Fox News reported at the end of October that Senator Clinton "says that when her husband left office, Social Security was projected to be solvent until the year 2055." They checked official statistics and found that when Bill Clinton left office the Social Security system was projected to remain solvent until 2037, not 2055.
Fox News reported then that they "asked the Clinton campaign repeatedly ... to provide the source for the claim that the projection was 2055 when Bill Clinton left office -- but so far we have received no response."
But two weeks later at the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Clinton was at it again: "Six and a half years ago when George Bush came into office... the Social Security system was on a path to be solvent until 2055."
You don't have to rely on the Fox News research staff.
Here's President Clinton himself in his State of the Union address in 1999, the year before he left office: "...by 2013, payroll taxes will no longer be sufficient to cover monthly payments. And by 2032 the trust fund will be exhausted, and Social Security will be unable to pay out the full benefits older Americans have been promised."
-- Iraq: I wrote earlier this year about the documentation by New York Times journalists Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. in their book "Her Way" of Clinton's obfuscation of her vote for authorizing our invasion in Iraq. When it was no longer politically attractive to support the war, she claimed she thought she was voting for more diplomacy. But, as the book shows, Clinton voted against Senator Levin's amendment that would have required this very additional diplomacy.
Now alter ego, hubby Bill, the former president, said a few days ago on the campaign trail that he "opposed Iraq from the beginning."
Google search engines were smoking from journalists trying to find a shred of evidence of this -- to no avail. Senator Clinton, when asked about this clear fabrication by her husband, responded, "There was nothing new in what he said."
Layered upon the wholesale dishonesty that defines Senator Clinton's presidential campaign is a projected arrogance that it doesn't matter. That somehow this nomination and this election belong to her, regardless of what she says or does.
Voters, of course, will have the final say on this.
