When is the truth a lie?

When Harry Reid says so. No, really. Using today’s standards, it’s a wonder any conversations, and subsequent actions, take place.

We have heard some of these over and over. They speak it like it’s a fact, but it isn’t. Stay with me for a moment.

“You can keep your doctor,” “families will save about $2,400 a year,” illegal aliens (non-documented immigrants brought to the U.S. against their will) will not be given free healthcare, “it won’t add one dime to the national deficit,” “for the price of your cell phone bill a young person will be able to get health care,” and lastly, none of the so-called “loss of insurance” was due to Obamacare.

They are all lies.

Some of the lesser-known and rarely remembered lies:

“If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will end this war. You can take that to the bank.” Which bank? Apparently I don’t know what bank to go to.

In candidate Obama’s original campaign, he promised to “eliminate entirely” income tax for seniors making less than $50,000. Yet another blatant lie, right to your face.

“My father served in World War II.” That’s what Obama said in one of many campaign speeches. Wasn’t he the communist, Kenyan father who was 9 years old when the war ended? Hmm? Obama was probably referring to his grandfather, who actually did serve. But could the candidate who wrote “Dreams of My Father” have been trying to boost the image of his communist father, knowing how most people never look into the facts?

“The public will have five days to look at every bill that lands on my desk.” Yup. And he’ll still love you in the morning. I think he meant five seconds, with no prior notification.

And how about the one where he repeatedly guaranteed to make government open and transparent? Ahh, he must have meant via the NSA? And now the press is banned from many meetings that were usually open to media. They get pictures, notes and official statements handed to them instead of being able to attend, witness, observe and take their own notes.

President Obama also said:

He would make it “impossible” for congressmen to slip in pork-barrel projects. Like the extra $4 billion slipped into Hurricane Sandy relief?

Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. Like the many negotiations that were off-limits to Republicans?

“No more secrecy.” NSA, NSA, NSA.

You’ll know what’s in it. Unless, of course, you read it. At which time you will be totally confused, because it won’t match anything you were told the bill was originally about. Confused? Good. So am I.

“We will put every pork-barrel project online.” They must be posted on the back side of the healthcare.gov website.

Soon after Obama took office, he pledged that his administration would cut the deficit in half. We’re still waiting on that one. Maybe he said it backward and meant he would increase it by more than half?

The border fence is “basically complete.” Apparently, it’s only 5 percent complete. Didn’t we allocate “muchos dolares” to this? He went on to say: “We now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents – more than twice as many as there were in 2004.” It’s true; however, he forgot to say this buildup began under Bush.

He also said, “The wall is complete.” The GAO, Congress’s investigative arm, reported that only 32 miles of the double-layer fencing was completed as of 2009. Mr. Obama built only a little more than four miles. Why bother?

“We got back every dime we used to rescue the banks, with interest.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), using numbers from Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget, has a different viewpoint. General Motors still owes approximately $15 billion, Chrysler owes $1.3 billion, CIT group owes more than $2 billion, and an estimated 25 other banks owe approximately $30 billion more. If money is “owed,” we didn’t get “every dime” back. Why lie about it?

The banks were “saved,” even though they still owe us billions of dollars, which means they’re not out of the woods yet. How anyone can claim saving General Motors as a major victory when the government sold the remaining shares owned by the taxpayer for one-third of what we paid for them is a mystery. GM shareholders lost big-time, and so did the American people.

TARP was a success, even though much of the money loaned to green companies went under, overseas, or still have mega-dollars outstanding and owed to taxpayers.

It just seems the truth is no longer truth, and a lie is just simply your truth as you see it. According to this administration, we have a do-nothing Congress because it won’t do exactly what the president wants, and the Senate is an effective body of legislators. I guess that’s because it took them only five years to pass a budget that was based on 3-year-old numbers. An odd “truth.”

Where I come from, “paid off” means there is a zero balance. “The fence is finished” means it requires no more work. And “no added cost” means no added cost, period.

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also a member of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.