My response:
To the editor (Greenwich Post):
In his letter on September 9th, former Selectman Peter Crumbine assailed “liberal politicians” in Washington and Hartford for trillion-dollar deficits, sky-high unemployment and health care reform. The problem with Mr. Crumbine—and the Republican establishment—is that they love to play fast and loose with the facts.
They conveniently ignore that President Bush added nearly $5 trillion to the federal debt, reversing budget surpluses left to us by Clinton economic policies. The unemployment rate started its steady march upward well before President Obama took office. While it has continued to climb, the trend in job losses reversed itself after the Obama stimulus package was passed, supporting the perspective that the stimulus is achieving its goal of restoring the economy to health. If Republicans are so masterful at managing the economy, how is it that under Clinton, four times as many jobs were created as during the following Bush years?
Republicans appear to be pleased with the current state of health care, since they did everything in their power to block any attempt at reform. Apparently 45 million non-elderly uninsured (four out of five of whom are in working households), a steady decline in employer-based coverage and premiums growing four times faster over the past decade than wage increases are facts that don’t matter.
Mr. Crumbine encourages us to send “free market business executives with proven records of success” to Washington and Hartford. The same successful business executives, no doubt, that brought the global economy to its knees with their “fiscally conservative” risk taking and whose banks had to be bailed out by Bush with a $700 billion rescue package.
I suggest the next time a Republican asserts facts about how bad Democrats are for the economy, take the time to do some fact checking. You’ll be surprised at what you find.
In his letter on September 9th, former Selectman Peter Crumbine assailed “liberal politicians” in Washington and Hartford for trillion-dollar deficits, sky-high unemployment and health care reform. The problem with Mr. Crumbine—and the Republican establishment—is that they love to play fast and loose with the facts.
They conveniently ignore that President Bush added nearly $5 trillion to the federal debt, reversing budget surpluses left to us by Clinton economic policies. The unemployment rate started its steady march upward well before President Obama took office. While it has continued to climb, the trend in job losses reversed itself after the Obama stimulus package was passed, supporting the perspective that the stimulus is achieving its goal of restoring the economy to health. If Republicans are so masterful at managing the economy, how is it that under Clinton, four times as many jobs were created as during the following Bush years?
Republicans appear to be pleased with the current state of health care, since they did everything in their power to block any attempt at reform. Apparently 45 million non-elderly uninsured (four out of five of whom are in working households), a steady decline in employer-based coverage and premiums growing four times faster over the past decade than wage increases are facts that don’t matter.
Mr. Crumbine encourages us to send “free market business executives with proven records of success” to Washington and Hartford. The same successful business executives, no doubt, that brought the global economy to its knees with their “fiscally conservative” risk taking and whose banks had to be bailed out by Bush with a $700 billion rescue package.
I suggest the next time a Republican asserts facts about how bad Democrats are for the economy, take the time to do some fact checking. You’ll be surprised at what you find.
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