Guest Post - Gibson lies about the EPA

We snagged this post from DailyKos and got permission for the author to post it here. 
 

NY-20: Gibson lies about his lie, 'That's a fact' 

(click to see post at DailyKos.)

by devtob

Tea party Republican Chris Gibson has a wholesome image -- clean-cut, well-spoken, church-going Catholic, veteran, Ph.D., hometown hero, family guy, etc. -- but he has become quite the shameless liar in his first few months in Congress.

Like every Republican, Gibson repeats the Boehner talking-points Big Lie that the Ryan Republican budget does not propose a voucher plan in place of Medicare and will not affect current Medicare recipients.

And Gibson lies about federal spending -- when challenged at a recent town hall to explain why the only federal budget surplus in decades occurred when income tax rates for billionaires were higher in the Clinton administration, he ignored the question and told a whopper about the EPA budget.
 
Here's the video, courtesy of the GibsonWatch website of Democracy for the Greater Glens Falls Area, an active DFA outfit:

The video catches Gibson in another BIG LIE:

"This level of spending is something we can't sustain.I'll just give you just one example, the Environmental Protection Agency, that budget went up, from 2008, it went up 131 percent. That's a fact."

Well, no, it's not.
Not. Even. Close.
 
The EPA budget was $7.2 billion in FY 2008, it went up to $10.3 billion in FY 2010, then down to $10 billion in FY 2011. The Obama EPA budget for 2012, which Gibson and other tea party radicals in the House will surely slash away at, proposes $9 billion.

Let's give a liar a break, and take the EPA's high budget watermark, the $10.3 billion in FY 2010. That's 43 percent more than FY 2008, not Gibson's weirdly precise 131 percent.

And it's less than 43 percent now, and will be even less in FY 2012.

Gibson is not just a liar about EPA, he's also a hypocrite.

While Gibson votes with the radical Republicans to cut EPA even more, he "applauds" the EPA spending federal money to investigate (and hopefully clean up) the notorious Dewey Loeffel chemical waste landfill in his district (Nassau, Rensselaer County).

The EPA budget under Obama has gone up substantially, which makes sense to those who care about the environment and recognize that EPA had been handcuffed under the Bush/Cheney administration.

Gibson could use a truthful number -- 43 percent from 2008 to 2010 -- to make his point, but he decided that telling a lie about a bigger number would impress his low-information constituents about the allegedly awful federal spending problem.

But his choosing to lie about EPA, as an example of "outrageous" federal spending, is essentially absurd, given that the EPA's share of total federal spending is well less than 1 percent. Gibson is a rookie, and gets his budget lies from Randroid Ryan, who is more experienced in Congress, and at lying with numbers.

Indeed, Ryan has been claiming that EPA spending has more than doubled by including stimulus money, about $7 billion over two years.

All of that money, save $20 million for administration and oversight, went to jobs-producing water and sewer projects, cleaning up hazardous waste sites, and reducing diesel pollution. 

So, EPA's basic budget is really up some 30 percent or so from 2008, not the 131 percent Gibson parrots from Ryan.

In repeating House Republican lies, Gibson has become just another Republican who lies on behalf of billionaires to bamboozle his constituents.

And there is nothing wholesome about that.