October 15, 2010 1:37PM # Betsy Markey: Misinformed or Misleading? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE On NPR stations this morning, the “Power Breakfast” segment from *Capitol News Connection* [profiled Rep. Betsy Markey (D‑CO)](http://www.capitolnewsconnection.org/podcast/power-breakfast/first-term-congresswoman-betsy-markey-fights-colorado), who is fighting hard to keep her seat this year. The reporter noted: > She’s a Blue Dog, one of those fiscally conservative Democrats who frequently complicate things for Party leaders by insisting on spending offsets and the like. A claim slightly complicated by the reporter’s earlier noting that Markey voted for the $787 billion stimulus bill, the health care overhaul, and cap-and-trade. How exactly does that make her a Blue Dog fiscal conservative? Oh, and in her first year she got a score of 19 percent on tax and spending issues [from the National Taxpayers Union](http://www.ntu.org/on-capitol-hill/ntu-rates-congress/). The [search](https://www.cato.org/whatever-happened-to-the-blue-dog-democrats/) for an [actual Blue Dog](https://www.cato.org/kirsten-gillibrand-a-not-very-blue-dog-democrat/) goes on. But I was really struck by this line about the massive stimulus bill: > **MARKEY:** \[E\]very economist from the far left to the far right was saying the government needs to step in because there was absolutely no private sector investment. This is of course [not true](https://www.cato.org/not-just-cato-economists-oppose-stimulus/). Hundreds of economists [went on record](https://www.cato.org/fiscalreality) against the stimulus bill. The Cato Institute’s full-page ad with their names appeared in all the nation’s major newspapers. It is hard to imagine that Representative Markey missed it. If she wasn’t much on reading newspaper ads, [lots of economists wrote op-eds and blog posts](https://www.cato.org/economists-against-the-stimulus/) [opposing the stimulus](https://www.cato.org/economists-across-the-spectrum-continue-to-flee-stimulus-bill/). If she didn’t read op-eds or blogs either, the ad and the economists were featured on [dozens of television programs](https://www.cato.org/weekly/index.php?vid_id=95). And so we come to the question in this post’s headline: Could Rep. Betsy Markey really be so misinformed that she actually believed that “every economist” supported a massive increase in spending and debt on top of TARP and the other bailouts? ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).