Commentaries appear at regular intervals. If you would like an invited commentary for your publication, please let me know!

When I was in college I had friends who would take certain classes several times, never quite scoring high enough to pass, and always dropping after the second midterm. (This was back in the days when colleges were still running under the lenient 1970s-era rules, such as you could drop a class as late as the sixth week of a ten-week class and take the class as many times as you wanted to, with only the last/highest grade "counting".) I was amused that these people never seemed to learn from their past mistakes, such as not studying—"I already took that midterm, I already know what is on it."—and in the process never grasping the fundamentals of the subject.

What reminded me of this is the propensity of liberals to put forth false premises over and over again. For example, the latest cry of "record deficits". Such an outrageous claim is easily debunked in a few minutes with a trip to the Office of Management and Budget to retrievethe historical budget figures (note: this is a 2.3 MB PDF file). This table covers from 1930 to present day, but that is a reasonable definition of the modern era.

On that web site the historic table for deficits (table 1.2) shows the following:

Category	Liberal Claim	Reality
Record Budget Deficit	Bush, FY 2004: 4.0% GDP (estimated)	FDR, FY 1943: 30.3% GDP

As you can see, the projected deficit for FY 2004 is nowhere near a record, yet liberals continue to make the claim and it continues to be reported as fact by the liberal media.

Well, what about dollar amounts instead of a percentage of GDP? First of all, a percentage of GDP is the best way to measure how large the deficit/debt really is because it demonstrates how hard it will be to pay off, similar to measuring your mortgage against your income. However, for the sake of argument let's check the inflation-adjusted (1996) dollar amounts:

Category	Liberal Claim	Reality
Record Budget Deficit	Bush, FY 2004: 387.5 billion dollars (estimated)	FDR, FY 1943: 424.5 billion dollars

As you can see, liberals are still wrong. Still, to be complete, let's compare outlays as a percentage of GDP:

Category	Liberal Claim	Reality
Record Budget Outlays	Bush, FY 2004: 21% GDP (estimated)	FDR, FY 1944: 43.7% GDP

Again: not even close.

While it is easy to understand why the liberals are lying, it is not so easy to understand how someone in the media—liberal or otherwise—could repeat such blatant lies. Reporters are supposed to fact-check and editors are supposed to provide oversight. As we saw with the recent New York Times scandals, when both fail the results are at best unreliable and at worst deliberate lies.

This pattern of deception by the liberal media is not new, either. They made the same baseless allegations during the Reagan administration.

So, for all you liberals out there, here is a remedial course in budget math!

Category	Proper Measure	How To Compute It	Example
Budget Deficit	% GDP	Deficit / GDP	450 billion / 11,250 billion = 4.0%

Be sure to mail this column to your favorite liberal. I think they have had long enough to get it right on their own. Obviously they need a little help!

I was amused that these people never seemed to learn from their past mistakes....

...the projected deficit for FY 2004 is nowhere near a record....

As you can see, liberals are still wrong.

They made the same baseless allegations during the Reagan administration.