hussein. I’m guessing Bush hasn’t actually looked at the report yet; he’s not so much into the whole “reading thing.”
Honorable mentions of lies that just missed my Top 10 list include:
* “Do you realize, 900,000 small businesses will be taxed under his plan because most small businesses are Subchapter S corps or limited partnerships, and they pay tax at the individual income tax level?” — which is patently false.
* “[Kerry’s] proposed $2.2 trillion in new spending, and he says he going to tax the rich to close the tax gap” — which is, at best, misleading since Bush has proposed $3 trillion in new spending himself.
* “[Kerry] said he’s going to have a novel health care plan. You know what it is? The federal government is going to run it…. Government-sponsored health care would lead to rationing. It would ruin the quality of health care in America” — which is patently false and an offensive scare tactic. In fact, literally everything Bush has said about Kerry’s health care plan is wrong.
* “[W]e’ve tripled the homeland security budget from $10 billion to $30 billion” — which clearly has not happened.
Remember, credibility is on the ballot this Election Day.