[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    CLINTON TOLD SOME REAL WHOPPERS

  (Mr. INHOFE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous 
material.)
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. Speaker, I was coming up from Tulsa, OK, on the plane 
last night and saw an article from USA Today called ``Clinton Told Some 
Real Whoppers.'' There is not time in 1 minute to go over them, but it 
is really incredible.
  He said that 58 million Americans go without health insurance and it 
is really 38 million Americans, and two-thirds of those are between 
jobs.
  He indicated ``Our economic program has helped produce the lowest 
core inflation rate and the lowest interest rates in 20 years.'' False 
again. The interest rates have been tumbling for the last 9 years. His 
budget did not even go into effect until October 1, and interest rates 
have been going up since them.
  ``For 20 years wages of working people have been stagnant or 
declining.'' Wrong again, Mr. President. The average disposable after-
tax income of Americans has risen 39 percent in the last 20 years.
  It is incredible how the President can say false things with such 
conviction. I include this article for the Record so that others can 
enjoy it too.
  The article referred to follows:

                     [From USA Today, Feb. 7, 1994]

 Clinton Told Some Real Whoppers!--The President's State of the Union 
 Speech Bent the Truth on a Number of Economic and Health-Care Issues. 
                              Here's How.

       Jimmy Carter once promised the American people, ``I will 
     never lie to you.'' Bill Clinton has made no such vow, and 
     it's a good thing. The exuberant chief from Arkansas has many 
     talents, but sticking to facts is not one of them. His well-
     received State of the Union address teemed with whoppers, 
     particularly on the crucial issues of the economy and health 
     care.
       The first substantive lines of the speech set the tone. 
     ``For 20 years,'' he declared, ``the wages of working people 
     have been stagnant or declining. For the 12 years of trickle-
     down economics, we built a false prosperity on a hollow base 
     as our national debt quadrupled.''
       Both sentences took liberties with the record. Americans 
     haven't gone broke. The average disposable (after-tax) income 
     of Americans has risen 39% since 1972, and median family 
     income has grown more than 12%--after accounting for 
     inflation.
       The ``false prosperity'' of the 1980s included the largest 
     peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history, which created 
     more than 18 million jobs. Unemployment tumbled to 5.3% in 
     1989, far lower than anything the president predicts during 
     his helmsmanship. Personal and family income for blacks and 
     Hispanics reached all-time highs in 1987, the heart of the 
     Reagan recovery.
       Clinton used his opening salvo to prepare the ground for a 
     before-and-after comparison and proclaim the superiority of 
     Clintonomics over Reaganomics.
       ``This Congress,'' he boasted, ``produced a budget that cut 
     the deficit by half a trillion dollars, cut spending and 
     raised income taxes on only the wealthiest Americans.''
       Yet according to the budget submitted last year by the 
     administration, Congress expected to reduce the annual 
     federal deficit over five years from $322 billion to about 
     $214 billion--with the figure zooming above $400 billion 
     shortly thereafter. In other words, the red ink would recede 
     only temporarily--and only if you don't count the hundreds by 
     the Clinton health-care plan, which the president wants to 
     put ``off budget.''
       As for spending ``cuts,'' the original Clinton plan sought 
     to increase federal outlays over five years by a cumulative 
     total of $1.3 trillion, while piling an additional $1.1 
     tillion onto the debt.
       The tax hikes targeted for the ``super-rich'' will affect 
     people earning as little as $22,000 a year. The 
     administration avoided admitting this by using a little 
     trick. It counted as personal income anything one could sell 
     in an emergency: home, insurance policies, savings, pensions, 
     investments and so on.
       Later in the speech, Clinton crowed that ``experts 
     predicted that next year's deficit would be $300 billion. But 
     because we acted, those same people now say the deficit's 
     going to be under $180 billion, 40% lower than was previously 
     predicted.''
       This passage includes a crucial fallacy. Clinton didn't 
     have anything to do with last year's budget, George Bush's 
     last, in which the deficit shrank from a projected $322 
     billion to $235 billion.
       If Congress had passed Clinton's ``stimulus'' package, 
     things would have been different. Taxpayers would have had to 
     support at least $8 billion in fresh spending during 1993 and 
     $109 billion through 1997.
       Next: ``Our economic program has helped produce the lowest 
     core inflation rate and the lowest interest rates in 20 
     years.'' Sorry: Interest rates have been tumbling for nine 
     years. Alan Greenspan gets credit for that. And all the 
     bragging about last year overlooks one telling fact. The 
     Clinton budget didn't even take effect until Oct. 1. Since 
     then, interest rates have crept upward.
       And: ``We have proved we can bring the deficit down without 
     choking off recovery, without punishing the seniors or the 
     middle class, and without putting our national security at 
     risk.'' Actually, ``we'' didn't prove anything in 1993, 
     except that ``we'' could inherit a rebounding economy. Still, 
     the sentence does describe nicely the Reagan recovery of 
     1982-87.
       Finally, the president asserted that 58 million Americans 
     go without health insurance at some time during the year. 
     Figures published by the Employment Benefits Research 
     Institute place the number of uninsured at 38 million and 
     show that nearly three-quarters of these people go without 
     coverage for eight months or less.
       Every commander in chief shades the truth, of course, 
     especially in set-piece orations like the State of the Union. 
     But while most presidential prevarications involve simple 
     overstatements, Clinton demands great, huge, Texas-sized 
     fibs.
       Now the public will get to judge his performance. Today, 
     Clinton stands on the threshold of his presidency. His first 
     budget kicked in four months ago. His tax policies have begun 
     to bite. Of all his buoyant predictions, only one stands 
     above question: ``The buck stops here.''

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