Mitt Romney pushes his dishonesty to yet another level in new web video

by Jed Lewison

This new Mitt Romney fundraising video is a perfect example of Romney's greatest skill: lying.

• President Obama never said he was one of the four best presidents—not even close. What he said was that he felt his administration's foreign policy and legislative record was as good as any other administration's record, with the exceptions of LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln. But he also said "when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do."
  
  
• President Obama hasn't "piled on nearly as much debt as all the previous presidents combined." The fiscal year for President Obama's first budget started October 1, 2009, at which point the national debt was $11.9 trillion. Since then, it's gone up by $3.6 trillion, a huge amount, but primarily as a result of the Bush tax cuts and the Bush recession. The debt was $5.8 trillion on October 1, 2001, so it grew by $6.1 trillion under his watch even though he took office with a balanced budget.
  
  
• President Obama didn't take "just four years to outspend 220 years of history." Aside from the fact that President Obama hasn't even been in office for four years (and the fact that his first fiscal year started just two-and-a-half years ago), this claim is just absurd. To get a sense of just how ridiculous it is, take a look at the Office of Management and Budget's historical tables. From fiscal years 1940 through 2009 (Bush's last fiscal year), the federal government spent an inflation-adjusted $88.9 trillion (in FY05 dollars). In Obama's first three fiscal years, we're projected to spend $9.4 trillion (again, in FY05 dollars), about 10 percent of the spending since 1940. So even if you exclude 150 years worth of spending, Romney's claim is wildly and laughably false.

Obviously, a stupid fundraising video by Mitt Romney doesn't matter much in the grand scheme. But it's worth pointing out because it is just one more example of how Romney plans to run the most dishonest presidential campaign in American history. Nobody should trust anything he or his campaign says without first independently verifying it's accuracy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/29/1078831/-Mitt-Romney-pushes-his-dishonesty-to-yet-another-level-in-new-web-video