Sen. Cornyn: 'Administration has taken lying to a new level'

Washington (CNN) – The Obama administration isn’t always truthful with the American people, a top Republican senator charged Monday.

“I think the current administration has taken lying to a new level,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said bluntly as he tied the administration’s flawed explanations about the deadly incident at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya to its faulty promises about the new healthcare reform law.

“Since the terrible tragedy that took four American lives in Benghazi, we’ve had difficulty, to put it mildly, trying to get to the bottom of this,” the second-ranking Senate Republican said during a Google Hangout session he held while the Senate is on recess.  “Now the goal is to talk to the Benghazi survivors – people who were actually there who could tell the truth and expose what happened and hold the people responsible accountable.  This has been a cover up from the very beginning.”

Cornyn, a frequent administration critic who is running for re-election, said that same lack of accountability is resurfacing as the White House tries to explain the problems with Obamacare.

“To me, that’s the one thing I find most aggravating about what’s happening in Washington these days, particularly about this administration.  Which is a lack of accountability and the willingness to mislead people or provide them just demonstrably false information and expect to be able to move on,” he said.  “We’ve seen this most recently in the health care debate over ‘if you like what you have you can keep it,’ something that we can go back to 2010 and demonstrate that the Department of Health and Human Services knew was false.”

Cornyn said Republicans are trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi and the health law promises but are struggling to do so “when the administration decides to cover this up and mislead and to change the subject as they seem to be very good at doing.”