Associated Press
Romney once told a fib this big.
It's not surprising that Mitt Romney's campaign was unimpressed with the new White House budget plan. What was surprising was how the campaign chose to express that dissatisfaction.
Here's a statement Team Romney sent to reporters yesterday morning:
"This week, President Obama will release a budget that won't take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis. The president has failed to offer a single serious idea to save Social Security and is the only president in modern history to cut Medicare benefits for seniors."
Notice, there are no ellipses between the sentences. As Paul Krugman noted, "Yep, Obama has failed to resolve the problem of excessive entitlement spending; furthermore, he's cutting entitlement spending!"
And while the contradiction made the campaign's statement amusing, there are a couple of other angles to keep in mind.
First, when Romney claims Obama "cut Medicare benefits," he's not telling the truth. As has been explained many times before, the Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act come from slowing projected growth in the future. The money comes from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries, and no one's benefits have been cut at all.
Either Romney doesn't understand these details, or he understands them perfectly and he's trying to mislead.
Second, it's ironic for Romney to bring up entitlements anyway. He has, after all, endorsed privatization plans for Social Security, while also offering his enthusiastic endorsement of Paul Ryan's budget plan, which ends Medicare altogether and replaces it with a voucher scheme.
Taken together, over the course of just two sentences, Romney contradicted his own talking points, lied about the Affordable Care Act, and engaged in some remarkable hypocrisy, accusing Obama of doing what Romney himself intends to do.
That's pretty impressive for one paragraph.
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When someone writes the obituary for the Romney campaign - whether it's this summer or after the November election (depending on when Mitt implodes) - his statement about the budget should be on the fronticepiece of the book. It's as clever a "magic bullet" that goes in four directions at once as the one that Arlen Specter wrote about in the Warren Commission report.
Steve, when you posted about this earlier you indicated a call was in the Romney headquarters asking for clarification. Did the campaign ever call back to made sense out of the attirubted quote?
Face it: Romney is a turkey!
That is an insult to Turkeys.
What is good for the goose. Thing is both sides do it, but this being MSNBC you are only hearing Liberals are the Chosen people, Conservatives only want to end abortion to eat live babies. It's all turned into a sporting event and is about scoring points, no longer about what is
rightcorrect.Hyperbole, much? Seriously, Liberals accuse Conservatives of wanting to eat live babies?!
Not trying to score any points, are you?
Sounds to me as if you are a part of the problem.
Red herring arguments are fun aren't they Eric? When you can't argue the case against then try to talk about something else.
Seriously? >.< Incoherence doesn't suddenly make conservatives seem smarter *sigh*
No - as George Carlin famously said, conservatives want live babies to grow up so they can turn them into dead soldiers.
Hilarious title, Steve.
These guys sound like an old girlfriend. When she said no she meant yes,I never caught on to it then either.
this was funny
Yes but if a truth falls outside the Faux Nooze bubble , is it heard by anyone inside?
He's playing to the base who only want to hear stuff that reinforces the lies Faux has already told them for the last 3 years.
Romney like the rest of the GOP suffers from schezophrenia!
If only logic and reason could win the debate. Unfortunately the GOP isn't trying to appeal to reasonable voters. They are going after the faithful with the mantra's that have been developed over decades by the right wing think tanks and bumper sticker sloganeers.
The message is built around fear. Fear is not based on reason and neither is Romney's pitch
If it is illegal to lie to Congress, it ought to be illegal to lie to the American people. We employ these people. If they are going to lie on their employment application, they've already disqualified themselves for the job. I would prefer that they quit telling us what they are going to do (unverifiable) and tell us what they believe and think is right and good. Let us decide if those attributes will lead in the direction we want to go.
Actually as civil servants they could be terminated for lying on their application. But then I guess they excluded themselves from the same code of ethics they require of all other civil service employees.
Paul, I consider their campaign ads and actions to be their job application. No doubt you are right, they would just change the rules to suit them.
I consider the voting booth to be the Governing body of the USA during Federal elections , yet we charge people with voter fraud if they toss out lawfully obtained registrations or use other means to rig elections. Treason would seem to be the more fitting charge to me.
If you find such statements inconsistent, then obviously you just don't know how campaigns are supposed to work. The idea is to accuse your opponent of every bad thing you can think of and see what sticks.
If you can come up with more bad things than the other guy (and don't actually end up in a slander suit), you win!
Is it just me, or does the picture make Mitt look like he is doing a Night at the Improv routine?
We all know Mitt speaks out of both sides of his mouth. When running for governor of Mass he spoke out of the left side. While running for the GOP nomination, he speaks out of the right side.
And the caption under the picture is either wrong or needs clarification. "Romney once told a lie this big." Really - just once? That is only true if all the other lies were of different sizes (probably all larger).
Really... we have to deal with this for another 9 months of these GOP losers.... they all are the misfits of there party. Its time for every-one to realize just because you are from another party doesn't mean you have to put up with it!!! OBAMA 2012!!!
Mr. Benen,
You should pay attention to the melodious flow of words from the lips of Mitt Romney and realize that he is a serious poet who should be given full consideration by President Obama as the next poet laureat for our nation.
I can contradict myself, tell multiple lies, and provide a healthy dose of hypocracy in much less than 46 words; but I am not a poet like Mittens.
I am symphathetic to the difficulties of the unemployed middle class older worker. As Mittens is still going to be unemployed after November, maybe we should start a campaign to ask President Obama to appoint him now to the job of poet laureat or to help get him one of those janitor jobs that Newt wants to take away from unions.
But Mitt isn't worried about the "very poor," because they already have a safety net. There's the third contradiction ... he seems to imply that entitlement programs are fine just the way they are.
This is the bread and butter of Mitt Romney's terrifically flawed campaign. He offers nothing but overheated rhetoric attacking President Obama and every single thing he has accomplished, yet fails to offer a viable alternative as to what a prospective President Romney would do. He has never released an economic plan, or a plan to cut the deficit, or a plan to protect the safety net. His only solution on Medicare is to kill it completely, so his criticism of Obama for "cutting" it is bizarre. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
Ya think? ;~/
Maybe we should hold a fund-raiser for the multi-millionaire?
Extra points to any who get the irony.
Show all work.
More of Mittochio's lies it's a wonder that his nose isn't 20 feet long by now. If this guy gets into office this country is in big trouble.
Has every Republican fallen off the right side of their flat earth? Or is the air in the bubble getting really stale?
Mitt Romney is a one man circular firing squad.
The article link says that Romney was "technically correct" (in his previous statement). This play with numbers and language has long been a part of politics (and from my view, is misleading on both sides). They call a reduction in proposed spending a "cut" and a dozen or so other things that don't tell the whole picture.
But, President Obama continues to increase deficit spending. We are going farther and farther into debt and someone has to propose and follow through with something that corrects this course.
I agree, but w/ one addendum: deficit spending does not necessarily contribute to long term debt. It does contribute to short term debt and yes, when we're talking about countries and economies, there is a tangible difference between the two. Many times reducing spending in the short term (closing deficits) will result in increases in long term debt. Other times it will not. Dishonestly treating the situation as if it's not as nuanced as it actually is, is not healthy or correct for either party.
As someone who has a hard time keeping up with the Maddow Blog, I'm wondering if Steve has continued with the Romney's Top Lies of the Week posting he did over at PA. Still doing it here, or was it just too easy?
One sentence came out of the right side of Romney's mouth and the other sentence came out of the left side of his mouth. It is a simple case of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
But seriously, folks. Does any one in any year pay any attention to the President's Proposed Budget? Don't everyone answer at once.
Me? Like The Lorax I think of the trees. All those poor trees. The Horror ... The Horror.