Back in February, in remarks made in nominating Judd Gregg to be Commerce Secretary, President Obama said:
He repeated the "every dime" usage in March:
That promise lasted only slightly longer than Judd Gregg's nomination. Similar to what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman, every word was a lie, including "and" and "the".
Today, a USA Today article reports on the testimony of Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, to a House subcommittee:
Oops. As Barbie is often (mis-)quoted as saying: "Math is hard." And putting names and numbers up on a website is a real tough technical challenge. Government employees might have to learn Excel, or something, and pay attention to the names on the checks they're sending out.
That "every dime" verbiage turns up quite a bit on the presidential teleprompter; as near as I can tell, it's a reliable marker for utter bullshit.
For example, Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in August:
At the time, even Newsweek noted that was false.
From the first presidential debate with McCain, denying his massive spending increases would bloat the deficit:
And, at the time, this was also noted as a lie. (Insert obligatory "not that McCain was much better" disclaimer here.)
More recently, Obama has used "every dime" in talking about the Chrysler bailout:
Uh oh. Given the history, I wouldn't bet a single dime on that happening.
And note the careful phrasing: "new taxpayer money". This is designed to avoid describing what happened to the $7 billion in old taxpayer money (i.e., a few months old), which, as Jim Lindgren notes, is gone and ain't never coming back.
The Washington Times also reported on Devaney's appearance at the subcommittee hearings. (And, to repeat, he's the chairman of the Accountability and Transparency Board.) Although the citizenry is currently unable to track the money, it turns out that our elected representatives aren't all that interested either.
Devaney was pressed by one of the three appearing members, on Obama's job promises:
"How do you plan to verify the actual number of jobs created?" he asked.
"Sir, we haven't really received any information about that on the Web site," Mr. Devaney said.
It's Other People's Money, and what Milton Friedman once said about New York City applies pretty well to our whole country today: