Storm Lake Times Editorial: Honesty in short supply
Before we get to revisionist history, let's discuss "intellectual" honesty, or lack thereof.
Sen. Grassley claimed to be seeking a bipartisan health care reform plan when he hogtied his good friend Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and proceeded to logroll health reform plans for months while Republicans, including Honest Chuck, lied about death panels and what the bill included.
He claimed to be bipartisan. In fact, he was following orders from the top Congressional Republicans to use health care to bring down Obama through his centerpiece legislation. Grassley single-handedly bought time for the lies to fester.
That's what amounts to "intellectual" honesty these days in Washington. All that drives Grassley's intellect is the desire to gain back the chairmanship of the powerful finance committee. Chuck Grassley is about power, not honesty or intellect.
Now to revisionist history.
Obama blames Bush for the deficits. Grassley says that Congressional Democrats went along with Bush. Yes, they did, including Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who declared on National Public Radio his vote for the Invasion of Iraq as the worst of his career. It was the Iraq war that gave rise to deficits, not spending on food stamps or energy assistance or Grassley's beloved tax credits for wind turbine development. Not to mention the death of more than 100,000 Iraqis in a civil war that our invasion unleashed, most of whom were innocents.
Deficits further ballooned when Obama continued the Big Bank Bailout kicked off by the Bush Administration. This after Bush kept his hands off Wall Street regulation thinking, as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan did, that financial deregulation would work everything out.
It worked out all right. Right to the precipice of another Great Depression.
Obama and Congress - Democrat and Republican - had no choice but to continue the bailouts and hope that something sticks. Something did stick: We avoided another Great Depression, the Dow Jones is up more than 30%, and Midwest manufacturing is rebounding.
We realize that Grassley is playing the contemporary politics game, where you turn a lie into the truth if you repeat it enough. That's revisionist history defined. Grassley has become an expert at it. And we used to think him an honest man.
Source: The Storm Lake Times
