The Lies of Obama are more consequential than those of Trump

I would summarize my opponent"s post to the following points: 1) Smiles introduces an interesting concept of "relative forgivability". And the criteria offered are motive, deliberation, acknowledgement, amendment and harm. 2) Based on the above criteria, Smiles concludes that Obama"s lie about healthcare is more forgivable than Trump"s. I will firstly note that the debate has been framed on the criterion of "consequentiality" rather than "relative forgivability". My question was whether Obama"s lies have had more impact than Trump"s lies, not whether who is a better candidate for forgiveness? Remember that the Democrats needed 60 votes in the Senate for cloture and that is exactly what they got aided by defecting Republican Senators, and it is quite possible that without the comfort offered by this lie, the number of 60 would not have been reached [1]. If we accept that Obama"s lie was necessary to bring about his health plan then definitely Obama"s lie that changed the nature of a major sector of the US economy was consequential to the extreme. It is incorrect to say "In 2009, this statement was generically true. Everybody assumed that insurance providers would continue to offer coverage in the same states after Obamacare was implemented. " The basic idea for the plan was extending coverage by throwing the healthy and sick into the same pool. This immediately implies that the premiums for the healthy would rise, and they would no longer have the plans they previously had. Also this is not how insurance works in an market economy "After all, the whole point of paying health insurance is to cover just such unexpected, extraordinary costs and any health insurance that failed to provide these basics was simply ripping people off. " Insurance firms offer coverage for future events that are important to premium buyers as otherwise they would not have customers. "if you like your healthcare plan and your current healthcare plan isn't a worthless con", come on! Even the worst critics of the situation prevailing before Obamacare said that the insurance firms were conning their customers. Bureaucratic and expensive, sure. However the vast majority of expensive treatments were paid for by insurance firms according to the terms of their policies (usual lifetime limit of $1.5 M). Obamacare dictates that insurance sellers and buyers could not enter into contracts they previously entered into voluntarily. This is a huge change from the previous situation, the result of a very consequential lie. Obama"s lie qualifies by Smile"s own criterion of "deliberation". It was repeated no less than 30 times. [2] Trump"s lie on the other hand is more likely an exaggeration as the repeal is still possible. Nor has his claiming that he would repeal (which anyway is Congress" business) changed the insurance market, it is where it was. It is not a consequential lie. As I wait for Smile"s defense of Obama"s NSA lie, here are some other significant lies by Obama. A) "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election. " fall 2007 [3] We can agree that the corrupt influence of money in US politics is now a major problem. There was hope in 2007 when both McCain and Obama agreed to accept public financing. As soon as Obama realized he would far outraise McCain he promptly went back on his word[4]. His campaign especially attracted money from entities like Goldman Sachs who gave him $683,490 [5] to $195,870 [6] for McCain. B) "This will be the most transparent administration ever", followed by TPP negotiation in secret from the public while available to representatives from corporations [7] There was a reasonable fear that the negotiations would result in too much power being given to corporations [8] C) "This [Bush] administration puts forth a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide". And then he went on to expand the domestic spying program [9] [1] . http://www.politifact.com... [2] . https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] . http://www.politifact.com... [4] . http://www.opensecrets.org... [5] . http://www.opensecrets.org... [6] . http://www.opensecrets.org... [7] . https://en.wikipedia.org... [8] . https://en.wikipedia.org... [9] . https://www.nytimes.com...