Freedom Line Blog

During a television appearance over the weekend former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin stumbled onto a hard truth for liberals when it comes to proving they can be trusted to reduce the deficit.

“If you could do it and it was credible and people believed it and it was real, I think that could do a lot for confidence.”

Let’s reword that a bit: If a deficit reduction plan was credible – meaning people believe it can work based on its assumptions and terms – and real – meaning the people proposing it are committed to implementing it – then the public would have confidence that the government could reduce the deficit.

Put another way: Credibility + Reality = Confidence

Applying that formula to ObamaCare and the Recovery Act shows just how much liberals fail to make the grade.

• Credibility: For months President Obama and Congressional Democrats swore that the individual mandate was not a tax, before claiming it was an excise tax so it can survive charges of being unconstitutional.
• Reality: A key argument for passing the Recovery Act was to keep unemployment below 8%.  Nearly $800 billion later, the number is 9.5%.
• Confidence: The latest RealClearPolitics average shows 60% of Americans agreeing that the country is on the wrong track.

So far, the liberals running Washington, D.C. have shown themselves anything but credible and based in reality.  No wonder nearly two-thirds of Americans have no confidence in them.