To the Editor:

During his State of the Union address to Congress, President Donald Trump repeated more than 20 of his more common lies according to fact checking organizations. To be clear, these are not misstatements. They are flat-out lies that have been debunked.

In my opinion, the most egregious was his contention that he and the Republicans are protecting the coverage for preexisting conditions. While Trump was making that statement his administration was in court suing to eliminate such protections.

Trump claimed that drug prices went down this year. However, there are reports that pharmaceutical companies had actually raised prices on a range of medications. Payments by third party payers did not show a decrease. Only if someone switched from a name brand medication to a generic would you expect a decrease in prices.

Then there is the Trump claim that this is the best economy ever – made more than 250 times before. But by a variety of measures this is false. The rate of growth is the same or maybe now a bit less than under Obama and lower than it was from 1997-1999 under Clinton. Unemployment was lower during Lyndon Johnson’s administration and was also lower in 1953. The gross domestic product rate of increase was more during the 1950s and 1960s than during Trump’s administration.

Trump keeps claiming that his tax cuts were the biggest in history. Reagan’s tax cuts were larger. But to slow the deficits those cuts created, Reagan also raised taxes a number of times. In Trump’s case his tax cut has increased the national debt by trillions of dollars without doing much, if anything, for the economy. The vast majority of the cuts benefited the top 5 percent. This week we find out that to pay for those tax cuts Trump proposes to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Trump claimed that the net worth of the bottom half of wage earners increased 47 percent. According to economists this is total BS. Nothing supports the claim. Even if there was some indication of a percent increase, it is likely to be largely a statistical illusion. Many low-wage earners have no net worth — they live paycheck to paycheck. Anything bigger than zero will look like a big percentage increase.

Trump repeatedly claims that he is investing $2.2 trillion to “rebuild” the military. The reality is that Trump is adding up the budgets for three years. The truth is his annual budgets for the military were no bigger than Obama’s.

 What about those 12,000 factories that Trump claimed America had gained? About 80 percent of those “factories” employ fewer than 6 people. If you run a bicycle shop that puts together custom bicycles, you are a “factory” under Trump’s definition. In reality the manufacturing sector of the economy is in a bit of a recession. Some companies may be starting new production, but others, like Harley Davidson have moved to other countries due to Trump’s trade war tariffs.

 Just about anything Trump claims needs to be considered a lie unless proved otherwise, because the odds are that he is lying. Look at what he actually does, not what he says.

Norman Hoffman

Waynesville