Barbara Boxer Earns 3 Pinocchios from Fact Checker

Barbara Boxer

There is a new Glenn in town. With his latest Washington Post Fact Checker blog post Glenn Kessler exposed Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in her attempted rewrite of history:

But the more we dug, the more we decided that her comments had begun to cross a line, especially since she had been an active member of the Budget Committee during the 1990s.

Boxer literally wipes away any Republican contribution to the process — and also claims credit for creating 23 million jobs while ignoring broad historical changes in the U.S. economy that had little to do with inside-the-Beltway sausage-making. This is more than just spin; it is a rewriting of history that borders on the absurd.

Mr. Kessler goes on to point out exactly how little Mr. Clinton had to do with the budget balancing:

From 1992 to 1997, CBO estimated, revenue increased at an annual average of 7.7 percent in nominal terms, or about 2.4 percentage points faster than the growth of the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy. CBO Deputy Director James L. Blum in 1998 attributed only 1 percentage point of that extra tax revenue to the 1993 budget deal. The rest, he said, came from capital gains.

Between 1994 and 1999, realized capital gains nearly quadrupled, the CBO concluded , with taxes on those gains accounting for about 30 percent of the increased growth of individual income tax liabilities relative to the growth of GDP.

It will be hard for the media to ignore the facts with this much exposure. Democrats are unaccustomed to being held accountable for their audacious lies. This is a significant shot across their bow.

Cudos to the Washington Post on this one!