Liar Tapping John Kasich On Bi-Partisanship, Obamacare

Is Donald Trump's claim that President Obama wire tapped him true or a lie? In Trump world, a lie is as good as the truth if Trump believes it, even if the Big Orange Machine provides no evidence or proof to back it up.

When other public officials make claims based on equally flimsy proof about one topic or another, holding them to account could by liar tapping them is a duty for all citizen patriots. Liar tapping would be a fitting description about Ohio Gov. John Kasich's often repeated claim that everyone but the great reformer is a partisan engaged in partisanship.

Yet again, Ohio's gaffe-prone governor, who's as partisan as the day is long, has rolled out the same stream of lies he's become so fond of, that media seem incapable of liar tapping with any consistency or strength.

Writing in The New York Times Friday, Ohio's lame-duck CEO is again shoveling his easily debunked claims that his way is the best way, and that everyone else, be they Republicans or Democrats, are less politicians than he is.

Liar Tapping Doesn't Require A FISA Warrant

You don't need a FISA warrant to liar tap the former Lehman Brothers banker on his view of history, from his days in Congress to his more than six years as governor. The 65-year old says that Democrats, in 2010, fixed health care unilaterally, without bipartisan support. "The result was Obamacare, which has run up government spending while failing to drive down the cost of health care."

Liar tapping Kasich shows that Republicans were politically opposed to anything the Obama Administration advanced, so they carped and whines and didn't go along with the leader the nation had overwhelmingly picked over the GOP challenger, Arizona Sen. John McCain. It takes a lot of brass for Mr. Kasich to talk about working with others who are political rivals when he voted, along with all other Republicans at the time, to approve President Bill Clinton's first budget that raised taxes on the wealthy. Kasich claimed it would be lead to end days, but instead it lead to a decade of prosperity and record job creation.

In his editorial, Kasich's claim that Obamacare is a failure is an easily corrected lie. The historic healthcare law has now insured 20 million who didn't have insurance before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law. The cost curve on medical cost growth is the lowest in decades, due to the ACA, and states who accepted expanded Medicaid coverage through the ACA have populations that have coverage where they didn't before. John Kasich was one of 16 Republican governors who broke ranks to take billions from Washington so Ohio's rising population of low-income workers, seniors, disabled, mothers and children would have access to doctors where they didn't before.

Another chestnut Kasich has trotted out repeatedly, that he does again in his NYT op-ed, is his version of history of when he was in Congress and chaired the House Budget Committee in the sunset years of his time in the U.S. House of Representatives. "When I was chairman of the House Budget Committee in the 1990s, we were able to make over Pentagon spending, revamp welfare and balance the federal budget for the first time in decades because Democrats and Republicans made a commitment to work together." As noted above, Kasich voted against Clinton's budget, the one that produced all that extra money that produced a so-called balanced budget. Has Kasich and his GOP comrades won the day, there would not have been any surplus to balance any budget.

Kasich claims that throughout his career he's "learned that meaningful change happens only with bipartisan support." Ask any Ohio Democrat when and where Mr. Kasich has involved them in his deliberations, and you'll find it slim to none. He's learned to talk a good game, but the proof of the pudding of working across the isle is a rare bird indeed.

When the term-limited governor claims that conservative, market-driven reforms control health care costs, liar tapping that one is easy: there are no examples to point to. Before the ACA became a reality, Republicans like Kasich were in a fever pitch over the skyrocketing costs of all medical costs, from doctors to drugs to procedures. Republicans controlled congress in Clinton's days and for a majority of President George W. Bush's time in the White House, but they did zero to reign in costs when they had the power to do so.

As he always does, the self-righteous leader can always find answers to what ails the nation in what he's done, either in Washington or Columbus. He does it again, pointing to his Ohio model as the bi-partisan solution devoid of bi-partisanship. "States often serve as the laboratories of change," he says, refusing to admit that laboratories sometimes blow up when chemists don't know what they're doing.

Liar tapping his claim on a good job being the "best anti-poverty program" is as easy as looking what he's done to create jobs over the last 50 months. For 48 of those months, Gov. Kasich has fallen woefully short of creating jobs in sufficient quantity to give every Ohio worker who needs a good paying job one. He's done so poorly, in fact, that Ohio's workforce has shrunk significantly on his watch, as discouraged workers bow out.

Republicans should reach across the aisle for help, and Democrats should accept the offer, he said. Really? Where was that spirit of bi-partisanship in 2010 when the ACA was working its way through Washington? Why didn't Republicans reach out to Democrats in 2008 and 2009, when the nation put them in charge by big margins? John Kasich has never believed that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, because if he did, he would have a long list of policies he could point to where he was willing to work with Democrats. But the hyper-partisan governor has little to point to on that score.

Commenters Liar Tap The Great Reformer

One commenter liar tapped Mr. Kasich with precision guidance. "Setting aside the fact that it's a bit rich to hear a Republican leader suddenly call for an end to partisan warfare after eight dirty years of GOP warfare - you then go on to make your case using your partisan opinion as facts," Dana in Santa Monica notes.

Den Barn, writing from Brussels, liar tapped Ohio's CEO this way on his GOP-centric view of the magic of the market: "So the idea of market based affordable health care is an oxymoron. It's like a government where people could individually choose how much tax they pay and how much service they get."

Gordon MacDowell of Kent, Ohio, knows this about Kasich's kind of politics: "All my life, the Republican party policy towards national health care has been that there should be NONE." Mr. MacDowell then liar taps Kasich, saying, "Since passing of the ACA, Republicans have confirmed the position that there be NO national health care by voting in Congress many times to repeal it, with no substitute. I guess that if Gov. Kasich and enough other Republicans now accept the notion of SOME national health care obligation, then Pres. Obama has won."

VJR outed Mr. Kasich for the partisan he is. Riffing off Kasich's intro, he translated it this way: "America, we need to be bipartisan, so I'll be partisan and start by blaming Democrats. Not a nice way to open up an opinion piece, Governor Kasich."

Longestaffe liar taps Kasich in similar fashion to VJR: "I must say he [Kasich] gets off on the wrong foot in this opinion piece by making the Democrats' supposed disregard for bipartisanship central to his argument."

Kathy in Hopewell Junction told John Kasich exactly what he refuses to admit: "Like it or not, Governor Kasich, the government is the solution not the problem.

Bite the bullet and recognize that the more we unravel health care from payroll, the more we will employ."

John Kasich knows he can get away with with his outlandish and preposterous claims because Media lets him. Plunderbund has held his feet to the fire throughout his governorship. And we'll keep the home fires burning so we can scorch him again when he wants to defy the truth with blatant lies.