Peasel Prattle: Fish, Barrel, Shoot, Repeat

More from the WaC Files

A few months ago, I started the “What a Crock” part of my blog to spotlight a few people whose opinionated commentary compels me to occasionally challenge them. One of them was former co-worker and rabid right-winger Rich Peasel, who has found my blog and wrote me a nice *concise* 400-word diatribe in my comment area about my oh-so-lengthy 1,683 word response to a letter he had published by the Flint Journal back in September.

Rich is getting the royal treatment here, instead of just publishing his comments as comments, I’m going to do another lengthy post to respond, because unfortunately, that’s what it takes to plow through it. But that’s what “What a Crock” is all about. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

So…let’s get started:

Wow Karen, Sorry I did not run across this blog earlier. It took you 5 pages and 1683 words to refute my 4 paragraphs in the Flint Journal. Maybe you should borrow the president's teleprompter to help in writing a concise blog.

Well, Rich, your stuff is not 100% bullshit, but a rich blend of manure from a wide variety of farm animals. I don’t need a teleprompter, however. Just a lot of Googling and quoting (including you) to make it abundantly clear that manure IS being spread. And I don’t need to be concise on a blog like this…but why don’t you do one yourself and we can see how concise YOU are?

You neglected to mention that the Republicans controlled Congress in the Bush years from 2000 to 2006 before the Democratic took over the Congress with Nancy Pelosi promising PayGo. From 2000 t0 20006 (or 6 years) , the Republican Congress increased the national debt 2.4 trillion. When the 110th Dems took control of the purse strings in 2006, they increase the national debt another 2.6 trillion in only two years. The Bush presidential years totaled 5 trillion in 8 years with two wars and less than 4% unemployment.

It should be noted that Peasel had made a previous comment with regard to a speech given by then-Senator Obama about the deficits being due to a “failure of leadership” by Bush, leading to his contention Obama does not “practice what he preaches.” But he doesn’t realize his contradiction: he blames the previous deficits on the Democratic congress, the current deficits on the Democratic president. His reasoning with regard to “the Republican Congress increase[ing] the national debt [*only*] 2.4 trillion” in six years as compared to the Democrats increasing it 2.6 trillion in two years uses the classic fallacy of “tu quoque” or “you too” argument. He also conveniently ignores the events leading up to the current fiscal crisis that is driving the spending (and no, it wasn’t just the Democrats who caused it). I wonder if a Republican congress would have done any better.

Yes, it's true that PAYGO is a joke, and I’m sure Republicans will be as coy about it as the Democrats. As noted by my favorite fact-checking website, a lot of spending is exempt from PAYGO:

On the first point, several types of spending are exempt from PAYGO. A big one is discretionary spending, which includes everything from defense and homeland security to education, housing and transportation. "Congress could triple the discretionary budget tomorrow without triggering PAYGO," writes Brian Riedl, a budget scholar with the Heritage Foundation. "That's quite a loophole." While spending on these programs is supposed to be controlled by annual targets set in congressional budget plans, PAYGO itself has no effect on them. So, to the extent that "an investment," to use Pelosi's words, is undertaken using discretionary spending, it's not affected by PAYGO. That's one misleading part of her statement.

Meanwhile, any spending increases currently scheduled under the law are also exempt. That means that even as the costs of programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid grow, policymakers are not required to make changes to finance these costs. PAYGO kicks in only if lawmakers seek to create a new entitlement, or to expand or increase existing entitlement benefits beyond what the current formula says.

"Total entitlement spending can continue growing 6 percent annually without triggering PAYGO," Riedl writes. "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid can continue down their path to swallow up the entire federal budget."

Moving on with Rich's commentary…..

Since Obama became President, Obama has increased the national debt almost $4 trillion in just a fraction of over two years (or 26 months at an astronomical average of $154 billion a month )! What did we get for Obama’s 4 trillion? More jobs? More infrastructure? Nope, Obama only managed save a few million jobs.

I’m not sure what point Rich is trying to make here with this non-sequitor. Obama still had Bush’s wars, his prescription drug plan, and the financial debacle which was unwinding. I think he should stay away from the “more jobs”, however, because Bush’s “job creation” was still dismal.  He had six years of a Republican congress—this is what they did. 

But here’s the best part of Rich’s “commentary”--

The Obama presidency spent more money in two years than every president from George Washington through Ronald Reagan. The 111th Democratic Congress spent more money than any Congress in the history of the United States.

Looks like Peasel has been snookered again. He was quoting something said by Eric Cantor last October, for which fact-checking website PolitiFact found his “Pants on Fire.”

We first turned to historical tables from the Office of Management and Budget. One table, conveniently enough, details federal government spending since the birth of the modern Republic in 1789.  We first looked at federal spending for 2009 and the estimate of spending for 2010. Combined, federal spending in those two years amounted to a little more than $7.2 trillion.

We didn't have to add up all 200 years -- you only have to add together 2006, 2007 and 2008 to reach $8.3 trillion, which exceeds the $7.2 trillion of 2009 and 2010. So by that measure, Cantor is wrong.

Want to use the data for 2010 and 2011 instead, under the assumption President Barack Obama was completely in charge for those budget years? Fine. Using those two years ups the total to a bit under $7.6 trillion. The three years before that by themselves total $9.2 trillion. So Cantor is wrong that way, too.

Finally, Rich thinks for some reason I need a history lesson:

“Since you like history Karen, Let’s look at the 16th Amendment. The Progressive Democratic Congress in 1894 passed the first peace time bill imposing an income tax. The Progressive’s logic was the rich were not paying their fair share. In 1909 the 16th amendment was passed authorizing the federal Income tax (supposedly only on the rich). The Dems argued at the time that the income tax would put a check on the $89 million dollar national debt. The Dems argued, “Congress will have to go slow in making appropriations unless the president is to be put in the embarrassing position. The president will not want to increase income tax, and if he had to do it would not hesitate… to put the blame where it belonged. The Income tax provision will be a whip in the hands of the president to keep Congress toeing the mark of economy.” Now that we settled who the tax and spend party is? I will at a later date explain how to reduce the national debt.”

I don’t know how this little piece of history is supposed to settle who the tax and spend party is. Why don’t we discuss something more current and relevant, such as the post-WW2 period. Eisenhower had a top marginal tax rate of 90% and the economy was booming. It was so booming that we became the world economic superpower.

This is a graph of historical marginal tax rates, not average rates, but it's nonetheless intriguing.  Especially when shown side by side with this.

In retrospect, it can be said Obama passed the largest two-year tax cut in history. Which the Republicans voted against, even though they had no problem with it when Bush did it.

Might as well admit it, Rich. Republicans are tax and spend too. In fact, your St. Reagan had more tax increases than anybody else:

There's no debate that Reagan dramatically reduced taxes in 1981, his first year in office. That $38-billion cut would equal $90 billion in today's dollars. At the time, it represented 1.91 percent of the gross domestic product, which is the total value of goods and services produced in the United States during a given year.

But the following year, Reagan raised taxes dramatically and other increases followed.

The 1982 hike alone, which applied to corporations and individuals, increased taxes by about $17 billion, according to a 2006 U.S. Treasury report. The increase represented 0.8 percent of the GDP. That's why it is sometimes billed as the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. That same year he also raised the gasoline tax.

In 1983, Reagan hiked taxes again. This time it was the passage of the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which increased payroll taxes to provide long-term funding for Medicare and Social Security. According to liberal economist Paul Krugman, in a June 8, 2004, commentary in The New York Times, "this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts" for many middle- and low-income families.

Reagan also significantly increased taxes through the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, the Tax Reform of 1986 and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987.

So here’s another five pages to answer Rich’s comments. But I will say I’d like to hear his “explanations” on how to reduce the national debt. This oughta be good.