JCR Blog

Many Republicans have moments when they flip through their morning papers and think to themselves, "What is this writer trying to pull?" This was probably the case if you were looking at the DMR last Thursday when the editorial board came up with this gem:

"Recall that the last time the Democrats controlled Congress, they produced healthy budget surpluses that put the country on a path toward paying down the national debt."

Surely a misprint, right? As you will recall, the balanced budgets around the turn of the century were a product of the ground work of Newt Gingrich and the Gang of Seven (which included a young Congressman Jim Nussle) leading up to and including the Republican Revolution of 1994. Well a number of letter writers called the Register on this error. The sometimes insightful, always vulgar State 29 caught it. Chet Culver's own Chris Woods even realized there was an error.

But does the Register admit its mistake? From today's paper:

We’ll stand by our assertion.

It’s true that Republicans happened to hold majorities in Congress in the late 1990s, when a budget surplus was finally achieved, but they weren’t responsible for it.

Pretty outrageous stuff, eh?

In tomorrow's Register, read about how Johnson went to China, reviving trade and diplomatic relations and how Jimmy Carter won the Cold War.

Hat tip to the insightfully vulgar State 29.