On May 7th, President Obama spoke at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) event. At that time, he told his giddily enthusiastic audience that “…(Republicans\’) willingness to say no to everything — the fact that since 2007, they have filibustered about 500 pieces of legislation that would help the middle class just gives you a sense of how opposed they are to any progress…”.
As might be expected, this piece of information was very meaningful to his audience – and to left wing web sites, which picked it up, reported it as fact, and generated a frenzy of anti-Republican hatred from their commenters.
But there was a bit of a problem; namely that President Obama was, for a change, lying.
The lie was so egregious that even Glenn Kessler, the lifelong Democrat who does fact-checking for the Washington Post, gave it “four Pinocchios” – the worst rating on honesty he has.
Here is part of Mr. Kessler\’s debunking of this thoroughly fraudulent claim:
Indeed,when you go through the numbers, there have just been 133 successfulfilibusters – meaning a final vote could not take place – since2007.
But,even if you accept the way Senate Democrats like to frame the issue,the president is still wrong. He referred to “legislation” -and most of these cloture motions concerned judicial and executivebranch nominations.
Eventhen, while Obama referred to “500 pieces of legislation,” thesame bill can be subject to as many as three cloture motions, furtherinflating the numbers.
Obama\’scount also includes at least a half-dozen instances when Republicanswere blocked by Democrats through use of the filibuster. In fact, inthe biggest oddity, the president reached back to 2007 in making hisclaim, so he includes two years when he was still a senator. On eightoccasions, he voted against ending debate – the very thing hedecried in his remarks.
Does it surprise you that President Obama lied? I certainly hope it doesn\’t – not after all these years of him continually lying to us about so many other things.
All I ask is that you keep the fact that he lies in mind, so you will be skeptical whenever Mr. Obama speaks. Because you ought to be.
