Liar, Liar Pants On Fire - The Greatest Political Lies Of All Time

The next few days will be spent reviewing some information from the latest edition of Reason magazine. Before starting, though, please allow me to put in a recommendation for Reason. Reason's subtitle is "Free Minds and Free Markets" and it does a great job of examining the concept of freedom in a wide variety of settings. The writing is first rate and is supported by detailed and provocative analyses of facts, something politicians rarely let get in the way of their actions. It delves into the seamier side of politics and the detrimental effects the political class and government actions have on liberty in this country and abroad. I highly recommend it as a refreshing alternative to the narrow minded, shallow reporting of most main stream news outlets.


Today we will start with an article in the March, 2010 issue of Reason magazine by Veronique deRugy. I have been looking for the information she writes about for years and I thank her for pulling it together. As you can imagine from the title of this blog, Ms. deRugy's article deals with some of the biggest political lies ever told. It is in the context of budget overruns and how just about every political class program runs over budget. This article highlights some of the biggest lies and failures including the following disasters:

• Medicare: 1967 estimated cost for 1990 = $12 billion; actual 1990 cost = $98 billion, off by a factor of 8.6 times higher than estimated


• Boston's Big Dig: 1985 estimated cost of $2.6 billion; actual cost by 2008 = $22 billion, off by a factor of 8.5 times higher than expected


• Capital Hill Visitor Center: 200o estimated costs of $265 million; actual cost by 2007 = $621 million, off by a factor of 2.3 times high than expected


• Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Disposal: 1992 estimated costs of $6.3 billion; actual cost by 2008 = $79.3 billion, off by a factor of 12.6 times higher than expected


• V-22 Osprey Aircraft: estimated 1986 cost of $4 billion; actual cost by 2006 = $12.5 billion, off by a factor 3.1 times higher than expected


• International Space Station: 1993 estimated cost = $17.4 billion; actual cost by 2003 = $32 billion, off by a factor 1.8 times higher than expected


• Denver International Airport: 1989 estimated cost = $1.7 billion; actual cost by 1995 = $4.8 billion, off by a factor of 2.8 times higher than expected


• Kennedy Center Parking lot: 1998 estimated cost = $28 million; actual cost by 2003 = $88 million, off by a factor of 3.1 times high than expected

The original Medicare estimate looks even more ludicrous in 2010 since the annual cost is around $500 billion, 43 times higher than the original annual estimate of $12 billion.

These estimates are reported by Ms. deRugy and are based on a detailed analysis that was published by the Journal of American Planning Association. The authors examined 258 world wide government projects from the past 75 years to come to their conclusions. They found that nine out of the ten government projects they examined came in over budget. The clear cut world wide winners were the Sydney Opera House and the Concorde supersonic jet. The opera house came in at 1400% of budget and the jet came in at 1100% of budget. Looks like the word wide political class cannot run anything efficiently or effectively either.


Back to the waste in the U.S. One would hope that if a project runs over budget that the results would be above expectations. However, that is not the case. The Big Dig not only exceeded its budget by eight fold but it took seven years longer to complete than scheduled and it has been plagued with problems, the epitome of which was the tragic death of a motorist who died from falling roof panels while driving through a Big Dig tunnel. The International Space Station missed its budget but the expected results from the space station have not materialized. The Yucca Mountain Project is not even operational yet despite overrunning its budget by over twelve fold. The Osprey has been plagued by mechanical problems in addition to cost overruns, problems that have killed 32 Marines in four crashes. The Capitol Hill Visitors Center not only missed its construction budget by over two times but it overran its construction schedule by three years. Thus, we as taxpayers are constantly overpaying for under performance in both cost, functionality, and schedule.


The article goes on to explain how badly the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been in predicting costs for government programs. In 2005, the CBO projected Medicare would cost $1.5 trillion a year by 2050. In 2009, just four years later, it predicted the cost in 2050 would be $3 trillion a year by 2050. How can you predict so horribly that you double your original forecast in a very short time? And we expect these people to accurately predict the cost of the Obama health care reform program?


Speaking of the Obama health care program, the article goes on to explain the financial shenanigans that the Obama administration and the Democrats are doing to us. I never understood why the government would start collecting taxes immediately, if the current Democratic plan passes, but the benefits to Americans would not start until 2014. I thought Obama wanted to make sure that the bad legislation did not start until he ran for President again.


However, I was not devious enough in my thinking. Obama and the Democrats continue to emphasize the ten year impact of health care reform and how reasonable the cost will be. The problem with this approach is that in the first ten years, there are ten years of tax collection under the program but only six years of real expenses of the program. Thus, by looking at the first ten years, Obama skews the true costs to something more reasonable. The true analysis would be to start counting the ten years in 2014. In that case, true costs could be closer to $1.8 TRILLION dollars, double what Obama and Democrats are hyping today. These numbers would cost every American household an additional $1,400 a year in health care costs on average. Thus, as the article points out, Americans will pay much more than the politicians are telling us and who really believes we will see any where near the benefit that is also being hyped? If so, it would be the first time ever that the U.S. Federal government program met its purported expectations.


As stated in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," the government and the ruling political class never execute any program successfully, always over budget, always behind schedule, always under delivering goals, and in some cases, such as the Big Dig, actually fatal to ordinary Americans. There are many other examples in the book where we see how badly the government functions. Many steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would address this situation, the most important of which is Step One which would start to shrink the Federal government's budget by 10% a year for five years. The reasoning is that if the political class has less money to work with, they will have less money to waste. Thus, we would be much less likely to hear, "Liar, liar, pants on fire," when it comes to government waste.



Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.