Hillary Clinton gave a speech at Brookings yesterday on the Obama admin’s national security strategy. During Q&A, the issue of deficits came up. Leaving aside the implicit deficit confusion issues, she also made a lie, and the state department left it in the transcript:
This is a very personally painful issue for me because it won’t surprise any of you to hear that I was very proud of the fact that when my husband ended his eight years, we had a balanced budget and a surplus. And that was not just an exercise in budgeteering; it was linked to a very clear understanding of what the United States needed to do to get positioned to lead for the foreseeable future, far into the 21st century.
And when President Obama came into office, he inherited a very different situation. And I watched this as a senator from New York. I voted against tax cuts that were never sustainable, wars that were never paid for, and now we’re paying the piper. And it’s unfortunate that this president has to take the necessary and difficult steps, which he clearly is committed to doing, that are not politically easy.
The main reason I supported Obama over her in the primary (once John Edwards, who I mistakenly voted for, bowed out), was because of her foreign policy hawkery. Now, she’s the secretary of state and seems much more dovish than Obama, what with the CIA drone strikes and lack of timetable in Afghanistan. In any case, unless I’m missing something, some sort of cognitive dissonance has deluded her into thinking she voted against the Iraq War.
Update: She did vote against the surge in 2007, but that was a completely political move to match Obama’s vote in the lead-up to their primary.
“. . . when my husband ended his eight years, we had a balanced budget and a surplus.” . . . immediately followed by a recession. (oops)
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
By the way, Nick, you missed the bigger lie — bigger because it’s at the heart of her meaning. She said . . . “wars that were never paid for.” Obviously, the wars were paid for. The soldiers were paid. The weapons manufacturers were paid. Everyone was paid and no federal checks bounced.
What she should have said is, “wars that were paid for by the government, not by taxpayers.”
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Didn’t miss it, just making a very narrow point with this post. Not really sure why, as I no longer bear any emnity to her, it was just remniscent of the whole “bullets in Kosovo” snafu.
[...] May 28, 2010 by Kasey Dufresne As Nick is traveling today, I’m covering the Friday Links today. This week, we covered the BP oil spill, our love and hate of cars, the future of small scale slaughethouses, the worker suicides in China, deficit debates, the movement for a separation of corporation and state, and Hilary Clinton’s misinformation. [...]