Top Five Obama Lies of 2009

Posted by Enrique on 12.30.2009

Change we don’t need



I seem to recall reading somewhere that people like to read list-based articles when they browse the web. There are several reasons: the headline reassuringly promises what the article contains; lists can be read quickly; it's fun to argue about lists; it's fun to think about what you'd put on the list. They're easy on the reader, and easy on the writer. Everybody wins.

With that in mind, I've put together my top five lies of President Barack Obama of 2009. I'll make the disclaimer that Obama's lies aren't really much worse than you'd expect from a powerful elected official from Chicago, and there's a chance that when he told them he wasn't being willfully deceptive per se. On the other hand, what's he done lately to earn the benefit of doubt?

The story so far…

(Note: Not all lies below were told during 2009. Some were promises made previously that were broken in 2009. So, you know, FYI, that's the standard I'm operating under here. Like I said, easy on the writer.)


5. "When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it."

Now that he's been president for a year, it's funny to reminisce about candidate Obama's high ideals. Apparently, at one point, this Obama fellow just tossed out this "I'll put bills online before I sign them" line on a whim. He must have thought it sounded good at the time, but I can't imagine he ever intended to keep it. It's one of those pie-in-sky platitudes politicians toss out because they don't expect anyone to hold them to it.

So let's have a laugh and hold him to it. The first major legislation executed by the Chief Executive was the so-called stimulus act in February. With a price tag of $787 billion, and at a length of over 400 pages, this was precisely the type of bill worthy of five days of public scrutiny. As it happened, Congress passed the bill late on a Friday, and Obama signed it on a Tuesday. It's nice they gave us the weekend to work on it, but would it have been too much to delay signing it for a few more days, just to keep up appearances? The infamous healthcare reform bill that just passed Congress is a couple thousand pages long. Does anyone believe the public will have sufficient time to scrutinize the final version before Obama puts his autograph on it? In the internet age, there's no excuse for a government not to put bills online and allow people enough time to read them.


4. "I will not sign a [healthcare reform] plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future. I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period."

He says it twice, as if to taunt us. The purported cost of the recently-passed healthcare reform bill is in the neighborhood of $850 billion. It would take a wild imagination and/or shady accounting tricks to claim such a bill won't add to the deficit, not to mention complete ignorance of the entire recorded history of the federal government's financial wisdom. Government programs/projects that come in under budget are exceedingly rare, and entitlements achieving cost savings is bloody un-fucking-heard of.

Now, you may have heard the Congressional Budget Office has said health care reform won't add to the deficit in the first ten years. Fair enough, but that depends on what you mean by the first ten years. Most of the spending doesn't begin until 2014, so if you start counting with 2010, then the bill is, ahem, deficit neutral (and that's assuming many unpopular cost-cutting measures will be enacted at some unspecified future point). If you start counting in 2014, the CBO numbers add up to $1.8 trillion. I'm usually skeptical of information that comes from government agencies, but when they talk about spending money, I find them pretty convincing.


3. "Let me be clear: The United States government has no interest in running GM. We have no intention of running GM."

This one was notable for its sheer piss-in-your-ear-and-tell-you-it's-raining brazenness. Again, he says it twice, just to rub our pudgy faces in it. Two paragraphs earlier, he announced Rick Wagoner was "stepping aside" as GM's Chairman and CEO. In fairness, GM is a longstanding welfare queen, and the government's de facto ownership of GM didn't start on Obama's watch. But Obama's too smart not to know he was bullshitting. HE SAID IT TWICE.

In GM news, the company posted a $1.15 billion loss in the Q3 2009, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office has said it doesn't expect their $50 billion bailout to ever be fully repaid. But there is some good news. I just saved a bunch of mon Some guy named Fritz Henderson, who happens to be GM's current CEO, "told reporters it is his ‘mission' to prove the [GAO] wrong." He sounds like a plucky fellow. I wish him well.

What? Henderson resigned two weeks after he said that? Mission accomplished, so to speak. At least he didn't say it twice.


2. "Our [stimulus] plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs. 90 percent of these jobs will be created in the private sector."

Yes, of course. And then there was the pre-presidential white paper with the infamous graph that suggested the stimulus would help cap unemployment at 8.0%. It's probably not fair for me to hold Obama accountable for politically-motivated economic projections that are never right, no matter who makes them. But it would be fair for me to hold him accountable for his sleazy insinuation that government stimulus would primarily benefit the private sector.

As Michael Barone notes, public employment has remained largely constant in 2009, while private sector employment declined. In addition, about one-third of the $787 billion stimulus was meant for state and local governments. I'm no statistician, but Obama's idea of 90% seems to conflict with mine. Maybe it's me. Is it me?


1. "If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime – not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing. Because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle-class."

Longtime readers will know this particular lie is dear to my heart. After being in office less than one month, Obama raised the federal tax on cigarettes by 71 cents to $1.00 per pack. Since Obama is a former (?) smoker himself, I find it hard to believe he doesn't know cigarette taxes primarily affect middle- and low-income Americans. This lie is number one not only because of how quickly it became manifest once Obama was in power, but because he's a bloody traitor.

Now, I understand some Americans don't think smokers are "real" poor people or whatever. But even if you don't count cigarettes, Obama's scheduled to break his tax promise on the first day of 2010, when 50 previously-enacted tax cuts will expire. So there.

In any event, I think we can all agree 2009 was crap. But at the same time, it had its moments. And really, it could have been worse. It could always be worse. Best wishes for a not-worse 2010, dear readers.