Back in September, the Congressional Research Service released a report that found no evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy spur economic growth. Republicans objected to the wording and findings of the report. It ended up being quietly pulled in mid-September. From the NYT article about this:
Congressional aides and outside economists said they were not aware of previous efforts to discredit a study from the research service.
“When their math doesn’t add up, Republicans claim that their vague version of economic growth will somehow magically make up the difference. And when that is refuted, they’re left with nothing more to lean on than charges of bias against nonpartisan experts,” said Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Maddowblog points out that this is not a new tactic for Republican lawmakers:
This was consistently one of the more offensive hallmarks of the Bush/Cheney era. In 2005…after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism. Reality proved problematic, so rather than addressing the problem, the Republican administration decided to hide the reality.
Soon after, the Bush administration was discouraged by data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.
When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.
[…]
And now, we’re seeing a similar problem. Republicans have adopted trickle-down, supply-side economics as the foundation for their entire worldview. The Congressional Research Service used reliable, objective information to report what most mainstream economists widely accepted — if the goal is boosting economic growth, giving people who already rich a tax break doesn’t do anything except make the gap between rich and poor more dramatic.
This is all part of a pattern: if conservatives don’t like the facts, they not only dispute them, but try to bury them. So we have climate change deniers in government. More recently, they’ve attacked Nate Silver for using math instead of his gut to predict the outcome of the 2012 election and made paranoid, unsubstantiated claims that national polls are all skewed against Mitt Romney.
The GOP is a party that stands for the denial of reality, obstructionism, and bullshit. No wonder the GOP nominated a blatant liar like Romney to be president. I cannot believe these mendacious assholes are the only other major political party in this country.
