Obama – Hoist With His Own Petard

Perhaps President Barack Obama, when videotaping his weekly address, should, before opening his mouth, at least look at what his own administration is releasing. Obama made a demonstrably false statement about what has happened to incomes of middle-class Americans over the past thirty years.

On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report entitled, “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007.” The very first sentence (page 11 in the .pdf file) of this report revealed a fact that runs counter to the impression Americans get from the MSM about what happened to the average American’s income in the approximately three decades that preceded 2008, the year that Obama was elected president. It said that after deducting federal taxes, accounting for government transfer payments (redistributions of wealth) and adjusting for inflation, the income of the average American household had grown significantly in the 28 years from 1979 to 2007.   [emphasis mine]   “From 1979 to 2007, average household income, measured after government transfers and federal taxes, grew by 65 percent.” The “middle class,” BTW are represented (in this histogram) by the second, third, and fourth quintiles.

Said Obama during his Saturday, October 29, 2011, weekly address, “This week, a new economic report confirmed what most Americans already believe to be true: over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier.” He continued, “And this has happened during a period where the cost of everything from health care to college has skyrocketed.” But… the increases in income that the CBO documented were in inflation-adjusted dollars, meaning that each type of household saw its income rise over and above the level of inflation between 1979 and 2007.

It must really hurt to be “hoist with his own petard,” but Obama doesn’t care since the MSM will slavishly broadcast anything he says.

But that’s just my opinion.