In a move I wish was slightly more surprising, Congressman Allen West has posted another petulant Facebook message that includes an entire Wall Street Journal column he didn't write.
"It seems the inept community organizer has failed. A second term? One must be stuck on stupid!" he wrote. "It is evident that President Obama and his Administration either has an utter disdain for free enterprise and the private sector or is incompetent in understanding how to set the right fiscal, economic, monetary, and regulatory policy conditions for economic growth... Unfortunately it is my assessment that it is not one or the other but both."
"It is evident"? How is it evident, Congressman West? You haven't explained. Is it because you can't? Is it because you have such a loose grasp of economic policy that you just yell about "fairness" and "enterprise" and hope no one notices?
West calling people names happens all the time, but this time, he lied too. So here we are, again trying to correct the ramblings of the bellowing cartoon character who somehow managed to get into Congress.
What West is short on -- and, indeed, has always been short on -- is actual evidence. He's correct in citing the "anemic 1.5 percent GDP growth," but he didn't connect it in any meaningful way to the tax cuts.
The only other number he included in his message -- "We have an Administration with less than 5 percent private sector experience" -- is a lie. It's not true, not even a little. It's not 5 percent -- it's much closer to, ah, 68 percent of Obama's Cabinet, because people interested in actual information went and actually checked. It's a 3-year-old lie West cribbed from Glenn Beck, and he's trotting it out because his appeal depends almost entirely on the ignorance and disdain of voters.
As for Obama hating free enterprise and wanting to destroy the small businesses West claims to care so deeply about -- well, West hasn't provided any evidence at all. The tax cuts he's fighting for apply to those making more than $250,000 a year, which means, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that about 2.5 percent of small-business owners would be affected. That's it. Eighty-one percent of it would go to millionaires, which is the group West has been far more kind to. How serious is this guy about cutting the deficit anyway?
As for economic growth, well, the CBPP researched that too -- and found that the Bush tax rates resulted in far, far less small-business job growth than the Clinton rates. It's certainly not the only factor that played a role in those numbers, but, again, where are the numbers from West's side? His claim is that the best way to help the middle class is to give their bosses tax cuts. He hasn't bothered explaining why.
He's never explained his support of the flat tax either, other than quoting Ben Hur, and he has outright ignored any mention of American income inequality. West thinks the rich are the ones who make the jobs. The rich have a larger share of income than ever before -- where are the jobs? And why does West think giving them more cash is the answer?
On, and for the people interested in passing on West's other lie, that half the country doesn't pay federal taxes? Yes it does -- and in a bigger ratio than at any other time in history.
West says he's protecting the middle class, but the middle class is disappearing because the rich are being given a larger share of income than ever before. Given, by a tax system that puts the burden on the very people West says he's standing up for, in the name of dishing out cash to the wealthy. He says it's the responsible thing to do -- are we seriously just supposed to take his word for it?
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