From Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo:
It's nice to see the GOP surrogates are doing a little pre-State of the Union warm-up by spouting a new crop of ridiculous lies and comical rewritings of history.
Here for instance is serial bamboozler and former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie just moments ago on MSNBC waxing poetic about President Bush's plan to balance the budget by 2012 and claiming that the last time the budget was balanced was in 1998.
Unlike the more established Republican tradition of chat show lying, I'm not even sure what it is this goof is trying to hang his hat on with this whopper. Back on planet earth we know that the budget became balanced during the Clinton presidency and remained in balance until he left office in 2001.
According to this October 24th, 2000 article at CNN.com, the 1999 budget surplus was $69.2 billion; 1999 was $124.4 billion; and 2000 was $237 billion.
President Bush oversaw the return to massive deficits.
So really what Gillespie should have said was that it was great that President Bush is considering balancing the budget since that hasn't happened since he became president after there had been three consecutive years of budget surprluses and plunged the country right back into deficits. But when you hear how that sounds I guess I can understand why he just decided to lie instead.
-- Josh Marshall
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