(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Fact Checking Pete Ricketts' Maiden Senate Speech [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-03 Pete Ricketts delivered his maiden Senate speech last week. Normally, maiden Senate speeches are serious and non-partisan in nature. For example, Robert Kennedy’s maiden speech in 1965 was the first occasion when he expressed his opposition to Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policies. In 2015, Ben Sasse denounced excessive partisanship. However, Ricketts’ speech was much different — it was overly partisan, misleading and sounded like a campaign kick off. During his fifteen minute partisan screed, Ricketts blasted the Biden administration’s alleged “reckless spending,” the so-called border “security crisis,” and claimed that our allegedly “disastrous, shameful withdrawal” from Afghanistan supposedly showed weakness to both our allies and enemies. Pete Ricketts’ maiden speech was hyper-partisan and misleading. The point of this piece is to fact check this tone deaf speech. Ricketts cited alleged “out of control spending.” Pete didn’t tell you that federal spending was 31.2% of GDP in 2020 and was 25.6% of GDP in 2022. Federal spending will be 24% of GDP under Biden’s budget. Pete also didn’t tell you that the GOP wants to extend the failed Trump tax cuts and repeal the corporate tax increase of 2022. That would add $3 trillion to the national debt. There is an old saying “ figures don’t lie but liars figure.” In raw numbers, Biden is spending more money. However, as a percentage of the economy, federal spending is down significantly since 2020. Ricketts neglected to mention that fact. Ricketts made another misleading omission in his speech. As governor, Ricketts signed into law $1.3 billion of federal stimulus funds that was spent on tax cuts, canals and a lake. Ricketts didn’t denounce alleged out of control spending when he took the Biden stimulus money. Ricketts didn’t mention that the current border surge began in the summer of 2020. Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) pointed out that: “The surge at the border began in the fall of 2020, in the last four months of Donald Trump’s presidency there was an 80 percent surge in apprehensions at the border.” Murphy followed up that interview with another tweet on immigration: “I’m not contesting there has been an increase in apprehensions. What I’m pointing out is that it didn’t start when Biden became President. Here’s the rough data on % increases in border encounters in 2020: Jun-Aug — 73% Sept-Nov — 44% Dec-Feb — 38%” Border crossing continue to be a problem because conservative Republicans have blocked immigration reform since 2007. The right wing of the GOP blocked immigration reform bills with bi-partisan support in 2007, 2013, 2018 and 2022. The GOP creates the problem and runs against the solution Another thing that Ricketts failed to mention is that border crossings are down substantially in 2023. The Republicans are now at the stage where they are complaining that Biden isn’t cleaning up Trump’s mess fast enough. Nebraska’s appointed, junior senator also criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Unfortunately, Ricketts didn’t mention the flawed Doha Agreement of 2020 in which Trump agreed to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. One can draw a direct connection between Trump’s 2020 Doha agreement and the swift collapse of the Afghan Army in 2021. It caused the Afghan Army to sell their weapons to the Taliban and to cut and run. According to the Washington Post: “The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan..” Former Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster described the Doha agreement in scathing terms: “Our secretary of state (Mike Pompeo) signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.” Does Ricketts want to re-invade Afghanistan? How would Pete pay for his new war? Wars are expensive. We already spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan over a twenty year time period. How much more does Pete want to spend there? So far, no Democrat has yet to announce plans to challenge Ricketts in a 2024 special election. However, Republican Chuck Herbster has expressed an interest in throwing his hat in the ring. A Ricketts versus Herbster GOP primary would be the political equivalent of nuclear war. I hope a good Democratic candidate runs against Ricketts. I realize it’s hard to recruit a good candidate to run an uphill race. I’ve been there and done that myself two times. If no Democrat runs against Ricketts, I may have to do something crazy and enter the race. Please don’t make me do that. I appreciate everything that you all do. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/3/2161792/-Fact-Checking-Pete-Ricketts-Maiden-Senate-Speech Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/