There is a good reason many Americans no longer believe anything coming out of Washington D.C. It's because you can't believe anything coming out of Washington D.C. The closest our present-day politicians can come to the truth is a half-truth, which is still a whole lie. As Will Rogers once quipped, "If you ever injected truth into politics, you'd have no politics."

For decades our federal government has been cooking the books. For instance, when our federal government increases spending less than originally proposed, it's called a "spending cut," in spite of the fact that it is still a spending increase. Only in Washington D.C. are spending increases entered into the books as spending cuts, so that spendthrift politicians, who are bankrupting our country, can pat themselves on the back for being penny-pinchers with our taxpayer dollars, despite the fact that they are spending them like drunken sailors.

Now, I've repeatedly written about the preposterous absurdity that Trump's "Big Beautiful" omnibus bill is the solution to omnibus bill spending that is burying our nation beneath a mountain of unpayable debt. How can increasing our annual deficit, as well as our national debt, decrease both? Obviously, it can't, except in the cooked books of Washington D.C., where spending increases are spending cuts, and deficits and debt are subtracted by being adding to.

In today's Time Capsule, I'd like to flip the coin over, however, to show the cooked books on the opposite side of the political aisle. It's not just Republicans, but Democrats also, who are proving themselves to be mini-mes of Bernie Madoff. Like political polls, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which Democrats are lauding as their doomsayer, for its prediction of impending doom and gloom over Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," has proven itself to be about as reliable as a screen door on a submarine. Its batting average on financial predictions is zero; it's never right, but always wrong. Still, as customary in Washington D.C., its abysmal incompetence has not undermined its credibility, but only enhanced it, to the point of setting it on a pedestal as an impeccable prognosticator of our financial forecast. Never mind that its past accuracy has been about as accurate as a dart throwing monkey's.

What I'd really like to draw your attention to, however, is the illegitimacy of the CBO. It was founded in 1974 by a Democrat-controlled Congress to combat a Republican President, Richard Nixon. While it was proclaimed to be a nonpartisan agency, it was established to counter what Democrats' perceived to be the bias budget analysis of the Nixon White House. In other words, it was created, intentionally or not, to be a political player in our federal government's highly politicized budget process. Much like the Federal Reserve, the Central Banking System of the United States, which was created by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, to prevent future financial panics, the CBO is nowhere to be found in our Constitution, nor in the wildest imaginations of our Founding Fathers.

In light of the above, every American should ask themselves a couple of questions. First, how did the CBO become the go-to forecaster of our financial future? Second, how did the Federal Reserve end up controlling our interest rates? After all, the Fed has proven to be about as effective as the CBO. For instance, although it was established in 1913 to prevent future financial panics, it failed to prevent the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which led to the Great Depression, and subsequent financial panics since, such as the Credit Crisis of 2008. I, like another Tennessean, President Andrew Jackson, actually believe that the Fed—a central bank—is unconstitutional. Therefore, instead of asking ourselves when Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is going to lower our interest rates, or complaining, like President Trump is vehemently doing, about Powell’s refusal to do so, what we really ought to ask ourselves is how did Powell get such power over our whole economy.

As today's Time Capsule has made plain and my old granny used to proclaim, “You can hear everything today but the truth and the meat frying.” No matter which side of the political aisle you listen to, you’re still being lied to. The cooked books of Washington D.C. are about as reliable as those at Enron, the infamous energy company remembered today for the most crooked bookkeeping scandal in American history. And when it comes to agencies like the Fed and the CBO, their origins are dubious, their legitimacy questionable, their histories checkered, and their incompetence incontestable.