I like Bill Maher, and I often very much enjoy his HBO show. His rants at the end are often compelling ways to make a common sense presentation on real issues. Sometimes, they're too infected by his own personal bugaboos and the arguments don't work, but any review of the weekly diaries here about his show will find many examples of Maher hitting the right notes especially to illuminate GOP folly.
However, he's no Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart. He's neither as funny, smart, or incisive, and he's not as well-prepared. He won't be a good stand-in for those giants of political satire who won't be playing the roles they have played in years past in skewering the usual conservative bull pucky. One way in which Maher's show really fails to carry the same standard is that there's no proverbial 'videotape.' It's aired live and that leaves no chance for the host to correct the record when conservative guests mislead the audience or even tell outright lies and assert they are undeniable "facts."
On Friday night, there was a classic assertion of a GOP zombie lie that refuses to die because it's just not challenged by well-meaning, but uninformed TV interrogators/hosts. So, I'm setting the record straight here...and maybe Bill Maher will take the initiative to do the same next week on his show. At the risk of pimping my own diary, if we can get this and keep it on the Rec List, maybe we can get the attention of the folks at Bill Maher's show to take notice and tell the truth about this zombie lie on his show next week.
During the regular panel discussion last night, as host, Bill Maher started a discussion about about growing inequality and the need to raise taxes on the wealthiest. Maher wondering why GOP candidates won't call the Bush tax cuts a mistake. Maher tried to frame the issue with a point-blank question directed at one of his panelists, GOP strategist and TV talking head, Ron Christie. Maher asked Christie if the Bush tax cuts were "a good idea?" In response -- in defense of those tax cuts -- Christie offered up an oft-heard and too rarely challenged lie. Christie said:
"If you look at the revenue that came in after the 2001 and after the 2003 Bush tax rate cuts, yes, there was more revenue coming into the Treasury. That's a fact."
Christie's comment was followed by a long uncomfortable silence. Maher finally replied, not by challenging this "fact," but by saying that revenue didn't make its way to most people.
I don't think that's the right response, but I don't blame Bill for not knowing the facts. What Christie called a "fact" is not really a fact. It is certainly misleading, and could even be be fairly called "untrue" or even a "lie." Anyone calling that a "fact" is either uninformed, delusional or a liar. Or, perhaps some combination of the above.
I am hoping to convince Bill Maher to set the record straight next week -- or, at least, to provide the right ammunition for a TV talk host the next time some GOP salesman tries to pass off this rubbish as "fact." They need to be called out on this, so the American voter can know the truth.
As the linked chart clearly demonstrates, Christie's assertion is a misleading falsehood, whether you use the more meaningful "adjusted (for inflation) dollars" or even the actual (unadjusted) "current receipts."
Christie references 2 Bush tax cuts. 2001 and 2003. Christie's comment lumps in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which enhances the misleading nature of his assertion. If he's suggesting that both tax cuts increased revenue, then it's an outright lie. If you look at the numbers, the 2001 tax cuts had no positive impact, and might have had negative impact, since revenues went down.
If Christie is suggesting that the 2003 tax cuts (maybe in some delayed combination with the 2001 cuts) increased revenue, it's probably a false cause and effect presentation, but it's also almost irrelevant in comparison to the Presidents preceding and following George W. Bush. While revenues did increase after the 2003 cuts, as will be shown, it was hardly a huge impact, and pales compared with revenue growth over the course of both the Clinton and Obama Administrations.
Using the then current dollars, receipts went down each year from 2000 to 2003, before slightly rebounding in 2004. It wasn't until 2005 that receipts in a Bush year (slightly) exceeded the receipts in Clinton's final full year. More revealingly, though, if you refer to the columns that reflect inflation-adjusted "2009 dollars," you can see how misleading, untrue and utterly pointless Christie's statement was...and how ineffective Bush's tax policy really was.
The inflation-adjusted dollars metric shows the same yearly decline from 2000 to 2003, except the fall-off is more precipitous. Instead of increasing over those years as Christie claimed, in inflation-adjusted dollars, IRS receipts fell almost 15% from 2001 to 2003. If you compare with 2000, receipts in 2003 were down a full 18%. That's a fact.
The abject failure of the Bush tax cuts is further proved by diving a little further into the actual facts -- the real numbers. It is true that even using inflation-adjusted dollars, there is a slight tick upwards in 2004 receipts, above the especially weak receipts in 2003. However, receipts in 2004 were still even weaker than they had been in the down year of 2002. That's hardly a ringing endorsement of the economy-building effects of Bush's 2001 tax cuts. In inflation-adjusted dollars, tax receipts don't exceed the 2000 or 2001 levels until 2006.
What Ron Christie said was wrong and quite probably a deliberately misleading statement.
In fact, it would not be too harsh to call Christie's assertion a lie.
If you're comparing 2004 to earlier Bush years that followed the Bush 2001 tax cut, then technically, the 2003 tax cuts were followed by increased revenue. Anyone with any common sense would have to agree that's a meaningless and deliberately misleading comparison. It's especially misleading when you're suggesting, as Christie did, that both tax cuts produced increased revenue. Revenue in real, inflation-adjusted dollars was significantly lower after the 2001 cuts and didn't fully recover until 2006.
Are you really attributing that much delayed recovery to the "success" of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, Mr. Christie? Or, can we call your "fact" what it is: a lie?
Maybe Christie is in line with the Goebbels' philosophy that if you say a big enough lie often enough and assert it confidently as a fact, people will believe it. Or, maybe he's just bought into a lie told him by someone else. Either way, at the root of it, is a lie meant to fool the American people, to further policies that have been tried and failed.
Tax receipts in the Bush years peaked in 2007. Even picking the peak Bush year, 2007 (before the economic meltdown in 2008 for which Bush's policies are at least somewhat responsible), tax receipts under Bush increased from the first year to their highest point, by about ten percent. 10% (adjusted for inflation). If you compare the 2007 receipts to the final Clinton year, receipts actually only went up by about 5%. Five percent. And, of course, Bush's final year, in inflation-adjusted dollars, receipts were lower than in Clinton's final year.
Relying on the apples-to-apples inflation-adjusted metric, we can compare fully the Bush years with both the Clinton and Obama years. In the Clinton years, using inflation adjusted dollars, tax receipts were up over 61%, from 1993 to 2000. Sixty-one percent. That's compared with the five percent (5%) that receipts increased over the next 7 years under George W. Bush. 61% versus 5%, (and, I didn't even use as a starting point the slightly lower tax receipts in 1992, in Bush the Elder's final year). Even if you choose 2001 as the starting point because of the recession that year, you still find that the growth in tax receipts in the Clinton years was six times (6x) greater than in the Bush years.
In the Obama years, tax receipts are up over 10% when compared with Bush's final year. However, the real starting point for Obama would have to be 2009 receipts, because of the economic and fiscal meltdown he inherited. After all, the tax year began in 2008, and it was well in to 2009 before any Obama policies even went into effect. Using 2009 as the starting point, tax receipts are up nearly 33% over the course of the Obama Administration, with considerably greater increases expected in 2015.
Those are the real facts, Mr. Christie. Not the lie you said was a "fact" on Real Time.