This three-minute video is a weekly Townhall.com production featuring columnist and blogger Mary Katharine Ham. We hope you enjoy!
I was reading the President's Wall Street Journal op-ed the other day, and came across a word I hadn't heard in a while:
Because revenues have grown and we've done a better job of holding the line on domestic spending, we met our goal of cutting the deficit in half three years ahead of schedule.
Deficit. Remember that one? It was all the rage, well, pretty much up until November of 2006. It is no longer the hotness, as political buzz words go, because Democrats are now in power, and that means they get to do all the right deficit spending. It's the new black!
But back in 2004, the federal deficit was sure to end us all, according to Democratic candidates, and it was all caused by those utterly irresponsible Bush "tax cuts for the rich."
In a 2004 debate with Bush, Kerry mentioned the deficit six times, calling it the "biggest in American history" (It wasn't.). He spoke of the President's turning a surplus into a deficit – "the biggest fiscal turnaround in the history of the country."
He, of course, didn't mention that said "turnaround" happened on the heels of an inherited recession, the dot com bubble-burst, and the small matter of the largest domestic terrorist attack in our history.
Both candidates made a promise in 2004. Kerry promised to cut the deficit in half by 2008, in part by rolling back the Bush tax cuts. Bush promised to cut it in half by 2009 without getting rid of the tax cuts.
At the time, Democrats called Bush's plan "laughable." CNN reported on it without a hint of condescension:
Like a cowboy-boot wearing David Blaine, President Bush has promised to perform an amazing feat of prestidigitation: he's going to saw the whopping federal budget deficit in half in just five short years.