The latest strategy of the Republicans is crystal clear: pretend that the last 12 years never happened, and instead focus their energies on portraying the Democrats as the ones who ran up the deficit, increased federal spending to outrageous new heights, and created a huge new government bureaucracy.
All these things that were the result of Republican rule are now going to be be subtly blamed on the Democrats, using the same tactics that the Bushies used to convince people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq was behind the September 11 attacks.
For instance, today Bush is suddenly portraying himself as fiscally responsible, saying that he will balance the federal budget by 2012 — in other words, four years after he leaves office — and at the same time managed to portray the Democrats as big spenders, even though they haven’t even taken the reins yet. This from the man who is spending billions every day on a personal war.
Speaking a day before the new Democratic-controlled Congress is sworn in, Bush said an important lesson from the November midterm elections was that voters want to end the “secretive process” of inserting pet projects known as “earmarks” into spending measures, costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year. He said some earmarks are not even slipped into legislation but are “stuffed into committee reports that have never been passed and are never signed into law.”
Note how this simple statement makes it sound like the Democrats were the ones inserting pork barrel earmarks into bills. In reality, it was the Republicans bellying up to the bar during their stranglehold on Congress.
“Congress needs to adopt real reform that requires full disclosure of the sponsors, the costs, the recipients and the justifications for every earmark. Congress needs to stop the practice of concealing earmarks in so-called report language. And Congress needs to cut the number and cost of earmarks next year by at least half.”
Of course, there must be an ulterior motive to Bush’s call for ethics, right?
Bush also urged Congress to give him the power of a line-item veto, a tool that he said 43 of the nation’s governors have at their disposal to eliminate excessive spending.
Aha! And do we really think that Bush would use such power to cut spending? I think not. Let’s hope that this Congress will start clawing back their constitutional powers and stop letting them be transferred to the executive branch.
Repeating a lie often enough makes people believe it. Or will it not work this time? Even die-hard Republicans have had enough of this Bush tactic.
“It’s time to set aside politics and focus on the future.”
Yeah, right. You first.
