By Jonathan Bernstein
Mitt Romney really dropped some whoppers in his conversation with Larry Kudlow on CNBC today. Ready? First: It’s one thing to argue that the stimulus didn’t work; granted, it goes against the consensus of economists, but there’s nothing particularly dishonest about that. But to pretend that there was no stimulus at all? That Obama simply ignored the economy in his first months of office? Here’s Romney:
"Well, I think the president made an error coming into office and deciding that the economy would take care of itself and he focused his energy on a series of liberal plans that he and his friends have been working on for years; take over the health care industry, a massive regulation of financial services in this country, trying to impose unions where employees don't want them, a new energy policy, slowing down the leasing of federal lands for the production of oil and gas."
What Romney said the president did do goes from questionable to outright false: Calling the Affordable Care Act a takeover of the health-care industry gets it wrong, and the president (much to the dismay of labor) did not devote any energy to changing union rules — while the idea that Dodd-Frank constitutes “deciding that the economy would take care of itself” is, well, odd indeed. But forget all that: Romney is here flat-out lying about what Obama actually did coming into office, which was to propose a massive stimulus bill.
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