Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

It got a laugh in Iowa. And a laugh in Georgia when he campaigned for Saxby Chambliss. It
killed in Texas when he campaigned for gubernatorial candidate Rick Perry They loved it at
the Simon for Governor luncheon in Santa Clara. And he got laughter and applause at a meeting
of the leaders of the Fiscal Responsibility Coalition in our nation's capital.
To me the joke itself is not as funny as the fact that it's based on a lie. He never said
he'd allow a deficit "only in times of war, in times of economic security as a result of a recession,
or in times of national emergency." He'd never said anything remotely like it during the
campaign. On June 9, 2002, Tim Russert interviewed Budget Director Mitch Daniels on Meet
the Press.
RUSSERT: Now, we have checked everywhere and we've even called the White
House as to when the President said that when he was campaigning in Chicago,
and it didn't happen. The closest he came was when he was asked, "Would you
give up part of your tax cut in order to ensure a balanced budget?" And he said,
"No." But no one ever talked about a war, a recession, and an emergency, the
trifecta.
Daniels responded that he was not "the White House librarian," so he didn't have a record
of Bush saying this during the campaign. A few weeks later, Russert told me that he'd
heard that Ari Fleischer was hopping mad the following Monday morning and wanted to "go
after Russert" for questioning Bush's credibility. Apparently, Karl Rove then took Fleischer
aside and explained that they might want to let this one slide. 1
Even after Russert exposed the lie, Bush continued to tell it.
So now we have record deficits. But the good news is that, just as Bush promised, the 2001
and 2002 tax cuts have provided such a terrific stimulus to our economy that Congress passed
another huge one in 2003.
Seriously, though, we have lost three million jobs in this country in the last two and a
half years. It's gotten so bad it's even affected the children of semi-celebrities, who are usually
immune to economic ups and downs. My daughter, Thomasin, just graduated from col-
1
Funnily enough, one candidate had said something about a war, or a recession, or a national emergency
being an acceptable reason for running a deficit. It wasn't Bush, though. Or Nader. It was Al Gore, who said at
the Economic Club of Detroit on May 8, 1998: "Barring an economic reversal, a national emergency, or a foreign
crisis, we should balance the budget this year, next year, and every year."