In an exchange with Pat Buchanan on Thursday’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC reporter Norah O’Donnell demonstrated just how out of touch she is when it comes to her view of the state of the American economy (video follows page break):
People will say when there were tax increases during the Clinton years it was the best decade of economic growth in half a century, and that when Bush- that when Bush cut taxes, we had not a great record of economic growth, and spending increased, so the facts are what they are.
The facts are what they are, but they are not quite what O’Donnell thinks they are. The economic growth of the 1990s under President Clinton and a Republican Congress began to slow following the burst of the dot-com bubble on March 10, 2000, well before the passage of the first of the Bush tax cuts in June of the following year.
The National Bureau of Economic Research places the beginning of that recession at March 2001, two months before the first cuts were even introduced in the House of Representatives. As such, the initial downturn took place under Clinton-level tax rates. O’Donnell’s attempt to throw the Bush legacy in Pat Buchanan’s face clearly falls flat.
O’Donnell’s description of the granny-killing Paul Ryan Medicare proposal is also somewhat odd. She seems to think that seniors will starve under Paul Ryan’s budget:
I’m not passing judgment on the Republican plan, but that’s what people at home say. ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what it’s going to cost me? I can’t afford that. I can barely buy a can of beans for dinner.
O’Donnell did not acknowledge that the Ryan budget exempts current retirees and those nearing retirement from any changes to their Medicare coverage. Her attempt to convince MSNBC’s viewers that Paul Ryan will have seniors living out the plot of a Steinbeck novel only further illustrates the extent to which the network is committed to promoting Democratic talking points.
