There he goes again

It’s one thing to say something that’s not true and hope you’ll get away with it. It’s another to get caught in a lie, but to go ahead and repeat it over and over again.

Last week, Newsday discovered that the president had been citing a report that supported his tax cut plan, despite the fact that the report didn’t actually exist. To summarize, the White House had been bragging about a new survey from the Blue Chip Economic Forecast, which the administration said forecasted the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year, but only if Congress passed the president’s tax cut proposal. The problem was the Blue Chip Economic Forecast hadn’t made such a prediction, and the Forecast’s editor complained to the White House about the error.

Plenty of administration critics — including Carpetbagger — had some fun with the exposed lie and moved on. We figured it would just be another fun example of the Bush White House being careless with the truth.

The president, however, decided on a different approach. Bush has continued to cite the economic report that doesn’t exist.

Newsday uncovered the White House’s falsehood on Sunday, Feb. 23. However, as Spinsanity (a great non-partisan blog detailing political falsehoods) notes today, Bush has cited the non-existent report twice since then.

On Feb. 24, the day after the Newsday report, Bush said, “[T]hese economists predicted in the blue chip forecast that the economy would grow at 3.3 percent if the Congress responded to a stimulative package.” Let’s assume that the White House was having trouble keeping up with its reading and didn’t realize the president was wrong about the forecast.

Even giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, there was no reason for him to use the forecast again three days later. “A lot of the experts are projecting growth at 3.3 percent,” Bush said on Feb. 27, obviously still touting the Blue Chip Forecast. “Inherent in their projections is that Congress pass a stimulus package, fiscal stimulus package.”

The president cites a forecast that doesn’t exist, gets called on it, but keeps on citing it. Amazing.

This is all-too-familiar territory for Bush. For nearly a year, Bush told audiences that he announced, during the 2000 campaign, that he’d only allow the budget to run deficits if there was a recession, a national emergency, or a war. He would joke that he didn’t know we’d hit a “trifecta” by having all three. The New Republic discovered that Bush never said any such thing, and exposed the “trifecta” story as a lie.

Even after it had been exposed as a lie, Bush used the story 11 additional times in public speeches before his advisers finally got him to stop using the made up anecdote. As The New Republic explained, he had to keep making excuses for his huge deficits — even with a discredited story — to try and get his administration “off the hook for the mountain of economic dishonesty he shoveled in order to pass the tax cut” in 2001.

Does Bush not know the truth or not care? I know people who hated Clinton because he lied about sex, and many who hated Gore because the media made him out to be a “serial fibber,” but few politicians in America can match Bush’s indifference for telling the public the truth.