Al on Rush Limbaugh and Reaganomics...

If Reaganomics worked, Rush is a straight-talking champion of the little guy on a populist crusade to take the country back from those pointy-headed liberals who think they know what's good for everybody and are drunk with the power of sending out welfare checks.

If Reaganomics didn't work, Rush is the carnival clown hired to distract the crowd while paramedics carry the mangled bodies from a derailed roller coaster.

-Al Franken, from Rush...pg. 124

Al Franken does not like supply-side economics. Al Franken does not like Rush Limbaugh. So put the two concepts together and you have one angry chapter in Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Now I'm not going to discuss how Reaganomics in practice gave us some of the lowest inflation in history, or how it gave us 59 consecutive months of economic growth, or even how it created eight million new jobs. My purpose with this website isn't to argue for or against any particular issue, but to expose the lies and tactics that Al Franken uses to make his point. That is what I plan to do here.

When I started reading Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, I was expecting a meticulous case to be gradually made against Rush Limbaugh, but the Reaganomics chapter is really the only place in the entire book where any intellectual (a word I use lightly) reasoning is used against Rush. The rest of the book consists of personal stories, empty attacks against other prominent figures (Phil Gramm, Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, so on...), attacks against Rush supporters, a couple of moronic cartoons and a hilarious chapter in which Al tries to discredit Republicans for using "apocryphal anecdotes," i.e. Reagan recalls a personal story, so he must be a liar.

The Reaganomics chapter is powerful and convincing, that is, if you take Al's spin at face value. First (and this is one of my favorites), he says, "In 1985...Reagan submitted a budget of $588 billion to Congress. The budget that Congress sent back...was $583 billion." But on page 100 of Lies, he proclaims that the proposed 1985 budget was $926 billion. As Al would say, it gets worse. The whole reason he included the 588 billion (for which he did not offer a source) was to make the point that Congress did not pass more than was proposed, as Rush argues, but in fact passed less. But after his more recent confession of the proposed budget being $926 billion, he admits that the actual budget passed was $932 billion, six billion more! This, after declaring in his first book that "the Gipper [Reagan] asked Congress for $16.1 billion more in spending than it passed into law." Now read that quote again. Okay, now fast forward to the aptly-titled Lies (pg. 100), in which he presents a chart that shows a total Congressional budget $47 billion dollars greater than that proposed by Reagan. These are Al's own figures, not mine. How quaint. I don't even have to refute Al's arguments anymore, because apparently he's developed a habit of refuting his own. Works for me.

Then there is the infamous chart. I have to admit, the first time I looked at Al's chart and Rush's chart side by side, I was convinced of Al's point about Rush being a "big fat liar," as the chapter's title suggests. Al pulls a chart from Rush's book, See I Told You So, that illustrates tax rates from 1980-1992. "Rush uses the years 1980 and 1992," says Al. "This is interesting, because the chart is supposed to be about tax rates 'during the Reagan years...'" Well that's all true, except for the last part of the sentence. Once again, Al Franken has referred to other publications with the hope that his readers are not familiar with those publications.

Rush does criticize the Bush tax hikes, just as many conservatives today are critical of Bush Jr.'s heavy spending, but Rush also praises and reveres George Bush throughout the book, and often in regard to economic matters. Al reprints Rush's chart, but he does not reprint Rush's explanation for the chart, which makes sense considering it answers the very question Al is asking (Why 1980 and 1992?). On page 115 of Rush's book, he explains, "between 1980 and 1992 the wealthy not only paid more income taxes in actual dollars, but they paid a greater share of income taxes as a percentage of their income, compared to other income groups" [emphasis added]. That, and that alone, was the purpose of the chart. Al's claim about the chart being about tax rates "during the Reagan years" is intentionally misleading. If you read Rush's book, you'll see that the chart is an illustration from a bullet point about income taxes between 1980 and 1992. On page 112, he makes the point that our economy was prosperous when "we had strong Republican administrations through 1992." And as he explains on page 121, "...the annual growth rate in total giving in the 1980s was nearly 55 percent higher than in the previous twenty-five years. And this trend continued right through 1992, year twelve of the so-called Reagan-Bush era." Although this quote is obviously a reference to charity during that period, it nonetheless illustrates Rush's motivation for using both the Reagan years and the Bush years in his chart. He is trying to set the Reagan-Bush era apart from the administrations of Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Carter. Al forgot to mention that.

Then there are the payroll taxes. Says Al, "While income taxes were going down during the Reagan years, payroll taxes were going up. For the lowest quintile in 1980, payroll taxes were 5.2 percent. By 1989, that number was up to 7.6. The top one percent, on the other hand, paid only 1.5 percent of their income in payroll taxes in 1980. That went up to 1.6 percent by 1989." That seems like a valid enough argument, so I thought I would crunch some numbers and compare them to the chart that Al came up with. Just a side note, I divided the numbers on Al's "Honest" chart and noticed that he took a bit of liberty with the percentages. Not a big deal, except that he berates Hannity for that very thing on Chapter 14 or Lies.

When I began my calculations, I gave Al the benefit of the doubt in many ways because of the limited numbers I had to work with. Basically, I took the average 1989 incomes for the poorest 20% and richest 1% from Al's chart, subtracted the payroll taxes (7.6% for the poorest, 1.6% for the richest), and factored in the income tax rates from Rush's 1992 column. Yes, there is a discrepancy since Rush uses '92 and Al uses '89, but that is why I say I've given Al the benefit of the doubt. I'm using Bush's tax rates (or "alleged" tax rates, since Al has proven that he likes throwing out whatever random numbers serve his purpose at a given moment) against Reagan's apparently infamous payroll tax rates. Based on Al's accusations, this calculation should not work in my favor, but miraculously it does, and how!

Payroll taxes for an individual earning $8,642 in a given year were $656, and income taxes were -$276. So all in all, the earner ended up paying $380, or, a little over 4% of their total income. For someone earning $576,553, payroll taxes would have been $976 (taking the first $61,000 into consideration), and income taxes $126,842, for a grand total of $127,818, nearly 23%! Now obviously these numbers aren't Congressional Budget figures, because they don't pertain to any given year, in other words, they are complete rubbish. The indisputable point I'm trying to make is that even with the slight rise in payroll taxes, Rush's point still stands. Rush did not deceive his readers by including the paltry rise in payroll taxes, because as I have proven, it would not have made the slightest bit of difference. And that is, as Rush would say, "factual, documented, undeniable, take-it-to-the-bank proof."

For more on this topic, check out Al on Sean Hannity.

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