Debunking the GOP Lie About the Deficit

There's not much that can be done when journalists don't do their jobs. Or at least don't do their job when they are expected most to do their job. Case in point was all of last week when Republicans went to the airwaves blaming President Obama for increasing the deficit from 3.2% of GDP to over 10%.  Here's Minority Leader Mitch McConnel doing just that on the "very liberal" CNN:

"The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it's almost 10 percent."

Very simply put, that's a lie. No truth to it at all.

Here's another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn and Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, doing the very same thing on the "ultra liberal" NBC:

"You know, in the last year that President Bush was in office, 2008, the deficit was 3.2 percent of the gross domestic product. Today it's 10 percent."

Again, simply put.  President Obama has not more than tripled the deficit.  This so-called liberal media isn't doing it's job very well now is it? The facts are when Obama took office the budget deficit was at $1.3 trillion.  CBO scores the next fiscal year budget deficit to be $1.3 trillion.

That's just half the problem with the GOP lying machine, however. Both Republicans claim that when George Bush left office the deficit was a meager 3.2% of GDP.  NO IT WAS NOT.  When Bush left office the budget deficit was $1.3 trillion, the amount President Obama inherited.  The same amount that Republicans are now so concerned about by crying that it's too much.  Yes it's too much, and it's because of 8 years of a Republican administration.  Quit with the lying!

Republicans know they are lying when they say this stuff and journalists know too. Yet it continues daily. Republicans are hoping that they are not fact-checked (and they aren't) so that people will really believe that things weren't so bad when the GOP was in power. If they are fact-checked, which is rare, Republicans do their usual routine of questioning the fact-checker's patriotism and end the discussion by stating whoever it is that corrects them is obviously not a Serious and/or Real American.

Looks like by now the media would be on to Republican behavior and its constant lying.  Instead, though, they fear that calling them out for their lies would result in the same tiring tirade of being called a liberal rag.  It's just easier to let them spout their lies. (H/T Steve Benen)