Last updated on March 19th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Worshiping at the altar of dishonesty
As most sane and informed people know (those two pre-requisites are essential) “Obamacare” (aka the Affordable Care Act) actually saves us money. But just as Mitt Romney continues to insist Obama apologized for America, Rick Santorum insists Obamacare costs us money. He thinks he’s clever. He wants us to think he’s caught Obama in a lie and he wants us to think the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agrees with him.
This is what Santorum had to say Friday to fellow anti-government conspiracy enthusiasts at Osage Beach, Mo:
“You know what people are going to be talking about this week and next week? Obamacare. Why? Well, the Congressional Budget Office this week just came out with their new numbers. And I know you’re gonna be shocked to hear this, but it’s twice as expensive as what President Obama said.”
Of course he got those angry I-wanna-kill-those-evil-liberals murmurs and the gullible GOPer “Oh my God” he wanted from the audience. The Republican Party feeds on fear and paranoia and Santorum is a master of that game. He knows how to titillate and tease the sub-par intellects his votes depends upon.
The only problem for Santorum is that the CBO said no such thing – zero, zip, nada. FactCheck.org rates this Santorum lie as “absolutely untrue”, sorta like most every other lie Republican tell about President Obama. In the end, it was Rick Santorum who was caught in the lie Friday, and the CBO agrees.
And Santorum is not the first to lie through his teeth about the cost of healthcare reform. As FactCheck.org reports:
- House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia put out a press release saying that “[t]he new CBO projection estimates that the law will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years – well above the $940 billion Democrats originally claimed.”
- Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions also issued a release saying: “President Obama told the American people his health law would cost around $900 billion over 10 years, but CBO’s numbers reveal that we will spend more than $1.75 trillion on only the coverage provisions over just 9 years.”
- Several of our readers emailed us about a Fox News article that repeated the Republicans’ claims, saying that the CBO had found the law would cost “twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag.”
Here is FactCheck.org’s breakdown (click to view full image):
“And as you can see, the estimate of gross outlays have crept up since the original projection — which the CBO said is due in part to an economy that is recovering more slowly than originally projected. But the net costs — after accounting for revenue measures related to insurance coverage — have declined just a bit.”
This is obviously pretty freaking far from the cost-doubling the GOP is talking about. FactCheck.org is puzzled too: “So, where did Republicans get their $1.76 trillion cost figure? That’s the gross cost for 11 years ending in 2022. Republicans inappropriately compare that figure to the original estimate of $938 billion for the 10-year period ending in 2019.”
You can bet that comparison was no accident either. And in fact, far from costing us money, “Once everything is factored in, CBO has estimated that the law would reduce the federal deficit by $210 billion over the 2012-2021 period (see Table 1, page 2). CBO did not update that overall figure in its latest report.”
Santorum has quite a few unhealthy obsessions in his heart (what Republican doesn’t these days?). Besides an obsession over anal sex there is his abortion obsession, contraception (“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country”), pornography (it’s a pandemic), his vomiting over Separation of Church and State, Satan hating on America, liberals hating on the Crusades, women in combat, and of course, healthcare reform, because somehow us having the same insurance he wants for himself in Congress and as president amounts to government taking control of our lives.
Of course, you know Hypocritical Rick won’t scorn his own socialized medicine if he gets elected. He’s saying we should pay for our own healthcare through taxes but we should pay for his? My son should die because of lifetime limits on his healthcare dollars and I should pay for the healthcare of the man who let him die with my tax dollars?
And the thing is, Santorum has lied about each and every one of his obsessions. I can’t think of a single true thing he has said relating to any of them. Not one.
This is a man with a deep-seated hatred of the truth.
I mean, look, this is the guy who says he “sticks it to the man” but the people Santorum really wants to stick it to is the American people – me and you, our wives, our children, our grandparents – like his hateful god he wants to stick it to little children who haven’t done anything wrong. And he wants to stick it to us by taking away our rights to just about every damn thing you can think to name, including our healthcare. And he will use every dishonest means at his disposal to prove his devotion to Machiavelli that the means justify the end. He may be smarter than Rick Perry (who isn’t?) but he’s more dishonest (I honestly wonder if Perry knew he was lying half the time) and glib enough (unlike fellow lunatic Michele Bachmann or fellow candidate Mitt Romney, both of whom also have honesty issues) to be dangerously beguiling to the semi-intelligent and ideologically blinkered set.
He is a dangerous man who wants nothing good for America and nothing good for its citizens. Rick Santorum wants my son to die – my son who without the much maligned Obamacare would have lifetime dollar limits on healthcare. He likely wants you or people in your family or people you know to die as well, for the same reasons and for other supports offered American families by the Affordable Care Act. I suppose if you want a guy who will tell any lie and sink to any depth to get rid of our first black President, who has done so much to save the lives of those we hold dear, then Santorum is the guy for you. But if we don’t expect total honesty from our politicians they shouldn’t actually worship at dishonesty’s altar with zealous hatred burning in their bellies – and we all deserve better that unending, hateful lies. My seven-year-old son deserves better.
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