The Fact Checker: GOP Candidates
Romney’s economic scorecard: Promising success, comparing records
Presidential Accountability Scorecard
(ROMNEY CAMPAIGN)
“My Plan for a Stronger Middle Class will get our economy moving again, and Americans can use this scorecard to hold me accountable.”
— From the Mitt Romney campaign Web site
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week unveiled an “accountability scorecard” that invites voters to track his performance on the economy if he defeats President Obama in November. A quote on the sheet reminds potential scorekeepers that the president predicted that his administration would be “a one-term proposition” if his policies didn’t turn the economy around in three years.
The scorecard outlines Romney’s goals for future measurements, but it also compares Obama’s presidency with Romney’s term as governor of Massachusetts, using simple up and down arrows to signify the two men’s respective records on various economic indicators: jobs, unemployment, home prices, budget deficits and family income.
For what it’s worth, Romney’s campaign first presented its scorecard after the Tax Policy Center released a report saying that the net effect of the GOP candidate’s tax proposals would be a higher burden for the middle class. We deemed that study to be fair after examining it for a column that covered an Obama campaign ad.
Romney also unveiled a new five-point “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class” that essentially repackages his older and relatively detail-deficient proposals for boosting the sluggish economy. His points include trimming the deficit, expanding trade, improving education and job-training programs, achieving energy independence and promoting small-business growth — pretty standard campaign fare.
As for the scorecard, let’s go through it to determine whether Romney’s simple arrows paint an accurate picture of the candidates’ records.
The Facts
Jobs and Unemployment
Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics shows that Massachusetts added 50,000 jobs during Romney’s tenure in office. But that number represents only 1.5 percent growth for the Bay State, compared to a higher 5 percent increase for the nation as a whole during the same period. (We used seasonally adjusted data for our comparisons).
Wind credits, part 2: the Romney campaign’s attacks on current policy
(Bill Roth — Associated Press)
“President Obama’s promise to ‘easily’ create 5 million green energy jobs has become a particularly depressing punch line amidst the endless disappointments of the last four years. The president spent $90 billion in taxpayer stimulus dollars, some of which went to his donors and political allies or was sent to create jobs overseas instead of here in America. Now we have American wind and solar energy sectors that combine to produce only one percent of our energy — and our wind industry has actually lost 10,000 jobs.”
— Remarks from Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams, July 31, 2012
Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams made these remarks last week as he responded to criticism of the campaign’s newly stated opposition to tax breaks for the wind-energy industry. We covered a claim from President Obama’s campaign in a previous column, and now it’s time to examine this follow-up from Romney’s team.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) authored the original tax credit in 1992, and he is seeking an extension for it. He expressed disbelief over the Romney campaign’s statement, telling reporters on Tuesday that he would reach out to the former governor’s campaign for answers.
“I have got to get to the bottom of what they are doing,” Grassley said, “because I think people that didn’t know what they were doing said it, because [Romney] was over in Poland, he obviously wasn’t thinking about wind energy.”
The Romney campaign showed no signs of reversing its position. Instead, Williams described Obama’s green-energy promises as a joke, claiming that success of the federal investments had been minimal and that much of the funding went to the president’s allies. He added that the wind-energy sector lost 10,000 jobs while the wind and solar industries have produced only 1 percent of America’s electricity.
Let’s examine Williams’s claims to find out how much truth they contain.
The Facts
In terms of Obama promising 5 million green-energy jobs, Williams was referring to an October 2008 debate in which then-Sen. Obama talked about climate change as one of the biggest challenges of our time. Here’s what the Democratic nominee said:
“It’s absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it’s an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.”
Spin and counterspin in the welfare debate
“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”
— Mitt Romney campaign ad released Aug. 7, 2012
“This is a common sense reform to give governors — including some of Romney’s supporters — flexibility to live up to the goals of the welfare reform law. Romney should know: He used to support these kinds of waivers. In 2005, he joined other Republican governors in a letter to Senator Frist, urging the Senate to move quickly on ‘increased waiver authority’ for the welfare program.”
— Obama campaign defense on its Web site
When Bill Clinton signed the bill overhauling welfare 16 years ago, the 42nd president declared: “After I sign my name to this bill, welfare will no longer be a political issue. The two parties cannot attack each other over it. Politicians cannot attack poor people over it. There are no encrusted habits, systems, and failures that can be laid at the foot of someone else.”
Oops, guess he was wrong about that.
In an effort to reopen the welfare war, Mitt Romney this week began airing a tough ad that accuses President Obama of wanting to do away with the work requirements embedded in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In effect, Romney is trying to suggest that Obama is such a left-winger that he would undo a central achievement of a Democratic icon.
People forget that Clinton’s signing of the bill — a few months before the 1996 presidential election — was highly controversial. Clinton, in his signing speech, spent almost as much time talking about the things he disliked in the GOP-crafted bill as he did about the parts he liked. Key members of his administration resigned in protest. And a young state senator in Illinois named Barack Obama also expressed his opposition.
This is a complex issue, and highly technical, which makes it ripe for spin and counterspin. Neither side necessarily conducts itself with glory here.
The Facts
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the centerpiece of the 1996 legislation, established work requirements and time-limited benefits for recipients. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services, without much fanfare, issued a memorandum saying that it was encouraging “states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment.” As part of that, the HHS secretary would consider issuing waivers to states concerning worker participation targets.
Is Obama challenging voting privileges of Ohio military members?
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage … If I’m entrusted to be the commander in chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”
-- Facebook message from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Aug. 4, 2012
“In their lawsuit, the Obama campaign and the DNC argue it is ‘arbitrary’ and unconstitutional to provide three extra days of early, in-person voting to military voters and their families. At least 20 times in their legal papers, they argue that there is no good reason to give special flexibility to military voters – and that this policy adopted by the Ohio legislature is so wrong it is unconstitutional.”
-- Memo from Katie Biber, general counsel for the Romney campaign, Aug. 5, 2012
These statements concern a lawsuit that Democrats filed against Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general to stop a new law that pushes the state’s early voting deadline back by three days for everyone except military personnel and their families. The measure, which was passed by a Republican-controlled legislature in 2011, changed a previously uniform deadline for all residents of the Buckeye State.
Ohio is a closely contested battleground state where the presidential candidates need every vote they can get to win the 2012 election. The state went to Barack Obama in 2008, with more than 1.4 million Ohio voters casting their ballots early, according to the United States Election Project of George Mason University.
Right-wing bloggers have weighed in on the Democratic lawsuit, with Breitbart saying that the president was seeking to “restrict [service members’] ability to vote in the upcoming election.” The Romney campaign fed that notion with its recent comments.
Plaintiffs in this case include Obama’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Ohio Democratic Party. Meanwhile, a group of 15 fraternal military organizations filed a motion last week seeking to add themselves to the list of defendants officially fighting the suit.
We read the court documents for this case and researched Ohio’s new voting law to determine whether Romney and his campaign’s general counsel hit the mark with their comments. Does the Democratic lawsuit really try to undermine the voting rights of service members, arguing, as Biber contends, that “there is no good reason to give special flexibility to military voters – and that this policy adopted by the Ohio legislature is so wrong it is unconstitutional”?
The Facts
Ohio changed its voting laws after the 2004 election, allowing voters to cast early ballots until the Monday before Election Day — mainly to prevent long lines at polling stations. Obama seems to have benefitted from this during his 2008 presidential run, as many African-American churches drove congregants to the polls after Sunday services.
Four Pinocchios for Harry Reid’s claim about Mitt Romney’s taxes
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
“The word's out that he [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years.”
— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Aug. 2, 2012
Reid has generated a lot of controversy with his claim that presumptive GOP nominee did not pay any taxes for 10 years. He originally told the Huffington Post that a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this. Then, he told reporters in Nevada that “I have had a number of people tell me that.”
Reid has refused to identify his source (or sources). Romney and his campaign aides have emphatically denied the charge but Reid has stood firm. “I don't think the burden should be on me,” he said. “The burden should be on him. He's the one I've alleged has not paid any taxes.”
This whole exchange poses a fact-checking conundrum. Generally, we maintain that the person or the campaign making the charge must back it up. Reid has refused to provide any evidence, except for the (unproven) fact that someone called him up and told him something that may be true — or simply a rumor.
But we can still examine how credible this rumor might be.
The Facts
Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns, citing a precedent that is not very credible; he earned three Pinocchios for that claim. Most presidential candidates in recent years have released more than two years of returns, so Romney may be paying a political price for failing to release more.
A tough new Obama ad that — surprise! — is accurate
“Chances are you pay a higher tax rate than him [Mitt Romney]….Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010 but paid only 14 percent in taxes…probably less than you. Now he has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break. And raises taxes on middle class families by up to two thousand dollars a year.”
— Voiceover of new Obama campaign ad, “Stretch”
The Obama campaign rushed to take advantage of a new Tax Policy Center study about Mitt Romney’s tax plan, combining it with information about Romney’s 2010 tax return. We have looked at these issues before but as these ads go, the language is fairly careful and restrained. Let’s take a deeper look.
The Facts
Romney certainly made a lot of money in 2010 — $21.7 million, according to his tax return — and yet his tax rate was about 13.9 percent. As we have noted before, he achieves this rate because much of his income is treated as capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a preferential rate of 15 percent, and because he donates about 14 percent of his income to charity. (Reuters wrote an interesting article showing that Romney’s donations of appreciated stock to the Mormon church further shielded him from possible capital gains taxes.)
Obama’s new campaign ad on dueling budget plans
“Mitt Romney’s plan? A new $250,000 tax cut for millionaires …increase military spending…adding trillions to the deficit. Or President Obama’s plan? A balanced approach …Four trillion in deficit reduction.”
— Voiceover in a new Obama campaign ad
In just 30 seconds, this new Obama campaign ad covers a lot of ground, evoking images of the George W. Bush administration (“two wars …tax cuts for millionaires”), tying presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney to those policies and then ending with positive words for President Obama’s plans. (There’s even an amazing shot of a super-millionaire’s home.)
At least the ad is about policy differences, rather than the usual campaign fare of outsourcing, Bain and verbal gaffes. Let’s take a deeper look.
The Facts
The Obama campaign has to perform some leaps of logic because, frankly, the Romney campaign has not explained how his budget and tax numbers add up. Romney has proposed to cut tax rates, but keep revenue neutral with unspecified offsets, while also boosting defense spending while reducing the deficit through largely unspecified cuts. Pinning down the actual figures is a bit like nailing Jello to a wall.
Romney’s pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
“A Republican administration will ensure that the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem by May 1999.”
— Republican Party platform of 1996
“Immediately upon taking office, the next Republican president will begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem.”
— Republican Party platform of 2000
“Republicans continue to support moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem.”
— Republican Party platform of 2004
“We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”
— Republican Party platform of 2008
“My understanding is the policy of our nation has been a desire to move our embassy ultimately to the capital. That is something which I would agree with. But I would only want to do so and to select the timing in accordance with the government of Israel.”
— Mitt Romney, interview with CNN, July 29, 2012
Like Lucy and the football, the pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is a campaign promise that is never fulfilled. But once again it is in the news, particularly after White House spokesman Jay Carney last week could not answer whether Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, so let’s take a closer look at this issue.
The Facts
The Israeli government is located in Jerusalem, including the prime minister’s office and parliament, and yet all but two countries have chosen to locate their embassies outside of Jerusalem, most commonly in Tel Aviv. The United Nations also does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
An Obama quote taken out of context, yet again
“Barack Obama on the Economy”
— headline in a Romney campaign ad, followed by President Obama speaking:
“We tried our plan — and it worked. That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election. That’s why I’m running for a second term.”
Another day, another out-of-context quote?
Readers should be very wary of television ads showing a snippet of the opposing candidate speaking. There is often too much context missing.
Both campaigns have crossed the foul line in this regard (remember Mitt Romney supposedly saying he liked to fire people?) but this is the second week in a row we have had to examine how the Romney campaign is using one of the president’s quotes. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
There is a dead giveaway here that something is missing: Why would Obama be bragging that his plan “worked” when the unemployment rate is still above 8 percent? That doesn’t sound like smart politics.
Romney’s claims of misspent stimulus money
“Where did all the Obama stimulus money go? Friends, donors, campaign supporters, special interest groups. Where did the Obama stimulus money go? Solyndra: 500 million taxpayer dollars, bankrupt. So where did all the Obama stimulus money go? Windmills from China, electric cars from Finland.”
-- Narration from Romney campaign ad
“Seventy-nine percent of the $2.1 billion in stimulus grants awarded through it went to overseas companies -- $2.1 billion.”
-- 2010 remarks from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), featured in Romney campaign ad
We’ve covered most of these claims in the past, with each one receiving Pinocchios to one degree or another. But GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and his campaign must have missed all that, because they repeated and combined the assertions in this ad, even adding in a comment from a Democrat to bolster their case.
Let’s review how President Obama’s administration handled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act --better known as the stimulus--to determine whether this ad bears a closer resemblance to the straight truth.
The Facts
Crony capitalism
Romney claims the Obama administration funneled stimulus money to friends, donors and campaign supporters. In large part, this assertion starts with a federal loan that went to Solyndra, the now-defunct solar-panel maker that received $535 million as part of the stimulus program’s clean-energy initiative.
Did Mitt Romney get a ‘bailout’ for Bain & Company?
“Ironically, Mitt Romney knows better than anyone that business can’t always do it alone. When Bain & Company was on the verge of bankruptcy Romney himself negotiated a $10 million bailout with the FDIC.”
— Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, in Web video issued July 24, 2012
Once again some ancient Massachusetts history has entered the 2012 campaign.
Seeking to rebut Mitt Romney’s claim that President Obama believes business owners don’t build their own companies — for which we gave Romney Three Pinocchios — Cutter has now tried to turn the tables on Romney by arguing that Romney himself could not survive without the help of government assistance.
This issue briefly flared up during the GOP primary season, when former House speaker Newt Gingrich raised it, so let’s see what really happened.
The Facts
First of all, Bain & Company is not the same thing as Bain Capital, the private equity firm from which Romney made his fortune. Bain Capital is a spin-off from Bain & Company, which is a traditional consulting firm. But in the early 1990s, Bain & Company overextended itself after an ill-advised decision in 1985-1986 by the firm’s eight founding partners to take $200 million out of the firm, for themselves, with borrowed money. (Romney, who had left in 1984, was not a founder.)
Obama uses out-of-date data to criticize Romney’s Medicare plan
(John Raoux/AP)
“He [Romney] plans to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Now, understand how that works. If the voucher isn’t worth what it takes to buy health insurance in the private marketplace, you’re out of luck. You’ve got to make up the difference. You’re on your own. So one independent, nonpartisan study found that under a similar plan, seniors would have to pay nearly $6,400 more for Medicare than they do today. Where are you going to get that from? Where are you going to get it from — $6,400?”
— President Obama, remarks in West Palm Beach, Fla., July 19, 2012
On a campaign trip to Florida last week, President Obama — no surprise! — brought up the subject of Medicare.
This is a highly emotional and difficult subject to understand. There’s a reason why we suggested last year that readers would be best advised to mute the sound if any ad concerning Medicare aired — for either party.
Let’s look more deeply at the president’s remarks.
The Facts
The current Medicare system, in place since the mid-1960s, is essentially a government-run health-care program, with hospital and doctors’ fees paid by the government, though beneficiaries also pay premiums for some services as well as deductibles and co-insurance.
An unoriginal Obama quote, taken out of context
“To say what he said is to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple Computer or that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft or that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor Company or that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s or that Papa John’s didn’t build Papa John’s Pizza. This is the height of foolishness. It shows how out of touch he is with the character of America. It’s one more reason his policies have failed. It’s one more reason why we have to replace him in November.”
— Mitt Romney, July 18, 2012
There are few original ideas in politics, just old arguments.
We were reminded of this as we considered the ruckus over comments by President Obama that his GOP rival, former governor Mitt Romney, criticized as an attack on free enterprise. Romney immediately began jabbing Obama on the campaign trail and the Romney campaign rushed out an attack ad focused on Obama’s words — though, as we shall see, it sliced and diced the president’s quote to make it seem much worse.
We will stipulate that taking snippets of quotes and twisting them is an age-old political tactic. In May, we gave Two Pinocchios to President Obama for performing out-of-context quote-snipping on Romney’s words. But that doesn’t make it right. Let’s take a look at what Obama actually said, and then how it has been interpreted.
The Facts
The president, during a campaign speech in Roanoke, tried to make the case that wealthy people need to have higher taxes in order to help serve the public good. Here is what he said, with the words used in the ad in bold type:
Mitt Romney and Bain: a Fact Checker collection
(Nicholas Kamm/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain after I went off to the Olympics and that`s been demonstrated by people who work at Bain, by all of the documents but I still retained an ownership interest. . . . I had no involvement with the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, interview with CBS News, July 13, 2012
Given the extensive interest in the question of when Mitt Romney stopped managing Bain Capital, we have compiled a summary of 11 Fact Checker columns that assessed claims that, at least in part, needed to deal with this question. We evaluated each claim on a case-by-case basis, so the Pinocchio count has varied depending on the importance of the 1999-2002 period to the facts at hand.
At the end of this column we also provide some additional commentary on this question, especially in light of Romney’s assertion that that he had “no role whatsoever” in the management of Bain after February, 1999.
“Mitt Romney and 100,000 jobs: an untenable figure” (Jan. 10. 2012)
Claim: Romney said that businesses in which Bain had invested had created “net-net” more than 100,000 jobs.
‘Crony capitalism:’ the RNC’s look at the case of Steve Westly
“Meet Steve Westly. He raised over $500,000 for Obama's campaign. With Obama in office, Westly Group Investments have received 500 million taxpayer dollars. Westly was even appointed to a top advisory role, influencing how federal taxpayer money was spent…Westly raised money for Obama, then got a half a billion taxpayer dollars. Obama’s friends are doing fine, but the middle class isn’t.”
--voiceover of new Republican National Committee ad, “The Obama Connection.”
We’re shocked, shocked that anyone thinks that big campaign contributors get special access to politicians.
Just as “Big Oil” appeared to have special sway in the Bush administration, now too “clean energy” types appear to have special connections in the Obama administration. Is this a matter of coincidence … or “crony capitalism”? Republicans have tried to make this charge an issue this week, and we have already examined one such example and found it wanting.
Let’s play connect-the-dots in the case of Steve Westly.
The Facts
The figures in this ad are relatively accurate. (Westly raised more than $500,000 for Obama, in 2008, according to Opensecrets.org.) Westly Group is a big player in clean technology, investing in companies that develop promising technologies. He also has not been shy about advertising his connections in the Obama administration, famously sending an email to top presidential aide Valerie Jarrett, warning that the president might be making a mistake in visiting Solyndra. (For all his apparent influence, his advice was not taken.)
4 Pinocchios for an unproven Romney claim of ‘crony capitalism’
“I am ashamed to say that we’re seeing our president hand out money to the businesses of campaign contributors, when he gave money, $500 million in loans to a company called Fisker that makes high end electric cars, and they make the cars now in Finland. That is wrong and it’s got to stop. That kind of crony capitalism does not create jobs and it does not create jobs here.”
— Mitt Romney, Irwin, Pa., July 17, 2012
Hoping to turn attention away from questions about his departure from Bain Capital a decade ago, Mitt Romney this week has sought to focus attention on what he calls President Obama’s “crony capitalism.” We have dealt with this charge before, but this week it seems the Romney campaign has upped the ante, trying to make a connection between the president’s contributors and the president’s policies.
We will deal with some of these claims in more detail at a later date, but today we will look at the question of Fisker Automotive. This case keeps coming up, and it really feels like whack-a-mole. Romney now has raised the stakes by asserting a connection between the loan and campaign contributors. And his campaign was sufficiently proud of his statement that it e-mailed it to reporters.
The Facts
Fisker has developed a luxury plug-in electric sedan called the Karma that retails for $108,000, currently manufactured in Finland. It hopes to develop a $50,000 sedan named the Atlantic that would be manufactured in Delaware.
Romney’s misleading history of tax returns issued by presidential contenders
(Evan Vucci/AP - AP)
“John McCain ran for president and released two years of tax returns. John Kerry ran for president; you know, his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow this wasn’t an issue.”
— Mitt Romney, on Fox News, July 16, 2012
“It's standard for the last Republican nominee, the last Democratic nominee.”
— Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” July 15, 2012, answering a question on why Romney will release only two years of tax returns.
In trying to fend off demands — from both Democrats and even some Republicans — that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney release more than two years of tax returns, his campaign has sought to claim that releasing two years of tax returns is normal. (Romney so far has released his 2010 return and an estimate for his 2011 return.)
Is that really the case? Let’s check out Gillespie’s claim, presumably about McCain and President Obama, and Romney’s claim that the tax returns of Teresa Heinz Kerry were “not an issue.”
The Facts
The Tax History Project run by TaxAnalysts has a fascinating Web page with the tax returns of presidents and presidential candidates, dating all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt. McCain, it is correct, released two years of tax returns, but Obama released seven years of tax returns.
Weighing the evidence on Romney’s departure from Bain: A response to readers
It’s not often that one of my columns gets more than 5,000 comments, many of them angry. I tried responding via Twitter and various e-mail exchanges but eventually gave up because I was overwhelmed. My analysis was also roasted on the web by various people I often admire, and the Huffington Post rewrote my column to highlight exclusive material that they thought I had played down. My best friend from third grade even sent me a message on Facebook saying I “was carrying the Republicans’ water.”
It was that kind of day!
I always value informed critiques. Given the many comments, I will try to make a general response.
First of all, as The Fact Checker, I began looking into Mitt Romney’s departure from Bain Capital in January in response to Obama campaign allegations that he was responsible for the closing of hundreds of stores at KB Toys. The question is not whether Romney left Bain in 1999 or 2002 — everyone knows he took a leave to run the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, then decided to run for governor in 2002 and officially backdated his resignation to 1999 — but whether he had a direct role in Bain deals during this period.
For some readers, this may not be important. He is listed as chief executive in SEC documents, he hired the people at Bain, and so they might believe he bears responsibility for these deals. End of story. But that’s really an opinion, not a fact.
When evaluating an attack ad, I have to look at the actual facts behind that ad. Can you really say Romney was responsible for the closing of 600 stores at KB Toys in 2004, given that the initial Bain investment took place in 2000, when he was at the Olympics, and he had clearly left Bain by 2002? It would have been fuzzier if the investment had started under Romney’s confirmed leadership, but I could find no evidence of his direct involvement in this deal.
The years 1999-2002 are a gray period in Romney’s life. The importance of whether you pick 1999 or 2002 as the end of his tenure at Bain is best illustrated by the Obama video ad above.
I hold campaign attack ads to a high standard, especially since they can be highly misleading. On balance, I would expect a campaign to provide direct evidence that the rival had a role in the activities being denounced. I would have come to the same conclusion if the person’s name on the Securities and Exchange Commission documents was Barack Obama, rather than Mitt Romney. Indeed, this column gave three Pinocchios to Republicans who claimed that Obama had a secret plan to raise gas prices because of long-ago comments by his aides.
Some readers who complained about the column may not be regular readers. When checking the facts, I pay little attention to the political party making the claim. I look at everything on a case-by-case basis. On the day new questions emerged about Romney and his departure from Bain, I wrote a long column that critically evaluated 22 claims by Republicans about Obama’s alleged “outsourcing,” finding many of them thinly sourced or absurd. I have repeatedly roasted Romney for misleading claims about the number of jobs he claims to have created at Bain. At the moment, I have given four Pinocchios more often to Romney than to Obama.
Regarding Romney and Bain, the question for me remains whether one can specifically tie Romney to the questionable deals. So far, I have not seen enough evidence that he was actively managing Bain and its investments during this period.
Thus I am standing with my assessment that Romney essentially left Bain in 1999. Our colleagues at FactCheck.org have done the same. But of course I remain open to new evidence or information, and will adjust Pinocchio ratings accordingly.
But readers can judge for themselves. Here is a roundup of the evidence, pro and con.
Do Bain SEC documents suggest Mitt Romney is a criminal?
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
"Romney and Bain claim that he was not involved with Bain, but Bain and its portfolio companies in their required filings under the Securities Exchange Act continuously certified to the Securities and Exchange Commission say precisely the opposite — asserting without qualification that he was a controlling person, fully in charge of Bain, under the Federal securities law. Under normal circumstances, the question of the truth of this representation would result in an investigation by the SEC into possible criminal, as well as civil, violations of the law."
— Robert Bauer, Obama campaign counsel, July 13, 2012
There is a journalistic convention that appears to place great weight on “SEC documents.” But these are public filings by companies, which usually means there are not great secrets hidden in them. The Fact Checker, in an earlier life covering Wall Street, spent many hours looking for jewels in SEC filings.
As we wrote yesterday, we are standing with our assessment that Mitt Romney left the helm of Bain Capital in 1999, when he departed to run the Salt Lake City Olympics. The date is important because some questionable investments by Bain took place between 1999 and 2002, when he ran for governor. But a Boston Globe article on Thursday raised new questions about that timeline, citing SEC filings, and the Obama campaign jumped to take advantage of it.
Despite the furor, we did not see much new in the Globe article. We had examined many SEC documents related to Romney and Bain in January, and concluded that much of the language saying Romney was “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” was boilerplate that did not reveal whether he was actually managing Bain at the time. (For instance, there is no standard definition of a “chief executive,” securities law experts say, and there is no requirement for anyone to have any responsibilities even if they have that title.)
The one thing new we saw in the Globe story was the assertion that “Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain ‘executive’ in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.” But then we realized we had already reviewed those documents in January. The 2001 form describes him as a “former executive” (see page 1 of form A-5) — the campaign says this was retirement pay — but the 2002 form says “executive.” So either you believe he suddenly rejoined the firm, after leaving it, or someone made a typo.
Romney’s sudden departure from Bain had left the partnership in flux, in fact almost breaking up the firm, and a final resolution was not reached until he ended his Olympic sojourn and decided to run for governor. At that point, he signed retirement papers that set his departure date as February 1999, the month he left for the Olympics.
Fortune magazine on Thursday reported that it had obtained the offering documents for Bain Capital funds circulating in 2000 and 2001. None of the documents show that Romney was listed as being among the “key investment professionals” who would manage the money. As Fortune put it, “the contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain — which, one should note, is different from no longer having legal or financial ties to the firm.”
Let’s also not forget that Massachusetts Democrats tried to keep Romney off the ballot in the 2002 governor’s race on the grounds that he had been living and working in Utah, even paying taxes there, and thus had failed to meet the requirement to have lived seven consecutive years in Massachusetts. The effort failed, but not after Democrats waged an expensive, months’ long battle to prove he worked so much on the Olympics that he was in effect a citizen of Utah. (More on this below.)
Still, the Obama campaign has raised a very serious charge of potential criminal behavior. Does it have much credibility?
The Facts
One of the SEC documents in question that has received attention in recent days is a Form 13D that was posted by Talking Points Memo. A Form13D is filed when an investor or investment group announces that it has acquired more than five percent of the company.
Obama and outsourcing: a guide to the GOP’s charges
(Susan Walsh/AP)
“Over his four years in office, Obama promised that he would focus on creating "jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced." However, as he racked up trillions in new debt, billions of dollars did go to create jobs that were outsourced or spent overseas. Whether it is electric cars made in Finland or solar panels in Mexico, taxpayers would be astonished to learn that their hard earned money went abroad for jobs that weren't created in the United States.”
— New Republican National Committee Web site , www.obamanomicsoutsourced.com
“This president has been outsourcing a good deal of American jobs himself by putting money into energy companies, solar and wind energy companies that end up making their products outside the United States. If there is an outsourcer-in-chief, it’s the president of the United States, not the guy who’s running to replace him.”
— Mitt Romney, July 10, 2012
We have written at length about the inaccurate and misleading claims of outsourcing made against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney by the Obama campaign — and surely will again. Now the Republican National Committee has tried to turn the tables on President Obama, and the Romney campaign is jumping aboard. As The Washington Post reported this week, Obama also has critics on the left for his record on outsourcing.
Some of these claims on the Web site we have seen before, when we awarded Four Pinocchios to a pair of over-the-top television ads attacking Obama. Now the RNC has expanded the list to include examples from more than 20 countries. Are these claims any more valid? We’ve dug deep into the RNC’s documentary evidence so you don’t have to.
Remember: Outsourcing generally means that a company hires another company to do work for them. This is increasingly a common practice. Some of these “outsourced” jobs may be sent overseas.
The Facts
First of all, the Obama quote used by the RNC is from a campaign speech he made on Oct. 30, 2008 — before he became president. The full context of Obama’s statement makes clear that he is referencing jobs in the renewable energy business — “jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid”— and that he is talking about creating jobs over a 10-year period. His point was that the United States is lagging in those areas.
More tenuous claims about Romney’s Bain Capital record
“Mitt Romney the businessman. Take a look at his record. Romney bought companies; drowned them in debt; many went bankrupt; thousands of workers lost jobs, benefits and pensions. But for every company he drove into the ground, Romney averaged a $92 million profit.”
— Voice-over from Priorities USA Action ad attacking GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney
“14,000 workers laid off.”
— Text from Priorities USA Action ad
Most of the anti-Mitt Romney ads in recent weeks have focused on Romney’s record at the private-equity firm Bain Capital, accusing the Republican presidential candidate of being everything from an outsourcing pioneer to a corporate raider. For what it’s worth, we debunked those notions in several previous columns.
We’ve also awarded Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that supports President Obama, with one Pinocchio for an ad that, in part, accused Romney of making “millions off of companies that went bankrupt while workers lost promised health and retirement benefits.” In addition, we’ve examined some of the companies that laid off workers while Romney served as Bain’s chief executive officer.
The Bain exaggerations are on the other side as well. We dinged the GOP challenger with three Pinocchios for laying claim to job growth that occurred after his tenure with the private-equity firm had ended. We also gave three Pinocchios to Bain Capital — and the Romney campaign — for sugarcoating their business record.
This latest video is unique. It blames Romney for the highest and most specific number of job losses we’ve seen anyone attribute to him as a former businessman. Let’s take a look at the Bain companies that filed for bankruptcy and fired workers to determine how much blame the presumptive GOP nominee deserves.
The Facts
First, a bit of background on Bain Capital. Romney founded the firm, which started out in venture capitalism and helped launch a few massive successes such as Staples and Sports Authority.
4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge
(mittromney.com)
“Promise: President Obama promised to lower annual health insurance premiums by $2,500…Result: Annual health insurance premiums have increased by $2,393....Gap: health premium costs are $4,893 higher per family than President Obama promised.”
— new Facebook/Twitter post by the Romney campaign
Promises made during the heat of an election campaign sometimes come back to haunt politicians.
The campaign of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is trying to nail President Obama for making an iffy promise during the 2008 campaign — that premiums will be $2,500 lower under his health care plan. Instead, the Romney campaign argues in an effort to create a viral Facebook post, the swing has gone $4,893 the other way.
The Romney graphic is false on several levels, though Obama certainly left himself open to scrutiny with imprecise language in the 2008 campaign. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
The Romney campaign cites a statement from a 2007 speech by Obama, but it’s a pledge that was repeated often: “When I am president, we will have universal health care in this country by the end of my first term in office. It's a plan that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year.”
Obama’s new attacks on Romney and outsourcing
“The Washington Post has just revealed that Romney’s companies were pioneers in shipping U.S. jobs overseas.... Does Iowa really want an outsourcer-in-chief in the White House?”
— one in a series of new Obama campaign ads
“Pioneers! Let me tell you, Tampa, we do not need an outsourcing pioneer in the Oval Office. We need a president who will fight for American jobs and American manufacturing. That’s what my plan will do.”
— President Obama, June 22, 2012
“Offshoring is the shipment of American jobs overseas. And in that Washington Post story, which the president is using now to attack American companies by name, there are no examples of jobs being taken from the United States and shipped overseas. What you have are companies that are expanding into new markets.”
— Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 24, 2012
“Just last week, it was reported that Governor Romney’s old firm owned companies that were ‘pioneers’ — this is not my phrase, but how it was described in the report — ‘pioneers’ in the business of outsourcing American jobs to places like China and India. Yesterday, his advisers tried to clear this up by telling us that there was a difference between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring.’ Seriously. You can’t make that up.”
— Obama, June 25, 2012
The Obama campaign has seized on a recent front-page article in The Washington Post to argue that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is an “outsourcer-in-chief,” while the Romney campaign has pushed back, asking for a retraction of the article. (The Post has refused and stood by the reporting.)
The Fact Checker does not check the facts in the reporting of Washington Post writers or columnists, despite the many pleas of readers to do so. We even avoid checking most pundits. We generally confine ourselves to checking the rhetoric used by politicians and interest groups.
In this case, both campaigns have seized on a news report in The Post, and both are describing it inaccurately for their own political purposes. The Obama campaign has even made the report the centerpiece of its current ad campaign. This puts us in a bit of a strange position.
So we will try to describe what the report is about, without venturing into the realm of media criticism.
The Facts
The article, by reporter Tom Hamburger, appeared on the Web on the evening on June 21 with a headline that said: “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas.” The headline was different in the print edition: “Bain’s firms sent jobs overseas.”
Tim Pawlenty’s losing bet: Obama’s had no entitlement proposals
“We have in the White House now the president of the United States, the leader of our nation, who has not put out any specific proposals on some of the most pressing issues of the day. For example, where is President Obama’s specific proposal on reforming Medicaid and Medicare? Anyone who understands the budget crisis facing this country understands that entitlements have to be talked about. And we need a leader to address that in detail.
I’ll come to your house, Bob Schieffer, and mow your lawn if you can find President Obama`s specific proposals on reforming entitlements in this country.”
— Tim Pawlenty on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 24, 2012
In an interview on ”Face the Nation” Sunday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty issued a light-hearted but bold challenge while suggesting that President Obama hasn’t done anything to address the skyrocketing costs of entitlement programs. (His remarks begin at the 5:45 mark of the video).
Host Bob Schieffer laughed about the wager, noting that he lives in an apartment and wouldn’t be able to hold Pawlenty accountable.
We’re not going to let his guest off the hook so easily.
Let’s take a look at Obama’s record on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to determine whether the president has made any “specific proposals” for reforms during his tenure.
The Facts
We’ll deal with Medicare and Medicaid first, since Pawlenty named those entitlements during his interview. Obama didn’t just propose changes to those programs; he enacted some of them by signing the Affordable Care Act — which the Supreme Court upheld this week.
Spinning the Supreme Court ruling on ‘Obamacare’
(Luke Sharrett/AP)
“The highest court in the land has now spoken.”
— President Obama, June 29, 2012
“What the Court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it's good policy.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, June 29, 2012
Soon after the Supreme Court ruling upholding the health-care law, President Obama and his presumed GOP rival Mitt Romney emerged with talking points so dissimilar you’d wonder if they were speaking about the same law. We will try to disentangle some of the differences.
But, first, a word about the claim, advanced by Rush Limbaugh and others, that because of the ruling that the individual mandate is a tax, “Obamacare” is now the biggest tax increase in history. That’s an absurdity.
The health-care law did include substantial taxes, such as an additional tax on investment income for the wealthy, but those were always disclosed and never hidden. The penalties it included for failing to get health insurance — which the Supreme Court has now labeled a tax — amounted to just about $13 billion a year, or $65 billion in the first 10 years of the law, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. (See Table 2.)
That compares to a total of $525 billion in new revenues contained in the bill. (The CBO always listed the penalties as a revenue, along with the other taxes and fees contained in the bill.)
As to whether this is the biggest tax increase in history, the best way to measure the impact of taxes over a long period is to consider a tax increase or decrease as a percentage of the overall economy, also known as the gross domestic product.
A 2006 Treasury Department study listed a tax increase passed in 1942 as the clear winner for the title of biggest tax increase — worth more than 5 percent of GDP. (Yikes, now that’s a tax increase. But the United States was fighting a world war at the time.)
The health-care law doesn’t even come close — 0.49 percent of GDP. That’s one-tenth the size of the 1942 tax cut. Essentially, the health-care law’s taxes are about the size of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase and significantly smaller than Ronald Reagan’s 1982 tax hike. (Our friends at PolitiFact beat us to the punch on this, awarding “Pants on Fire” to Limbaugh, and they have all of the math, plus other statistics.)
Now, let’s review the political statements.
Romney’s claim that Obama did ‘nothing on immigration’ until now
“Well, as you know, he [Barack Obama] was president for the last three and a half years, did nothing on immigration. Two years, he had a Democrats’ House and Senate, did nothing of permanent or long-term basis.”
-- Mitt Romney during interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 17, 2012
President Obama announced last Friday that his administration would no longer deport some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Former governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee, did not condemm or support Obama’s initiative, but criticized the president for failing to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform. Obama ”did nothing of permament or long-term basis,” he said.
Obama promised such reform while making his bid for the White House in 2008, and he has indeed failed to deliver on that pledge. But how much is the president to blame for the government’s inaction? After all, it takes more than just the executive to implement anything more than piecemeal reforms, and even then the options are limited.
Let’s review what’s happened with immigration reform during Obama’s term to determine whether the president has truly done “nothing.”
The Facts
Obama pushed for passage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act before Republicans won the House majority in November 2010. The bill would have made children of illegal immigrants -- technically up to age 35 -- eligible for residency if they attend college or serve in the military and don’t have criminal records.
A fierce tax debate, without much light
"Now, an independent study says that about 70 percent of this new, $5 trillion tax cut would go to folks making over $200,000 a year. And folks making over a million dollars a year would get an average tax cut of about 25 percent.”
— President Obama, June 14, 2012, speaking about Romney tax plan
“One of the absolute requirements of any tax reform that I have in mind is that people who are at the high end, whether you call them the 1 percent or 2 percent or half a percent, that people at the high end will still pay the same share of the tax burden they’re paying now. I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest. I’m looking to bring tax rates down for everyone.”
— Former governor Mitt Romney, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 17, 2012, also speaking about his tax plan
How are such opposing statements even possible?
The president declares on Thursday that his GOP rival will give the rich a 25 percent tax cut, citing an “independent study.”And then three days later, Romney insists that the rich will still “pay the same share of the tax burden.” In other words, no real tax cut.
Part of the explanation is that Obama is trying to nail Romney with specifics — and Romney is trying to avoid them. Let’s take a closer look.
The Facts
First, let’s examine the tax burden under current law. When it comes to federal income taxes, the wealthy already pay most of the taxes. (The percentages change a bit when payroll taxes are included, but not much.) People at the lowest levels have a negative share because they get refundable tax credits. Here are the figures from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center:
Romney’s claim that the federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters, police
Brian Kilmeade: “He [President Obama] says you’re out of touch. He says you want to cut firefighters and teachers, that you don’t understand what’s going on in these communities. What do you say to that, Governor?”
Mitt Romney: “That’s a very strange accusation. Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that’s completely absurd.”
-- Exchange between GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade, June 12, 2012
Fox News invited Mitt Romney on the air Tuesday to discuss the recent Gaffe-fest that featured President Obama and the GOP challenger himself -- whether he wants to admit it or not -- setting themselves up for easy attacks. To review, Obama said during a Friday news conference that “the private sector is doing fine.” Romney quickly pounced on that comment, telling voters the president is out of touch.
“He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers,” Romney said during a stump speech in Iowa. “Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
Obama’s supporters responded by suggesting the GOP challenger wants to start eliminating firefighters, teachers and police from the public workforce -- a reasonable assumption given his comments Friday. Romney described the accusation as “strange,” but we found it just as curious that he claimed the federal government doesn’t pay for such government employees.
Let’s take a look at who pays for what.
The Facts
We figured Romney may have misspoke, so we asked his campaign to explain exactly what he meant with his comment that the federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters and police. After some prodding, spokeswoman Andrea Saul provided this terse response: “As Gov. Romney said, ‘teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states’ – that is a fact.”
Fact checking the dueling Obama and Romney economic speeches
(KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)
“This is not my opinion. This is not political spin.”
— President Obama, remarks at Cuyahoga Community College, June 14, 2012
President Obama and former governor Mitt Romney delivered dueling speeches on the economy Thursday, but they need to freshen up their facts. With the exception of a few odds and ends, we have heard much of this before. But we are amused, as The Fact Checker, to see that the president believes he needs to tell his audience that he is not spinning them.
Let’s do a quick round-up. We will keep the focus mostly on Obama, since he claimed to have lots of facts. As is our practice, we will not do a Pinocchio rating at the end, in part because we have given ratings in the past for various statements that have been repeated.
President Obama
“They haven't specified exactly where the knife would fall, but here's some of what would happen if that cut that they proposed was spread evenly across the budget.”
A wrong-headed question on ‘Obamacare’
KTIV (Sioux City, Iowa): “One of those businesses that I mentioned said very specifically when they said they needed to close up shop and move their jobs back to Wisconsin was that it was a direct result of the health care reform that you initiated, that Congress passed. How do you react to that?”
President Obama: “Yeah, that would be kind of hard to explain, because the only folks that have been impacted in terms of the health care bill are insurance companies who are required to make sure that they’re providing preventive care, or they’re not dropping your coverage when you get sick. And so, this particular company probably wouldn’t have been impacted by that.”
— exchange on June 11, 2012
This is a story of how an uninformed question became fodder for the presidential campaign.
Shortly after this interview aired, the Weekly Standard posted a blog item with this headline: “Obama Surprised to Learn Obamacare Is Hurting Small Businesses.”
Then, the next morning, the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, appeared on Fox News and declared: “He’s had a number of very revealing comments that show just how far out of touch he is with what’s happening in the country. Yesterday he said, among other things, that he didn’t realize that Obamacare is having any impact on small business.”
Romney suggested Obama read a new survey of small businesses from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which purported to show that small businesses were less likely to hire workers because of the health care law. (More on that survey below.)
Now, watching the video clip, it’s hard to see why someone would think Obama appears surprised. Despite Romney’s claim, he certainly doesn’t say he did not realize this problem. But he does seem a bit puzzled by the question, as should anyone: Why would a company consolidate offices in another state because of a national health care law?
We decided to investigate.
The Facts
The company in question is Nemschoff Inc., which makes chairs and other furnishings for the health care industry, including hospitals. This should have raised a red flag because it is no small business. It is a subsidiary of Herman Miller Inc. (which makes super-nice office furniture), an international company with $1.6 billion in annual revenue. When Herman Miller acquired Nemschoff in 2009, it reported that Nemschoff had annual revenue of more than $90 million.
Mitt Romney’s nonsensical claim about ‘Obamacare’
(Nati Harnik — Associated Press)
“Today, government at all levels consumes 37 percent of the total economy or GDP. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, government will reach half of the American economy.”
— Mitt Romney, economic speech, June 7, 2012
This is a startling assertion by the presumptive GOP candidate, which he has made in several forms in recent weeks.
David Corn of Mother Jones first spotted it when Romney made a victory speech in New Hampshire, arguing, “With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.” Corn quoted a number of economic experts finding fault with Romney’s reasoning, such as former Ronald Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett saying “this analysis is so stupid it is hard to know where to begin.”
FactCheck.org then weighed in when Romney had tweaked the language somewhat, but also found it wanting, saying it was “a pure partisan fantasy” and “patently false and misleading.”
With such harsh reviews, one would think that Romney might drop the assertion from his speeches. But now a new iteration has appeared, so we will examine it.
The Facts
The Romney campaign says this line is based on three separate claims. First, that in 2011, government expenditures amounted to 37.34 percent of the gross domestic product. Second, that with the president’s health plan in place in 2020, government expenditures are projected to climb to 39.18 percent. Finally, private health-care expenditures are projected to be 10.03 percent of GDP in 2020, so adding that altogether gets you to 49.21 percent.
Not fine: When the rhetoric is on the other foot
“The private sector is doing fine.”
— President Obama, June 8, 2012
Every politician has his or her talking points — the lines they repeat, over and over, to make their case. These lines are carefully crafted to present their case in the best possible light, or their opponent in the worst possible light.
The problem is when they start believing the spin themselves. That’s what happened to President Obama on Friday, when he said at a news conference that “the private sector is doing fine.” Republicans immediately pounced, and the president quickly clarified that things were not all that fine.
But look at what the president said just before that sentence: “The truth of the matter is that, as I said we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last two — 27 months; over 800,000 just this year alone.”
That is one of Obama’s favorite talking points — a figure plucked from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, starting with the lowest point in private sector jobs during his presidency. If you said that same “fact” day after day, you also might think the private sector is doing fine. (Obama’s larger point was relative — private sector hiring is doing better compared to state and local jobs, which keep falling.)
The line is also featured in a new TV ad the Obama campaign began airing last week, which we feature above. As a point of comparison, we also have posted a Romney ad that also uses BLS data to make claims about his record as governor.
We thought it would be an interesting — and amusing — experiment to use one campaign’s rhetoric, but inserting the other guy’s numbers. For instance, we will insert Romney’s job stats from his term of governor into Obama rhetoric, and Obama job stats in Romney rhetoric.
Romney’s conflicting remarks on Solyndra-like investments
(Relevant comments begin at about the 19:50 mark)
“Well, that [Konarka investment] was a loan that was approved by the prior administration. The governor made it clear that his philosophy was that government should not be in the business of venture investing.”
— Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom on ABC’s “This Week,” talking about a Massachusetts investment in the failed solar-panel company Konarka Technologies, June 3, 2012
Mitt Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom squared off Sunday with President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, on ABC’s “This Week,” with the two operatives defending their candidates’ records on clean-energy investments.
Earlier in the week, Romney held a news conference at Solyndra, describing the collapse of that federally backed solar-panel maker as proof that the Obama administration was misguided in trying to create jobs with targeted government investments — something the president’s critics have described as crony capitalism. But Massachusetts made similar investments when the presumptive GOP presidential nominee was governor of that state, and a small number of those companies have gone bust.
Does Romney have his own Solyndra situation? Let’s review the Bay State’s clean-energy programs to determine how much responsibility the former governor deserves for an investment in the now-defunct solar-panel start-up Konarka Technologies. We’ll also take a look at how much he supported government financing for green-technology development in general.
The Facts
Romney held a news conference at the Konarka headquarters less than three weeks after becoming governor of Massachusetts, announcing that the state would shift $24 million from its long-established Renewable Energy Trust to a new Green Energy Fund. The plan allowed the state to partner with private investors to provide loans, venture capital and management assistance to start-ups, with an independent group making the investment decisions.
Mitt Romney’s inaccurate claims about government workers
(Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES)
“That stimulus he [President Obama] put in place — it didn’t help private sector jobs, it helped preserve government jobs. And the one place we should have shut back — or cut back — was on government jobs. We have 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let’s send them home and put you back to work.”
— Mitt Romney, in Craig, Colo., May 29, 2012
There’s a lot going on in this quote by the presumptive Republican nominee, which a reader asked us to fact-check. Romney disparages President Obama’s $830 billion stimulus bill for allegedly not helping to create private sector jobs. He also dings government workers, suggesting that the president’s policies have led to a bloat of government workers — and that this is a bad thing for other workers.
Let’s take a deeper look at his claims.
The Facts
We have to admit that the statement is bit confusing, because it appears to mix different thoughts. The stimulus bill included payments to states to help save “government” jobs, such as those of teachers, firefighters and the like. But then Romney refers to “145,000 more government workers,” which is correct only if he is referring to federal workers, not state workers.
Obama versus Romney on job creation
The Obama campaign this week launched an attack on Mitt Romney’s record as Massachusetts governor, calling particular attention to his records on jobs. We will fact check this latest Web video in detail in the coming days, but we came up with an interesting way to compare the job creation records of both men.
First a caveat: Attributing “job creation” to a politician, particularly a regional one, is a dicey proposition. The economy plays a huge role in the success or failure of various job initiatives. It takes time for policies to take effect, so a politician may reap the benefits of projects undertaken by his predecessor — or see his successor reap the rewards from his or her ideas.
A stronger case can be made that a president has more control over the economy than a governor, but we still think it is silly to date his job record from the moment he takes the oath of office. Nevertheless, that is the common political metric.
Take a look at the chart above, which uses seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data to show the change in the level of employment during the first 40 months of each man’s tenure as governor or president.
The similarities are actually more striking than the differences. Both men took office as the economy was plunging, but the hole (in percentage terms) turned out to be much deeper for Obama. The jobs picture started to turn around for both men at about the same time, but because Romney’s job deficit was comparatively smaller, he moved into positive territory sooner — though it still took him 36 months.
The latest Romney claim about Bain Capital
“With regards to Bain Capital, they just put a report out about their record, the Bain Capital guys did. They noted they made about 350 investments since the beginning of their firm, and of those investments 80 percent of them grew their revenues.”
— Mitt Romney on Fox News, May 24, 2012
“The fact is that Bain Capital, there were a number of investments that didn’t perform well. In the case of Bain, it was less than 5 percent of the investments that ended up in bankruptcy. The fact is 80 percent of the companies he invested in grew. And that means that jobs were created. If you look, for example, at Sports Authority, 15,000; if you look at Brighter Horizons, 19,000; if you look at Staples, nearly 90,000 jobs created.”
— Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” May 27, 2012
Now that the “100,000 jobs created” talking point has been discredited, we sense a new talking point developing in the Romney campaign — that 80 percent of Bain Capital investments “grew their revenues.”
We’ve been highly skeptical of most of the attacks on Bain by the former Massachusetts governor’s GOP rivals and the Obama campaign, arguing on numerous occasions that the overall record of the investment firm is pretty good. But the point of private equity is to reward investors, not necessarily create jobs, which is where Romney’s defenders create problems for themselves.
So now Romney is citing Bain’s claim that 80 percent of their investments grew their revenues. Ed Gillespie, one of his aides, even suggested that revenues “means that jobs were created.” Is that the case?
The Facts
This new statistic appears to have emerged in a lengthy defense that Bain Capital — which Romney headed until 1999 — sent to its investors in March. (We should note that the letter approvingly quotes The Fact Checker for one of our analyses of an anti-Bain ad by Newt Gingrich.) The Bain letter said:
Romney’s unsubstantiated quote from union leader
(Mary Altaffer/AP)
“The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, ‘When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of children.’ ”
— Mitt Romney in an education speech at the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit in Washington, D.C, May 23, 2012
Mitt Romney veered from his standard talking points about the sluggish economy Wednesday to talk about education reform, a subject he said would be the top issue of the 2012 election if it weren’t for the housing crisis and the state of the economy. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee claimed that President Obama has bowed to powerful teachers unions, which he blamed for maintaining the status quo with failing schools.
The quote Romney cited could represent a serious indictment of teachers unions and their priorities, but only if the Republican candidate is correct in saying that it came from a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers. We searched for evidence that a former head of that educators’ group, the second-largest of its kind in the United States, had really made such a statement.
For what it’s worth, the quote has appeared on a Madison, Wis.-area billboard sponsored by the self-proclaimed nonpartisan group Reforming Education And Demanding Exceptional Results in Wisconsin (READER-WI), according to a blogger for the left-leaning site Daily Kos.
The Facts
A search on Wikipedia reveals that the quote in question appears in an entry for the late Albert Shanker, a teachers union icon who served as president of the American Federation of Teachers for more than 20 years. The statement is listed under the heading “Disputed quote,” which should have been an immediate red flag for the Romney campaign.
An out-of-context view of Romney’s time at Bain Capital
“To me, Mitt Romney takes from poor, the middle class, and gives to the rich. It is the opposite of Robin Hood.”
— worker in latest Obama campaign ad
Mitt Romney’s role at Bain Capital continues to be a major issue in this presidential election, as the Obama campaign rolls out video after video about the travails of individual workers who suffered at companies owned by Bain.
The latest video, about a company called Ampad, must bring back bad memories for Romney because in 1994 he seemed on the verge of defeating the late Ted Kennedy in a bitter Senate race when striking Ampad workers showed up in Massachusetts and started showing up in Kennedy attack ads. The Ampad story turned the tide against Romney and Kennedy won.
The Obama ads are very slick, and we find them frustrating to fact check. Unlike some of the ads produced by Romney’s GOP rivals — such as the notorious “King of Bain” video produced by supporters of Newt Gingrich — the facts mentioned in the ads are generally correct. But then those facts are intercut with highly personal attacks on Romney by the workers themselves, such as the statement featured above.
We can’t fact check those statements, since they are personal sentiments. (Some of the lines are almost too perfect, which makes us wonder.) So that leaves us in the uncomfortable position of validating the facts in a highly negative attack.
So we are going to try a different tack: a guide for readers on how to evaluate claims about Romney and Bain Capital. We will use this particular deal as an example.
Is Obama responsible for a $5 trillion increase in the debt?
(Charlie Neibergall/AP)
“When you add up his policies, this president has increased the national debt by five trillion dollars.”
— Mitt Romney, in Des Moines, May 15, 2012
Who’s to blame for the national debt? In a speech in Iowa, the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday pointed the finger at President Obama’s policies, naming in particular the 2009 stimulus (worth about $800 billion) and the health-care law, which has mostly not yet kicked in (and according to the Congressional Budget Office will not add to the deficit in its first 10 years).
The national debt is simply a matter of numbers, but the blame game is much more complicated. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
The Treasury Department’s “Debt to the Penny” Web site makes it easy to track the growth of the national debt during Obama’s presidency. There are two key figures — for publicly held debt and for gross debt, which includes bonds that the government owes to itself (such as Social Security trust fund bonds.)
Obama ad attacking Mitt Romney mimics Ted Kennedy ads
The production values are better, but not the message.
The Obama campaign’s new ad attacking Mitt Romney and his tenure at Bain Capital is a near carbon copy of a successful series of ads that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) used to fend off a strong challenge from Romney in 1994. Politico collected the old Kennedy ads last year.
Take a look and compare.
Obama ad (2012)
“If he going to run the country the way he ran our business, I wouldn’t want him there. He would be so out of touch with the average person in this country.”
--worker at company acquired by Bain Capital
“It was like a vampire. He came in and sucked the life out of us.”
--another worker
“Bain Capital sought elimination of the pension plan and termination of employee and retiree life insurance and health insurance.”
--union representative
Ted Kennedy ads (1994)
(go to 1:00 mark)“I would like to say to Mitt Romney, if you think you’d make such a good senator, come out here to Marion, Indiana and see what your company has done to these people.”
--worker at a company acquired by Bain Capital
“They cut the wages...we no longer had insurance... basically cut our throats.”
--more quotes from workers
Romney and Bain Capital: the Obama campaign’s newest ad
“It makes me angry. Those guys were all rich. They all had more money than they would ever spend, yet they did not have money to take care of the very people who made the money for them.”
— Former steel worker Joe Soptic, in a new Obama campaign ad on Mitt Romney’s business record
It’s no surprise that the Obama campaign chose the story of GS Industries for its first television ad attacking Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital.
Unlike some of the tales of job-killing and factory-closings that were thrown at Romney during the GOP primaries, this is a relatively straightforward story: The initial investment in the steel company was made in 1993 by Bain under Romney’s leadership, and the company took on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while paying Bain investors millions of dollars in dividends.
Romney was no longer actively managing Bain when the steel company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and closed its Kansas City plant, causing more than 700 workers to lose their jobs and health insurance, as well as part of their pensions. (More on that below.)
Using just the voices of angry former workers at the company, the ad is less about Romney’s business record and more about his values.
Romney is described by the workers as “a vampire” who destroyed people’s lives while seeking to make as much money as possible. “If he going to run the country the way he ran our business, I wouldn’t want him there,” one worker says. “He would be so out of touch with the average person in this country.” Ouch.
GS Industries has also been a tempting target for Romney’s GOP rivals. In January, Texas Gov. Rick Perry mentioned it as an example of Romney being a “vulture” capitalist. The opposition research done by Sen. John McCain’s campaign in 2008 also highlighted GSI.
As usual in campaign ads, some important context is missing. Let’s fill in some of the blanks. There is also a longer, six-minute version for a Web site called romneyeconomics.com, but we will focus on the two-minute version airing in battleground states.
The Facts
First of all, the investment was one of many done by Bain under Romney’s leadership, which the Wall Street Journal documented was a record mainly of success, not failure. The Romney campaign immediately countered the Obama ad with a Web ad focused on Bain’s successful investment in Steel Dynamics, featuring interviews with happy steel workers.
The RNC and Obama, taking quotes out of context
“President Obama might forget the recession but America hasn’t.”
--text from a new RNC web video, May 11, 2012
“When a woman in Iowa shared the story of her financial struggles, he gave an answer right out of an economics textbook. He said, ‘Our productivity equals our income,’ as if the only reason people can’t pay their bills is because they’re not productive enough. Well, that’s not what’s going on. Most of us who have spent some time talking to people understand that the problem isn’t that the American people aren’t working hard enough, aren’t productive enough -– you’ve been working harder than ever. The challenge we face right now -– the challenge we’ve faced for over a decade -– is that harder work isn’t leading to higher incomes. Bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs”
--President Obama, Remarks in Seattle, May 10, 2012
When a political campaign quotes an opponent, watch out. Some important context may be missing.
The Republican National Committee, in a new web video, blasts President Obama for forgetting about the recession, based on remarks that Obama made in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Obama, in that same Seattle speech, quotes presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney as some sort of unfeeling business executive, based on remarks Romney made last year while campaigning in Iowa.
Let’s look at what Obama and Romney really said.
The Facts
The RNC video actually runs a relatively long snippet from Obama’s speech, which to our mind undercuts the idea that Obama says he forgot about the recession. Here’s the full quote, with the part the RNC used in bold:
Mitt Romney’s claim of credit for the auto industry turnaround
(Jae C. Hong/AP)
“My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what the president did. He finally took them through bankruptcy. That was the right course I argued for from the very beginning. It was the UAW [United Auto Workers] and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.”
— Mitt Romney, May 7, 2012, in an interview with Cleveland’s WEWS-TV
What should we do when a politician keeps repeating a Pinocchio-laden claim — or even makes its worse?
We have examined previously the former Massachusetts governor’s claim that he set the course for the managed bankruptcy of the auto industry—and also have examined critically some of President Obama’s claims on the bailout. But clearly it’s time for a refresher course.
The Fact Checker challenge
I’ve issued a challenge to President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney--give at least one 15-minute campaign speech without embellishing the truth.
Will they succeed?
Read my full article in The Washington Post’s Outlook section. The video above offers some tips for how they can meet this challenge.
The latest Super PAC attack against Mitt Romney
“Mitt Romney. He made millions off of companies that went bankrupt while workers lost promised health and retirement benefits.
“His own tax return from last year reveals he made $21 million, yet paid a lower tax rate than many middle-class families.
“Now Romney’s proposing a huge new $150,000 tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent, while cutting Medicare and education for us.
“Mitt Romney. If he wins, we lose.”
— Voiceover of a new television ad by Priorities USA Action
This television ad, by the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action, poses a unique challenge for this column because each of the statements uttered within its 30 seconds has a ring of truth. Of course, it paints each of these facts in the most negative light possible, without any balance, but that’s their prerogative.
The ad also repeatedly shows an image of a youthful Romney with dollars stuffed in his pockets — a 27-year-old photo that was shot as part of a promotional effort for a relatively new company, Bain Capital, that Romney headed at the time. The ad at one point even photoshops an image of an older Romney, a rather cheesy maneuver that recently was mocked by our friends over at Flackcheck.org.
Here’s some context for the claims made in the ad.
“He made millions off of companies that went bankrupt while workers lost promised health and retirement benefits.”
That’s the dark side of Romney’s business career at Bain Capital, which he would argue on balance helped create jobs for workers. (We had earlier taken Romney to task for claiming he created 100,000 jobs without mentioning the ones that had been lost.)
Mitt Romney’s correct stat on the ‘Buffett Rule’
(Jessica Kourkounis/GETTY IMAGES)
“Someone calculated that the taxes he [Obama] would raise in his Buffett Rule would pay for 11 hours of government.”
— Mitt Romney, April 16, 2012
President Obama’s proposal to add a tax surcharge to adjusted gross incomes over $1 million, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, has generated scorn in Republican ranks, such as the comment above by the presumptive GOP nominee and former Massachusetts governor. (Romney was borrowing an observation first made by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.)
It would seem to be a simple math exercise to check this fact. But this is Washington…..let’s have some fun with “baselines.”
The Facts
The Republican calculation is based on the fact that in 2013, the Buffett Rule would raise $5.1 billion in revenue in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. (Alternatively, you can use the 10-year revenue figure of $47 billion and come up with an annual average of nearly $5 billion a year.)
Mitt Romney’s hyped-up business start-up statistic
(JOSHUA LOTT/REUTER)
“The President unfortunately has taken every single path that has led towards a restriction in job growth, has made it harder for new businesses to start up. As a matter of fact, the number of new business start-ups per year has dropped by 100,000 per year. This is just unacceptable and it’s one of the reasons why it has been so hard for this economy to recover.”
--Mitt Romney, on “Fox & Friends,” April 19, 2012
The uncertain economic environment continues to form the core of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign, as witnessed by his comments made last week. A reader asked whether these statistics on new business start-ups were correct, so we decided to investigate.
The Facts
The Romney campaign directed us to congressional testimony earlier this year by Brookings scholar Martin Neil Baily, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. In the testimony, titled the “The State of American Small Business,” Baily noted that “the number of start-up establishments has fallen off to a greater extent in this recession than in the 2001 recession.”
Romney and Iran’s ‘route to the sea’
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
(AFP/Getty Images)
“Maybe one of the few bright spots in the Middle East developments in the last year has been the rising of the people in Syria against [President Bashar al-] Assad. Obviously, as you know, Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally in the region. Syria is the route that allows Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons in Lebanon. Syria is Iran’s route to the sea.”
— Mitt Romney, question and answer session at AIPAC conference, March 6, 2012
We’ve puzzled over this comment for a while. When the presumptive GOP nominee referred to Syria as Iran’s “route to the sea” during the Arizona GOP debate in February, we figured it was just a slip of the tongue.
But then a reader counted at least five times in which Romney has used this phrase, including in the Feb. 22 debate, at last month’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference, in a TV interview (MSNBC, Dec. 21), on the radio (Kilmeade & Friends, Feb. 14) and even in a Washington Post interview (Feb. 10).
Considering that Syria shares no border with Iran — Iraq and Turkey are in the way — and that Iran has about 1,500 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, leading to the Arabian Sea, the reader wanted to know: What’s Romney talking about?
The Facts
This is the explanation provided by the Romney campaign: “It is generally recognized that Syria offers Iran strategic basing/staging access to the Mediterranean as well as to terrorist proxies in the Levant. This is a large reason why Iran invests so much in Syria.”
Women job losses: A deeper look at the data
(Tim Boyle/Bloomberg)
“And if you look at the damage early on, you know, most of the early job losses were in construction and manufacturing, and disproportionately affected men. But as the crisis intensified, as it did over the course of 2008 — again, before the president came into office — the damage spread and you saw state and local governments, for example, cut back into teachers, fired a lot of teachers, let a lot of teachers go. And a lot of women teach, so you saw the composition of those job losses change over the course of the recovery.”
— Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” April 15, 2012
We criticized Republicans last week for promoting the “true but false” assertion that under Obama, women have lost seven times as many jobs as men. This did not stop the Mitt Romney campaign from trying to promote this idea, which Treasury Secretary Geithner on Sunday labeled “ridiculous and deeply misleading.”
We did not think much of the GOP claim because, even though the numbers added up, it is silly to think any economy begins or ends with a presidency. Over the course of the recession (December 2007 to June 2009), the number of jobs declined by just over 5 million, with women accounting for nearly 1.8 million of that figure.
Still, since the recession ended, 2.2 million jobs have been added under Obama, with women accounting for just 284,000 of that figure. So something’s going on. Geithner’s theory — that women started to lose jobs later in the recession — is an interesting one, so we decided to dig deep in the Bureau of Labor Statistics database for some answers.
The Facts
Teaching (listed in the BLS database as “local government-education”) represents about 9 percent of the jobs held by women in the United States. The data show that, since Obama became president, a larger proportion of the overall job loss by women — 22.7 percent — has been in teaching positions.
Romney’s claim about ‘multiplying’ regulators under Obama
(Whitney Curtis/Getty Images)
“Today, our freedom is never safe – because unelected, unaccountable regulators are always on the prowl. And under President Obama, they are multiplying. The number of federal employees has grown by almost 150,000 under this president.”
— Mitt Romney, in a speech to the National Rifle Association, April 13, 2012
This number jumped out at us as we read the presumptive Republican nominee’s speech to the NRA. It seems to fit into the Republican narrative of out-of-control growth in government under Obama.
But context is important. Romney’s phrasing suggests that many of these new employees are “unelected, unaccountable regulators.” Is this the case?
The Facts
The Labor Department and the Office of Personnel Management maintain records on the number of federal employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the federal workforce (minus the Postal Service) was 2.062 million in January 2009, when Obama became president. As of March 2012, the number of federal employees stood at 2.208 million.
Romney’s claim that Obama has raised taxes on ‘millions of Americans’
(Steven Senne/AP)
“President Obama is the first president in history to openly campaign for reelection on a platform of higher taxes. He has already raised taxes on millions of Americans, but he won’t stop there. He wants to raise taxes on millions more by taxing small businesses and job creators.”
— Gail Gitcho, communications director for Romney’s campaign, in a statement, April 10, 2012
We are dubious about the first part of this claim — Harry Truman, after all, vetoed a big tax cut in the midst of his reelection campaign in 1948 — and we have already demonstrated how claims about the tax burden on “small businesses” are overstated. But a reader drew our attention to the central point of this statement — that Obama “has already raised taxes on millions of Americans.”
There is no question that Obama has proposed higher taxes on the wealthy, including ending the Bush tax cuts for people making above a certain income and imposing the so-called “Buffett Rule” on millionaires. But are “millions of Americans” already suffering under a tax yoke imposed by Obama?
The Facts
When we asked the Romney campaign for evidence to back up the claim, we received a list of “19 tax increases,” many of which were contained in Obama’s health-care law. But virtually all of these taxes have not yet taken effect (more on that later) — and the key ones target people making more than $200,000 (singles) or $250,000 (married filers).
Obama vs. Romney, part 2
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
“I’ve also put forward a detailed plan that would reform and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid.”
— President Obama, remarks to newspaper editors, April 3, 2012
“I’d be willing to consider the President’s plan, but he doesn’t have one. That’s right: In over three years, he has failed to enact or even propose a serious plan to solve our entitlement crisis.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, remarks to newspaper editors, April 4, 2012
Welcome to the 2012 election campaign, now that it’s clear who the contestants will be. But with speeches like these, will it be possible to have a serious debate?
We recognize that politicians seek to define differences — and Obama and Romney spent most of their time attacking the other side — but we found the disconnect between the two speeches somewhat jarring. Let’s try to explain what these two men are saying.
The Facts
Entitlements are such programs as Social Security and Medicare, and their costs will soar as the Baby Boom generation heads into retirement. On the surface, Romney’s attack appeared contradictory, because a few moments after attacking the president for not having a plan for solving the entitlement crisis, he faulted Obama’s proposals for reining in spending on Medicare as part of his health care law.
Romney’s attack on Obama
(Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Mitt Romney’s appearance this week before the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, a day after President Obama addressed the same group, lacked the bevy of new “facts” that Obama rolled out as he lashed out at the House Republican budget plan. Instead, the increasingly likely GOP presidential nominee repeated versions of a number of claims that we have previously called into question. In the interest of fair play, as with Obama, we won’t award an overall Pinocchio rating for his speech.
“The administration pledged that it would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It has been above 8 percent every month since.”
Romney has subtly changed the wording here, dropping a reference to President Obama making this statement and instead attributing it to “the administration.”
Rick Santorum’s ‘kitchen sink’ slam at Romney
“What if I told you that this man’s big government-mandating health-care included $50 abortions and killed thousands of jobs. Would you ever vote for him? What if I told you he supported radical environmental job-killing cap-and-trade and the Wall Street bailout? And what if I told you he dramatically raised taxes and stuck taxpayers with a $1 billion shortfall? One more thing. What if I told you the man I’m talking about wasn’t him [Obama]? It’s him [Romney]”
— narrator of a new Rick Santorum TV ad, as a photo of Barack Obama morphs into one of Mitt Romney
Desperate for a win in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, former senator Rick Santorum has begun running a tough ad there that takes only 30 seconds to throw just about everything, including the kitchen sink, at his chief rival, the former Massachusetts governor.
So do these claims add up? Let’s take them in the order in which they were made.
The Facts
The individual mandate included in Romney’s health-care bill was originally a conservative idea, pushed by such groups as the Heritage Foundation. (That is a simplified version of a long and torturous path, which was best explained in articles by Forbes and The Washington Post.)
Romney and ‘outsourcing’: Biden’s out-of-context fact
(Kevin E. Schmidt/AP)
“Despite the fact that millions of taxpayer dollars were flowing to companies outsourcing state services like overseas call centers, he vetoed a bill passed by the Massachusetts legislature that would have stopped the state from outsourcing contracts overseas, state contracts…No, I really mean it. I mean, that’s one, when I was told about it, I said, ‘I’m not going to say that until you fact check that for me again.’ I mean, think about it. It’s one thing for the local company to outsource a call service, but for the state government to outsource a call service that’s set up to answer questions for people in the state about a problem they have with the government, to outsource that, denying folks in Massachusetts the jobs that are attended to that.”
— Vice President Biden, remarks in Davenport, Iowa, March 28, 2011
Since the vice president brought it up, let’s delve into some ancient Massachusetts history again.
We were dubious about this charge when the pro-Obama Super PAC claimed, in a slashing web ad, that American jobs were “relocated” when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts. But it’s another matter when the vice president levels the charge – and says it’s been fact checked.
We always caution readers to be wary of claims made about particular votes — or in this case, a veto. What is the context for that person’s action?
The Facts
Several months before the bill had landed on Romney’s desk in 2004, the governor proposed a $29-million plan to curb outsourcing of jobs out of the state, according to a March 23 article on the front page of The Boston Globe. But the plan landed with a thud and did not get very far in the Democratic-controlled legislature.
Mitt Romney and Russia: ‘Geopolitical foe’ at the U.N.?
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speaks in Seoul about Romney’s comments
(YEKATERINA SHTUKINA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world’s worst actors, of course the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran, and nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough, but when these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when [Syrian President] Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go to the United Nations and who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors? It is always Russia, typically with China alongside, and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council, and is of course a massive security power — Russia is the geopolitical foe.”
— Mitt Romney, March 26, 2012
The former Massachusetts governor made these remarks during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in response to Obama’s open-mike flub with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. (Obama was overheard asking for “space” concerning a dispute over missile defense, saying he would have more “flexibility” for a deal if he wins re-election.)
We will leave to pundits to decide whether Romney’s reference to Russia as a “geopolitical foe” is a Cold War throwback. (Medvedev thinks so, saying the comments “smelled of Hollywood.”) But we were curious if Romney is correct to claim that Russia is “always” defending “bad actors” at the United Nations.
The Facts
Russia is one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with China, France, Britain and the United States. Ten other countries rotate, with two-year terms, but only the permanent members have the power to block a Security Council resolution with a single “no” vote.
Romney and the individual mandate, again
There’s been a considerable amount of discussion lately about whether Mitt Romney’s old campaign comments and op-eds provide proof that he actually supports a federal mandate, contrary to what he claims and what Fact Checker Glenn Kessler determined about the matter in a previous column. Still, critics such as Rick Santorum continue to pound home the notion that the former governor advocated a national insurance requirement.
Romney has stood firmly behind his Bay State mandate but swears that he doesn’t support such a policy at the federal level. He has said states should decide for themselves how to improve their health-care systems. Our previous column noted that he has shown consistency on this issue, despite a tendency to explain his stance in convoluted terms.
Let’s once again review key remarks that Romney opponents have highlighted to determine what the GOP delegate leader really said, as opposed to what people assume he meant.
The Facts
First, opposing the federal health-care law is perfectly compatible with expressing a love for insurance mandates and thinking they can work for states that want to adopt them, as Romney has done. It’s like saying “Cardinals are pretty, and I think every state should adopt that species as its state bird, but I would never force them to do that — I don’t have the right.”
Pinocchios: Obama gets a downgrade; Romney an upgrade
“America uses 20 percent of the world’s oil, and we’ve got 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. I wasn’t a math major, but if you’re using 20, you’ve only got 2, that means you got to bring in the rest from someplace else.”
— President Obama, remarks on energy, Boulder City, Nev., March 21, 2012
“The fact of the matter is we use 20 percent of the world’s oil. But even if we drilled every square inch of this country, we’d still only have 2 or 3 or 4 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.”
--Obama, remarks on energy, Maljamar, New Mexico, March 21
“We can’t just rely on drilling. Not when we use more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but still only have 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.”
— Obama, weekly radio address, March 17
“There’s a problem with a strategy that only relies on drilling and that is, America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country — so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere — we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Let’s say we miss something — maybe it’s 3 percent instead of 2. We’re using 20; we have 2.
“Now, you don’t need to be getting an excellent education at Prince George’s Community College to know that we’ve got a math problem here. I help out Sasha occasionally with her math homework and I know that if you’ve got 2 and you’ve got 20, there’s a gap. There’s a gap, right?”
— Obama, remarks on energy, Prince George’s County, March 15
In response to reader comments and new information, we are revisiting two previous columns and making a rare change in our Pinocchio rating for two unrelated statements made by President Obama and Mitt Romney.
The feedback we get from readers, both positive and negative, is invaluable. We also try to be consistent in our use of the Pinocchio scale, and are always willing to reconsider rulings in the face of new evidence.
Romney’s ad: Why would Illinois trust Santorum?
(Steven Senne - Associated Press)
Mitt Romney needs a victory in Tuesday’s Illinois primary to regain momentum in the GOP nominating race, which explains why he would go negative with this ad. Rick Santorum represents his top threat after finishing first in a series of Southern contests, but Santorum still needs to prove he can win a state along the Rust Belt — he already lost Michigan and Ohio.
Romney’s ad attacks Santorum’s conservative credentials, hitting the former Pennsylvania senator where it matters most among the Prairie State’s rural voters. We looked at the claims to determine how much truth they contain.
The Facts
First off, we should point out that Pennsylvania voters ousted Santorum during a year when Republican incumbents nationwide were swept out of office. He fell to moderate Democrat Bob Casey, which suggests that Keystone State constituents were looking for someone to legislate from the center.
Mitt Romney’s misfire on light bulb standards
(M. Spencer Green/AP)
"And the government would have banned Thomas Edison’s light bulb. Oh yeah, Obama’s regulators actually did just that."
— Mitt Romney, March 19, 2012
During an economic speech on Monday, the former Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful charged that the Obama administration “banned” Thomas Edison’s light bulb.
Really?
Let’s take a look at this contentious issue.
The Facts
Thomas Edison did not invent the incandescent light bulb, but he did make it commercially viable, filing his first patent for improvements in 1878. And, then 129 years later, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
More ‘Mediscare’ hooey, GOP version
“This IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments so Washington can fund more wasteful spending. ...Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years.”
— Musician Pat Boone, in a television ad sponsored by the 60 Plus Association
A number of readers asked us to examine the latest claims about Medicare, made this week by both GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and a conservative advocacy group called the 60 Plus Association.
Actually, there is little new in either the 60 Plus Association’s $3.5 million ad campaign, featuring the venerable Pat Boone, or the “Five Questions for President Obama on Medicare” issued by the Romney campaign. We feel we have dealt with similar claims in the past, but apparently that has not deterred such attacks.
The Romney statement is amusing because it constantly repeats the phrase “ending Medicare as we know it”—which in turn has been a Democratic attack line against a House GOP plan for Medicare. (Democrats used to simply say “end Medicare” or “kill Medicare” until The Fact Checker and other fact checking organizations called them on it.)
Indeed, both parties are absolutely shameless about Medicare. (For instance, the Democratic National Committee attacked Romney on Medicare this week.) Both claim that other party would kill/destroy/ruin/whatever Medicare; neither side has much of a leg to stand on.
Someone must be falling for this stuff, however, or else it would not keep getting repeated.
The Facts
The current Medicare system, in place since the mid-1960s, is essentially a government-run health care program, with hospital and doctors’ fees paid by the government, though beneficiaries also pay premiums for some services as well as deductibles and coinsurance.
Mitt Romney and the individual mandate: A highly misleading DNC ad
“Mitt Romney — against individual mandates except when he’s for them.”
— New DNC Web ad attacking Romney
Many Democratic attacks on Mitt Romney suggest that he is a politician without conviction, and someone who will “say anything” to get elected. A new Democratic National Committee Web ad follows that pattern, highlighting a series of TV clips that aim at a perceived vulnerability of the former Massachusetts governor: his successful effort to create universal health care in his state.
President Obama’s health-care law was largely built around the concept of an individual mandate, as was Romney’s law. Romney, however, has insisted that he never intended to take the concept nationwide, but that each state could decide for itself how best to promote universal coverage.
This ad uses the clips — some of which we had not seen before — to suggest that Romney actually did support a national mandate, even when he now says he is against it. But how accurate is this claim?
The Facts
Readers should be wary of campaign ads that show many little clips, because a line or two can be taken out of context. One of the first things we do when fact-checking an ad like this is to look at the entire TV interview or debate segment, to understand why the comment in question was made.
Rick Santorum’s latest, strangest ‘Obamacare’ claim
“What we will go to in a very short period of time, the next two years, a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them. After Obamacare, it will not be less than 50 percent; it will be 100 percent.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, speaking in Steubenville, Ohio, March 7, 2012
Rick Santorum has made the growth of entitlement spending a key focus of his campaign for the presidency, and he touched upon the subject again when he addressed supporters after the Super Tuesday primaries.
We were struck by both figures he used in the speech — that 50 percent of Americans “depend on some form of federal payment” and that Obama’s health-care law would bring the figure to an eye-popping 100 percent. In other words, in just two years, every single American would begin to get federal handouts, according to Santorum’s calculation.
As usual, the Santorum campaign did not respond to a request for documentation, so we searched for the best data we could find.
The Facts
With the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, entitlement spending has certainly grown. And the Great Recession has also increased the number of people who rely on government benefits, such as unemployment insurance.
Obama and Iran: Mitt Romney’s critique
“This is a president who has failed to put in place crippling sanctions against Iran. He’s also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it’s unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. … It’s pretty straightforward in my view: If Barack Obama gets reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change.”
— Mitt Romney, campaigning in Georgia, March 4, 2012
It is a pretty declarative statement by the former Massachusetts governor: “If Barack Obama gets reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change.”
We can’t fact-check the future, but we can say this with certainty: If Romney becomes president, he will discover that this diplomatic stuff is much harder than it looks. And he will absolutely hate it when Congress tries to get involved in foreign policy issues.
Both of these statements are true for every president. It was ever thus.
Let’s take a look at some of Romney’s specific charges about Obama’s handling of the Iran portfolio.
The Facts
If you go back four years, you will see that it was the Obama campaign that made claims of weakness and fecklessness on Iran. President George W. Bush had considered the building of a multinational coalition seeking to negotiate with Iran as one of his foreign-policy legacies, but Obama officials were critical, saying it offered “weak carrots and weak sticks.”
Did Obama say he ranked in the top four presidents?
“Now these days when he's not spending our money or infringing on our rights, he’s busy running for reelection. He believes that — did you hear this? He believes he ranks among the top four presidents in American history. Can you believe that? I’d find a different spot for him.”
— Mitt Romney, Feb. 28, 2012
A reader asked us about this statement in the former Massachusetts governor’s speech after his victories in the Michigan and Arizona primaries. This comment has its roots in something Obama said that caused a brief stir in the conservative blogosphere just before Christmas, so we figured it was worth exploring.
In Romney’s telling, Obama comes off as an arrogant twit. So, did the president really say this?
The Facts
In December, Obama sat down for an interview with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes.” The clip in question was never aired on CBS, but the full interview was later posted on the CBS News Web site. (See below at the 55-minute mark.)
Antiabortion Super PAC stretches truth in anti-Mitt Romney ad
We’ve addressed similar ads and comments accusing Mitt Romney of being a disingenuous antiabortion candidate because of his policies while serving as governor of Massachusetts. Now we have a antiabortion super PAC drawing essentially the same conclusion based on nearly identical claims.
For this ad, we’ll review the facts again and take a look at the notion that Romney created a government-run health care system for the Bay State, even though we tackled that issue in a previous column.
The Facts
Earlier this month, we awarded two Pinocchios to Gingrich and Santorum for insisting that Romney forced hospitals to provide emergency contraception — or “abortion pills,” as Gingrich called them — to rape victims.
Newt Gingrich’s claim of a ‘pre-Obama norm’ gas price
“When I was speaker for four years, the average price was $1.13. When Obama was sworn in, the average price was $1.89. So trying to get to $2.00 to $2.50 is closer to the historic norm. Think of it as a pre-Obama norm.”
— Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Feb. 23, 2012
“We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices. The bubble burst in housing because people couldn’t pay their mortgages because of $4-a-gallon gasoline.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, Feb. 27, 2012
We asked readers for examples of gassy rhetoric on gasoline prices, and we certainly got some. This Gingrich example, made during an appearance in Kennewick, Wash., is priceless.
We will look at that, as well as Santorum’s interesting new theory on why the United States suffered an economic crisis in 2008.
The Facts
Earlier this week, we noted House Speaker John Boehner’s (R) comment that gasoline prices had doubled during Obama’s term. This is technically correct but misleading because oil prices were artificially low because of the economic crisis.
Santorum’s misfire on Obama, colleges and religion
“President Obama said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob! There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, Feb. 25, 2012
“You know the statistic that at least I was familiar with from a few years ago, I don't know if it still holds true but I suspect it may even be worse, that 62 percent of kids who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave without it.”
— Santorum, on ABC’s “This Week,” Feb. 26, 2012
There are two things going on with these remarks by Santorum — an attack on Obama for demanding college education for everyone and then an assertion that the college experience is akin to some sort of liberal boot camp.
We always thought college was more about being liberated (from parents), but clearly in some conservative circles there has also been an undercurrent of concern about attitudes on college campuses. (Some colleges, such as Hillsdale College in Michigan, in fact market themselves as conservative alternatives.)
But let’s check out Santorum’s claims about Obama and also examine whether there is data that backs up Santorum’s fears about college’s impact on people’s politics and religion.
The Facts
Obama’s statement on college education, made in his first speech to a joint session of Congress in 2009, is easy to check. The president, noting the success of the GI Bill after World War II, said the United States should seek to once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world:
Rick Santorum’s defense of debt ceiling votes
(Jae C. Hong, AP)
“The debt-to-GDP ratio — which is now over 100 percent — when I came to the Senate, it was 68 percent of GDP. When I left the Senate, it was 64 percent of GDP. So government as a size of the economy went down when I was in the United States Senate.”
“What happened in the earmark process ... was that members of Congress would ask formally, publicly request these things, put them on paper, and have them allocated, and have them voted on in committee, have them voted on on the floor of the Senate.”
“The Weekly Standard just did a review ... and they said that I was the most fiscally conservative senator in the Congress in the 12 years that I was there. My ratings with the National Taxpayers Union were As or Bs; they were very high from the Citizens Against Government Waste. I got a hero award.”
“I was out there as a Republican senator, a conservative voting record, over a 90 percent conservative voting record from the American Conservative Union. By the way, Ron, you ranked 145th, in the bottom half of Republicans this year, in a conservative voting record from that same organization.”
— GOP candidate Rick Santorum during the CNN debate, Feb. 23, 2012
These were Rick Santorum’s responses after Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul attacked his record on spending, something those two Santorum rivals have done all week.
The former Pennsylvania lawmaker noted that debt as a percentage of gross national product actually dropped during his time in the Senate, suggesting his spending policies were perfectly well in line with conservative principles. He defended his earmarks by saying the process was open to the public, hinting that he had nothing to hide. And he threw out a list of positive ratings from conservative watchdog groups as proof that he promoted fiscal restraint.
We checked the facts to determine whether Santorum defended his credentials with legitimate claims. We provided a fairly comprehensive review of the former senator’s fiscal record in a previous column. For this one, we’ll stick to just his remarks during the debate.
The Facts
Santorum is on to something with his comment about debt-to-GDP ratio: It’s a logical way to put debt in context. That’s because inflation and economic growth cause the debt number to rise almost automatically over time. Thus, the most accurate way to gauge the impact of debt is to measure it as a percentage of economic output.
Obama and the stimulus: A reader’s research sheds new light
(Chip Somodevilla/GETTY IMAGES)
Earlier this week, we focused on a statement by Mitt Romney that “three years ago, a newly-elected President Obama told America that if Congress approved his plan to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, he would hold unemployment below 8 percent.”
We had examined this issue before, and were prompted to look at it again by a reader who had publicly challenged Romney to prove that Obama ever said this. We gave Romney Three Pinocchios for his claim, largely because this “eight percent” figure stemmed from a chart in a paper written before Obama took office, not Obama’s own words.
However, several readers wrote that we were being overly narrow in our interpretation and thus were too critical of Romney. And one reader supplied his own research to prove his point.
“I think your column usually is very good and generally even-handed,” wrote Jon Hoffman. “However, I think the effort to debunk the claim about the stimulus and unemployment is perhaps a bit too ‘legalistic.’ It may be true that the original projection was in a paper by two people who were not yet Obama administration officials, and if that were all there was to it, your case (and that of Chuck Smith) would be air tight.”
But then he supplied some YouTube clips that show that Obama “certainly alluded to such an effect.” We find his research interesting and we would like to share it with our readers. As always, we welcome thoughtful reader contributions and seek to highlight them whenever possible.
Ron Paul’s misleading ad: Rick Santorum is ‘fake’ fiscal conservative
Santorum has arguably claimed the mantle of GOP front-runner by virtue of winning the most primaries and polling at or near the front of the pack in Michigan and Arizona, where the next contests take place. So his rivals are taking aim at his record, mainly by attacking his fiscal policies.
Ron Paul has gone perhaps furthest in this regard with his latest ad, which suggests the former senator supports ruthless dictators and abortion services. The video only mentions spending, but it’s actually a two- or maybe three-for-one for all intents and purposes, since it questions the candidate’s social and foreign policy values.
We looked at Santorum’s record to find out whether Paul’s video misleads voters. (Note: Paul was asked to defend this ad in the CNN Debate on Wednesday night and he gleefully repeated the claim that Santorum is a “fake.”)
The Facts
The Paul campaign provided a list of five bills dedicating money to Egypt and North Korea — in one case, just Egypt. Each measure passed at least one chamber of Congress with a yes vote from Santorum.
Fact checking the CNN debate in Arizona
It’s hard to believe we’ve fact checked all of the GOP debates — and this may be the last one. But once again we heard a blizzard of dubious statements, including many oldies but goodies. Here is an examination of ten claims, in the order in which they were said.
As usual, we do not award Pinocchios for debate roundups but reserve the option to revisit some of these claims in more detail in the coming days.
“Obviously the first thing we need to do is repeal “Obamacare.” That’s one entitlement that we can get rid of. And that’s a couple trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years.”
— Rick Santorum
Santorum is only counting one side of the ledger — and overcounting it at that. Because the health care law raises some taxes and cuts Medicare spending, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it slightly reduced the deficit in the first 10 years, though much of the law was not fully implemented in the first four years. All bets are off in the next 10 years, however.
Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Rick Santorum’s bogus statistics
“In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized — ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — half of those people are enthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, at the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri, Feb. 3, 2012
These were interesting remarks by one of the leading candidates for the GOP nomination. Though Santorum made this observation earlier in the month, a video of his comments only circulated on the web over the weekend and a number of readers asked whether he is correct. (His comments also spawned headlines in Holland, such as one that proclaimed: “Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale.”)
So we will check his statistics — 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are from euthanasia and 50 percent of those die involuntarily — and also his claim that the elderly wear bracelets requesting that they not be euthanized.
(Full disclosure: The Fact Checker’s parents emigrated from Holland and I have direct, personal experience with the practice of euthanasia there. My father’s brother requested euthanasia when he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and after various remedies were ineffective. In the United States, he might have lived another two or three months, in great pain, and likely would have lapsed into a coma before death. But, after a conclusion by the Dutch medical establishment that he had no chance of survival, he arranged for his death at home with his family at his side. He even called me an hour before his death to say good-bye.)
We realize this is an emotional issue in the United States. But the simple facts, as Santorum described them, should be clear.
The Facts
In 2001, The Netherlands became the first country to legalize euthanasia, setting forth a complex process. The law, which went into effect a year later, codified a practice that has been unofficially tolerated for many years.
President Obama and crony capitalism: Examining Mitt Romney’s claims
(Gerald Herbert, AP)
“Before [GM and Chrysler] were allowed to enter and exit bankruptcy, the U.S. government swept in with an $85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan.”
— From a Mitt Romney op-ed in The Detroit News, Feb. 14, 2012
“I'd like to talk about something else that President Obama has been doing. He's been practicing crony capitalism. And if you want to get America going again you've got to stop the spread of crony capitalism. He gives General Motors to the UAW. He takes $500 million and sticks it into Solyndra.”
— Romney during debate in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 21, 2012
Mitt Romney has been driving home this “crony capitalism” message while stumping in the states with upcoming primaries, especially Michigan. He claims the president rewarded political allies with favors, specifically by throwing good money after bad with Solyndra and by protecting UAW interests in the auto bailout and restructuring processes.
President Obama has said he will not walk away from the “promise of clean energy” just because some of the government’s investments flopped, and he touts the resurgence of America’s automakers as proof that his bailout and restructuring plan helped save the auto industry. Let’s take a detailed look to determine whether Romney’s claims have merit.
The Facts
Romney described “crony capitalism” during a Feb. 6 campaign rally as using taxpayer money “to take care of your friends or to have government bureaucrats decide how the economy ought to work.” So we will measure the Obama administration’s actions against those criteria.
Michele Bachmann at CPAC: History through a partisan lens
(Win McNamee/GETTY IMAGES)
“No president since the modern state of Israel [was formed] has failed to stand by our ally Israel — only President Obama. …The president spurned the president of Egypt when he took his first foreign trip to Cairo… In May he even said that Israel should retreat to its indefensible 1967 borders… Obama’s State Department now designates Jerusalem as an international city and in a bizarre move our State Department will not even acknowledge that Jerusalem belongs to Israel.”
— Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Feb. 9, 2012
The former GOP presidential aspirant made a slashing attack on President Obama’s foreign policy Thursday in a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
In particular, she focused on Israel and the Middle East, where as we have written, Obama’s record is a matter of dispute. Unfortunately, some facts got lost along the way.
The Facts
First of all, she repeated some of the four-Pinocchio statements she made during the presidential campaign, such as wrongly claiming Obama had “gone around apologizing to the world” and asserting that Obama demanded that “Israel should retreat to its indefensible 1967 borders.”
The unemployment number: Is Gingrich right that it’s flawed?
(Evan Vucci, AP)
“When you include the number of people who have quit looking for work because they're convinced the Obama administration's economy is so bad they can't find a job, it jumps up to about 12 percent. When you include the number of people who have part-time jobs who wish they had a full-time job, it's at 16 percent or 17 percent. I mean, this is an administration which has actually shrunk the workforce fairly dramatically. In the last year, it's the lowest male participation rate in the labor force since the 1940s — so right after World War II.”
— Newt Gingrich, discussing a jobs report that showed unemployment decreases, from a “Meet the Press” interview on Feb. 5, 2012
These types of comments are typical of critics of President Obama who have brushed off recent progress in lowering the national unemployment rate. Some say the improvements are too small, but Gingrich goes a step further, suggesting unemployment doesn’t gauge the true health of the job market. He recommended a few alternative measures after host David Gregory asked: “How is it that you can say this administration has not led economic recovery?”
Depending on the question, Gingrich actually has been inconsistent in his use of unemployment figures. He’s used the unemployment metric to argue that he was successful as Speaker of the House during the late 1990s. He said during a Jan. 19 interview with PBS’s “News Hour” that “we cut taxes in the largest capital gains tax cut in history, and the result was we got unemployment down to 4.2 percent.”
If the unemployment number is good enough for Gingrich, it should be good enough for Obama. Regardless, we looked at the speaker’s preferred metrics to determine whether they really paint a gloomier picture of the job market. Do they disprove the Obama supporters who say the economy is making progress?
Lori Williams of Tableau Software kindly developed some graphs for us to help readers visualize the data.
The Facts
The numbers in question come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which defines the unemployment rate as the percentage of people in the workforce — those who are actively seeking work — who haven’t landed jobs. It does not count part-time workers or individuals who dropped out of the labor force.
Romney and Plan B: The Santorum and Gingrich claims
(RICK WILKING/REUTERS)
“This is not the first time that elected officials have trounced on the fundamental right to religious freedom. In December 2005, Governor Mitt Romney required all Massachusetts hospitals, including Catholic ones, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. He said then that he believed ‘in his heart of hearts’ that receiving these contraceptives — free of charge — trumped employees’ religious consciences. Now, a few years later and running for president, his heart is strategically aligned with religious voters opposing this federal mandate.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, in an opinion article for Politico, Feb. 7, 2012
“There has been a lot of talk about the Obama administration’s attack on the Catholic church. The fact is Governor Romney insisted that Catholic hospitals give out abortion pills against their religious belief when he was governor. So you have a similar pattern.”
— Newt Gingrich, speaking in Cincinnati, Feb. 7, 2012
With GOP front-runner Mitt Romney attacking President Obama over the administration’s new rule requiring many Catholic institutions to offer birth control and other contraception services as part of employees’ health care coverage, his Republican rivals have begun attacking Romney for allegedly doing the very same thing when he was governor of Massachusetts.
We seem forever doomed to delve deep into ancient Bay State political tussles. It is well known that Romney’s views on abortion issues evolved as he edged closer to a presidential run in 2008. But is it correct that he “insisted” (Gingrich’s word) or “required” (Santorum’s word) that Catholic hospitals provide access to emergency contraception?
The Facts
At issue is the emergency contraception known as the morning-after pill, or Plan B, which is essentially a heavy dose of birth control pills that a woman takes after unprotected sex. It is generally effective only for the few days after intercourse but some anti-abortion advocates believe that it could thin the lining of a uterus and thus in theory could destroy a fertilized egg. (UPDATE: The New York Times reported in June, 2012 that a review of studies found no evidence that the pill affected fertilized eggs.)
Newt Gingrich’s claim that George Soros ‘approved’ Mitt Romney
“We can’t afford two George Soros approved candidates this fall.”
— Voiceover from Newt Gingrich campaign ad, referring to Mitt Romney and President Obama, Feb. 2, 2012
“I think for most Republican voters, the idea of trying to nominate a Soros-approved candidate is not a very appealing idea.”
— Gingrich, during a Fox News interview, Feb. 3, 2012
Newt Gingrich has progressively turned up the heat with his rhetoric against Mitt Romney since falling flat in the first two nominating contests this year. It seemed to work when he pulled off an upset in South Carolina, but the former House speaker finished a distant second in the recent Florida and Nevada primaries. His latest Web ad suggests that “ultra-liberal” billionaire George Soros supports both Romney and President Obama.
The new ad also suggested that the GOP front-runner supports Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — an unpopular figure among Republicans — and that his financial backing from Wall Street executives shows some form of concordance with Obama.
We looked at the entire Soros interview to find out where the billionaire philanthropist really stands on the 2012 candidates. We also examined the issue of Romney’ Wall Street backing and his stance on Geithner to find out whether Gingrich’s ad hit the mark.
The Facts
These types of accusations are typical for Gingrich. Part of his strategy after the New Hampshire primary was to draw ideological distinctions between himself and Romney, as well as to highlight parallels between his opponent and Obama.
Mitt Romney’s misfire on the national anthem
“We are the only people on the earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. It was FDR who asked us to do that, in honor of the blood that was being shed by our sons and daughters in far-off places.”
— Mitt Romney, Feb. 2, 2012
This is a strange one.
Kudos to Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed for first spotting this claim, though it turns out that the former Massachusetts governor also said this at least once before, during a stump speech in Iowa in December. (Update: a colleague reports this line has been a regular staple of Romney’s stump speech.)
The first part of this statement is simply wrong. As Kaczynski noted, Romney ran the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics and surely should have noticed the many athletes with their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems.
We randomly searched YouTube for the playing of the national anthem for various countries and quickly found several examples, such as Japan and Brazil, that disprove Romney’s claim of American exceptionalism. (Mara Liasson of NPR sent us the Russia clip.)
Japan
Brazil
Russia
But what about the rest of Romney’s claim — did President Franklin D. Roosevelt institute this? The history on this salute is interesting, and actually has more to do with the Pledge of Allegiance than the national anthem.
The Facts
A spokesman for Romney did not respond to a query, but the candidate may be bringing this up to remind voters of a flap that occurred during the 2008 campaign, when then-candidate Barack Obama did not put his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem.
Ron Paul’s claims about life without Medicare and Medicaid
(Jack Dempsey, AP)
“When I started medicine, there was no Medicare or Medicaid, and nobody was out in the streets without it.”
-- Ron Paul, during a CNN debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012
“When I got out of medical school in 1961, I practiced for a couple years before there was Medicaid. I worked in a Catholic hospital and didn't make hardly any money. Nobody was turned away, and people were treated. And back in those days, people weren't laying in the street with no medical care. Doctors always charged the least. Now, with the government coming in, with these programs that aren’t — you know, they’re totally bankrupt — everybody charges the most, everybody from the doctors to the labs to the hospitals.”
— Paul, during town hall meeting in Manchester N.H., Dec. 19, 2011
These comments reminded us of the character-probing question that CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer threw at Paul during the Sept. 12 debate in Tampa: Should society allow an uninsured 30-year-old to die from lack of medical care? You may recall that a portion of the audience erupted with a chorus of yeahs.
The libertarian congressman suggested people should embrace personal responsibility, and he described Blitzer’s hypothetical as implausible, since hospitals don’t turn people away for lack of money or insurance coverage. Paul has said repeatedly that life before Medicare and Medicaid wasn’t so bad.
We wondered about the state of health care for the elderly and poor just before those social programs took effect in the mid 1960s. Let’s take a tour down memory lane.
The Facts
The federal government implemented Medicare and Medicaid as part of the Social Security amendments of 1965, providing coverage for senior citizens and the poor, respectively. Payroll taxes pay for most of the Medicare expenses, while various state and federal taxes cover Medicaid costs.
Newt Gingrich versus Mitt Romney: A guide to latest charges
(Matt Rourke/AP)
“I’m standing next to a guy who is the most blatantly dishonest answers I can remember in any presidential race in — in my lifetime.... I don’t know how you debate a person with civility if they’re prepared to say things that are just plain factually false.”
— Newt Gingrich, Jan. 29, 2012
The slugfest between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich comes to a head Tuesday in Florida, where Gingrich is running behind because of a deluge of negative campaign ads by Romney and his allies and the perception that Romney bested him in the last two debates.
It’s tough to keep up with the various charges the two men have thrown at each other — Gingrich even brought up an ancient Romney veto concerning kosher food on Monday — so here is a guide to their most recent and most frequent claims.
(In addition to various columns on attack ads and charges, we previously looked at some of Romney’s claims about Gingrich when the battlefront had first moved to Florida.)
“His experience as speaker of the House end[ed] so badly, with an ethics scandal and him having to resign in disgrace and with his own members, 88 percent of them Republican members, voting to reprimand him.”
— Romney, Jan. 30, 2012
Here, the former Massachusetts governor echoes one of his TV ads, which we have already labeled as misleading. Gingrich was reprimanded, but he did not resign until two years later for reasons that had nothing to do with the reprimand he received from the House over an ethics issue. That issue involved whether it was proper for a tax-exempt foundation associated with the speaker to finance a college course that he had put together.
Rick Santorum’s claims about Massachusetts health reforms
(Matt Rourke, AP)
“There was just a survey that came out and said one in four [Massachusetts residents] don’t get the care they need because of the high cost. So you have a card, you’re covered, but you can’t get care.
“In Massachusetts, everybody is mandated -- as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts -- to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine. What has happened in Massachusetts is that people are now paying the fine because health insurance is so expensive. And you have a preexisting condition clause in yours, just like Barack Obama. So what is happening in Massachusetts, the people that Governor Romney said he wanted to go after -- the people that were free-riding -- free ridership has gone up fivefold in Massachusetts. Five times the rate it was before.”
-- Rick Santorum, during the GOP debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012
Santorum made these comments as part of a long exchange with rival Mitt Romney over the merits of the former Massachusetts governor’s health-care reform plan. He said the “free rider” problem grew worse when the law was supposed to alleviate it.
Romney defended his overhaul by pointing out that 98 percent of Bay State residents are now insured, and that “half of those people got insurance on their own; others got help in buying the insurance.”
Santorum has tried to discredit Romney’s health-care reforms in the past two GOP primary debates, insinuating that the former governor will be a liability challenging President Obama in the general election. We researched recent reports on the Massachusetts reforms to find out whether the former Pennsylvania senator had any basis for his most recent claims.
The Facts
The Santorum campaign did not respond to requests for information that would prove high costs have barred one in four Massachusetts residents from receiving care, although a spokesman did explain where the free-rider claim originated -- we’ll address that next.
Mitt Romney: Medicare fraud allegations and ‘Blood Money’
“At the center of one such Medicare scheme: Mitt Romney. It is a story of fraud. It is a story of big profits, big lies and at the time the biggest criminal fine for health fraud ever levied in Massachusetts history.”
— Voice-over from “Blood Money: Romney’s Medicare Scandal,” a video produced by pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future.
Winning Our Future, a Super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, has released another attack on rival Mitt Romney’s business practices. A one-minute “trailer” and a 30-second TV ad (see below) that amplify the themes of corporate malfeasance accompany the nearly eight-minute video, “Blood Money.” (The title refers to the fact that a company once partly owned by Bain Capital, Romney’s firm, was found guilty of charging Medicare for unnecessary blood tests.)
We were highly critical of Winning Our Future’s “King of Bain” film, awarding it Four Pinocchios, in part because it focused on business failures in which Romney was only tangentially involved. And anyone living in Massachusetts would find this Medicare fraud case to be old news because the case first emerged in 1992 as an issue in Romney’s successful race for governor.
Still, this time Winning Our Future gets closer to the mark. The case concerning Damon Clinical Laboratories is relevant because 1) Romney was a director of the firm while the fraud took place; 2) the fraud appears to have ended only after Bain sold its stake in the firm; 3) Romney personally earned nearly $500,000 from the sale of Damon; and 4) Romney’s statements about what he knew and when he knew it have been inconsistent.
We’re going to hear a lot more about Damon if Romney becomes the GOP presidential nominee. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union is already running an ad in Florida that highlights the case. (The spot is at the end of the column.)
Let’s take a closer look:
The Facts
In 1996, the Justice Department announced that Damon had agreed to pay a $35.3 million criminal fine — one of the largest corporate fines in U.S. history — and an additional $83.7 million to settle whistle-blower lawsuits. The company, then owned by Corning, admitted that from 1988 to 1993 it had bolstered its earnings by submitting false claims to Medicare and other federal programs. Essentially, the firm billed for blood tests that doctors had not ordered.
Ron Paul's claims that U.S. is blockading Iran in act of war
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“We're blockading [Iran]. Can you imagine what we would do if somebody blockaded the Gulf of Mexico? That would be an act of war. So the act of war has already been committed and this is a retaliation. But besides, there's no interest whatsoever for Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz. I mean, they need it as much as we do. I mean, so you have to put that in a perspective. But this whole idea that we have to go to war because we've already committed an act by blockading the country, I agree with Newt (that “the American people have no interest in going to war anywhere.”)”
-- Ron Paul, during NBC News debate in Tampa, Jan. 23, 2012
Paul made these assertions as the GOP candidates were discussing Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, which would interrupt the flow of Mideast oil to the rest of the world. The libertarian congressman chimed in as Brian Williams was moving to foreign-policy topics, suggesting he couldn’t let this one go.
Paul’s remarks illustrate one of his primary foreign policy views: that the U.S. should mind its own business and stop trying to force other nations to meet its demands. But the candidate’s characterization of U.S. actions struck us as interesting. Has the nation really imposed a blockade on Iran and committed an act of war against the republic?
The Facts
Paul’s assertions are curious considering that the United States is not involved in a literal blockade of Iran, nor of any other part of the world right now. In fact, the U.S. hasn’t participated in a blockade since the Bosnian War of the 1990s, when NATO forces tried to stop supplies from reaching rival factions through the Adriatic Sea.
Fact checking the CNN debate in Jacksonville
(Paul Sancya/AP)
We can hardly believe that there won’t be another GOP presidential debate for about a month—assuming there are enough candidates left. Here’s our round-up of bloopers and dubious statements at the CNN debate in Jacksonville, Fla., in the the order in which they were made.
As always, we may delve deeper into other statements in the coming days — and please remember that we do not award Pinocchios for instant fact checks, only full columns.
“What I said was: We want everybody to learn English because we don’t want — I didn’t use the word ‘Spanish.’”
— Newt Gingrich
Gingrich complained about a radio ad aired by the Romney campaign that claimed that Gingrich had said that Spanish was “the language of the ghetto.” (Romney at first suggested he was not familiar with the ad, but it ends with his voice saying he approved of it.)
Fact-checking Mitt Romney’s ‘prebuttal’ speech
Mitt Romney on Tuesday issued a “prebuttal” to President Obama’s State of the Union address, delivering his remarks at a shuttered drywall factory in Tampa. The speech made sense for the struggling GOP candidate on several levels: The former Massachusetts governor wanted to look presidential to dampen the surge by rival Newt Gingrich, and he wanted to dull any campaign edge that the president might gain that evening through his national address.
Romney focused his attacks on economic issues, listing a series of supposed facts about Obama’s policies and their results. Here are some of the key claims:
“The President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. But he won’t give you the hard numbers. Like 9.9 – that’s the unemployment rate in this state.”
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Florida show that Romney was right about this one.
Mitt Romney’s attack ad against Newt Gingrich in Florida
“While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. Gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create the crisis.”
— voiceover in a new Mitt Romney ad attacking Newt Gingrich
The nasty nomination battle between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has moved to Florida, where Romney has launched a slashing ad attacking Gingrich for his business ties to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Let’s take a look at the various claims in the ad.
“While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. Gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create the crisis.”
The ad strains to make a connection between Gingrich’s service for Freddie Mac and the housing collapse in the economic crisis. The video cites a Kansas City Star editorial that said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “were at the heart of the crisis” but that’s a matter of opinion. Other experts disagree strongly.
Rick Santorum’s debate attacks against Mitt Romney
(Octavian Cantilli, Reuters)
“If you look at cap-and-trade, Gov. Romney was very proud to say that he was the first state in the country as governor to sign a cap on CO-2 emissions, the first state in the country to put a cap believing in global warming — and criticized Republicans for not believing in it.”
— Rick Santorum, during NBC News debate in Tampa, Jan. 23, 2012
“When he was governor of Massachusetts, he put forth ‘RomneyCare,’ which was not a bottom-up, free-market system. It was a government-run healthcare system that was the basis of ‘Obamacare.’ And it has been an abject failure, and he has stood by it. He's stood by the fact that it's $8 billion more expensive than under the current law. He's stood by the fact that Massachusetts has the highest health insurance premiums of any state in the country; it is 27 percent more expensive than the average state in the country. Doctors — if you're in the Massachusetts health care system, over 50 percent of the doctors now are not seeing new patients -- primary care doctors are not seeing new patients. Those who do get to see a patient are waiting 44 days, on average, for the care.
A lot of those people were, as you know, on Medicare and Medicaid, so they're already on government insurance, and you just expanded it, in fact. Over half the people who came on the rolls since you put ‘RomneyCare’ into effect are fully subsidized by the state of Massachusetts, and a lot of those are on the Medicaid program.”
-- Santorum, during CNN debate in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 19, 2012
These quotes represent some of the most pointed attacks Rick Santorum has made against Mitt Romney during the past two debates, as he tries to portray the two GOP frontrunners as moderates — he dished out similar cap-and-trade criticism toward Newt Gingrich during the Tampa debate. (We have previously examined Gingrich’s flip-flop on this issue.)
The first set of remarks draw a distinction between Santorum and Romney on environmental issues. The second is a detailed litany suggesting the former Bay State governor doesn’t stand a chance of distinguishing himself from President Obama when it comes to health care during the general election.
We researched Romney’s stance on cap-and-trade and examined the effects of the Massachusetts health-care law to find out how close Santorum’s remarks came to the truth. We already wrote about the Massachusetts health-care overhaul in our biographical series about Romney, but we’re always willing to dive a little deeper on that subject.
The Facts
A Wall Street Journal article from October 2011 noted that Romney strongly supported cap-and-trade while serving as governor of Massachusetts. It reports that he stood outside an old coal-fired plant in 2003, promising activists, “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant, that plant kills people.”
Fact checking the NBC Florida debate
(Chip Somodevilla/GETTY IMAGES)
There were fewer fireworks Monday night as we continued our long march through GOP Endless Debate World, but still many dubious facts and statistics popped up at the debate hosted by NBC News with the National Journal and the Tampa Bay Times. We will examine some key ones in the order in which they were made, reserving the right to examine others in more detail in the coming days.
As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchio ratings during instant debate fact checks, only in full length columns.
“When I was speaker [of the House], we had four consecutive balanced budgets, the only time in your lifetime, Brian, that we’ve had four consecutive balanced budgets.”
— Newt Gingrich
We have repeatedly called Gingrich out on this, and yet he keeps saying it. There are three key problems with his claim.
Romney versus Gingrich: A guide to the latest charges
(EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Mitt Romney on Monday threw out new charges and innuendo against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in what may be the political equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall—seeing what sticks. We’ve examined the often bogus charges made by Gingrich allies (and the Obama campaign) about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. So let’s take a look at what is known about the issues raised by Romney.
The Romney campaign accompanied its attack with a new ad amplifying some of these claims, which we will also examine soon. But first here is a guide to the latest rhetoric.
Pro-Gingrich cartoon ad slightly wrong about Romney
“I agree with Governor Romney on many things, for instance abortion. He was pro-choice most of his adult life, so was I. But he changed his position when he became presidential candidate Romney. Now, let’s take guns. Governor Romney and I, we were in complete agreement on gun control — now that is, until he changed his mind. And on health care, well, I was so inspired by Romneycare that I nationalized it and called it Obamacare. Now presidential candidate Romney is against the individual mandate and universal health care.”
— Remarks by a cartoon President Obama during a fictionalized debate with Mitt Romney, depicted in an ad from the pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future.
Gingrich describes himself as the only viable candidate left in the GOP race, and this innovative cartoon ad — the first of its kind that we’ve seen — feeds into that narrative, attacking one of Romney’s perceived strengths: his supposed ability to challenge Obama.
The Post’s Fix reports that this video is the first in a three-part series envisioning potential debates between Romney and the sitting president. It illustrates an increasingly negative strategy by Gingrich and his supporters since the candidate’s lackluster finishes in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. The approach appears to be working, with a new CNN poll showing Romney losing ground in South Carolina — an equally likely explanation is that the other candidates are resonating with Palmetto State voters.
Fact checking the CNN debate in Charleston
(PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Two debates in a week…and another two next week. This could get tiring. Here’s quick round-up of some of the more dubious or interesting claims at the CNN Debate in Charleston, examined in the order in which they were made. As always, we may come back to do a fuller look at other, more elusive claims in the coming days.
Glenn Kessler will live chat with readers today at 1 p.m. ET about fact checking this debate. Submit your questions and opinions now.
A reminder: we do not award Pinocchios in these sorts of debate round-ups, only in full-length columns.
“The Corps of Engineers today takes eight years to study — not to complete — to study doing the port. We won the entire second World War in three years and eight months.”
— Newt Gingrich
We are not sure whether the U.S. involvement in World War II has any relevance to a study about whether to deepen the Charleston Port from 45 to 50 feet. Kudos to Gingrich for knowing local issues, but according to local news reports the Corps said that such a study would normally take five to eight years but “Corps officials say they are streamlining the review and approval process as much as possible to save time.”
Santorum’s erroneous marriage attack on Obama
(Chris Keane, Reuters)
“Elayne Bennett runs a program called Best Friends — the wife of [former Secretary of Education] Bill Bennett. And she told me through Bill that the Obama administration now has a policy — and this program is a program targeted at at-risk youth, specifically, in many cases, in the African-American community, who are at-risk young girls. The Obama administration now has regulations that tells them that they can no longer promote marriage to these young girls. They can no longer promote marriage as a way of avoiding poverty and bad choices that they make in their life. They can no longer actually even teach abstinence education. They have to be neutral with respect to how people behave.”
— Rick Santorum, during the GOP debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Jan. 16, 2011
Santorum made these remarks in response to a question about whether “the time has come to take special steps to deal with the extraordinary level of poverty afflicting [African Americans.]” You might recall that the candidate made headlines earlier this month by bungling a statement about a related issue.
“I don’t want to make peoples’ lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” Santorum told a group of Iowans on Jan. 1. The comment represents pretty standard conservative fare, but the former senator uttered a syllable that, to some ears, sounded like “black” before “people’s lives,” causing critics and the media to pounce.
Debate moderator Juan Williams may have been baiting Santorum into a race discussion, but the GOP candidate cleverly shifted the spotlight onto the Obama administration, making the type of accusation that gets a rise out of values voters.
We talked to Elayne Bennett and reviewed Obama’s record on abstinence education to determine whether Santorum’s debate remarks were accurate.
The Facts
Bennett told us that no federal officials ever prohibited her organization from encouraging marriage. In fact, the federal government bankrolled the foundation’s efforts to promote healthy marriages before and after Obama entered the White House, so Santorum is wrong on that account.
The Obama campaign’s suspect claim about Romney’s role in store closings
(Charles Dharapak/AP)
“Romney closed over a thousand plants, stores and offices, and cut employee wages, benefits and pensions. He laid off American workers and outsourced their jobs to other countries. And he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars while taking companies to bankruptcy.”
-- Stephanie Cutter, Obama campaign memo titled “Romney’s Economic Record: Profit at Any Cost,” Jan. 13, 2012
The game of numbers between the Obama and Romney campaigns is getting a bit silly. Romney started it by making the untenable claim that he helped create more than 100,000 jobs, a figure that included jobs created by companies long after Romney’s involvement had ended in the businesses. (In the recent debate, he modified his statement to make it a tad more accurate.)
Now, apparently believing that’s what good for the goose is good for the gander, the Obama campaign has upped the ante by blaming Romney for job losses and bad deals that took place after he stopped working at Bain Capital in early 1999 in order to run the Salt Lake City Olympics. As we will demonstrate, they use a technicality to accomplish this.
We will examine the statement that Romney “closed over a thousand plants, stores and offices.”
The Facts
First of all, note that the statement starts with “plants” and then pads it with “stores and offices.” As far as we can tell, there are only handful of plants on this list – Ampad (two), GS Industries (two), Dade Behring (three). The big number on this list comes from store closings -- in particular 600 stores shut down by KB Toys after it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004.
Fact Checking the Fox News-WSJ debate in South Carolina
And then there were five ... which made for a feisty evening of misstatements. We focused on 11, and may come back for more later in the week. Let’s take them in the order in which they were made.
“As [House] speaker, I came back, working with President Bill Clinton. We passed a very Reagan-like program: less regulation, lower taxes. Unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent. We created 11 million jobs.”
— Newt Gingrich
Former president Clinton would be shocked at this description, since he always credited the 22 million jobs created during his presidency to the deficit-reduction package he narrowly passed early in his tenure without a single GOP vote.
Four Pinocchios for ‘King of Bain’
“This is a story of greed, of playing the system for a quick buck, a group of corporate raiders led by Mitt Romney more ruthless than Wall Street. For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.”
— Voice-over from “King of Bain” video promoted by a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, “Winning Our Future.”
Newt Gingrich, meet Michael Moore!
The 29-minute video “King of Bain” is such an over-the-top assault on former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney that it is hard to know where to begin. It uses evocative footage from distraught middle-class Americans who allege that Romney’s deal-making is responsible for their woes. It mixes images of closed factories and shuttered shops with video clips of Romney making him look foolish, vain or greedy. And it has a sneering voice-over that seeks to push every anti-Wall Street button possible.
Here’s just a sampling of what Romney and Bain Capital, which he once headed, is accused of: “Stripping American businesses of assets, selling everything to the highest bidder and often killing jobs for big financial rewards . . . high disdain for American businesses and workers . . . upended the company and dismantled the work force; now they were able to make a handsome profit . . . cash rampage . . . contributing to the greatest American job loss since World War II . . . turn the misfortune of others into their own enormous financial gain.”
The video ends with a crescendo of images of despair, with voices of the victims adding emotional punch: “A lot of lives were ruined . . . he took away our livelihoods . . . he took away our future . . . he destroyed a lot of homes . . . it all gets back to greed.” (Irritatingly, few of these ordinary citizens are identified.)
The video is reminiscent of the devastating series of attack ads released by then-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) that derailed Romney’s Senate campaign in 1994. In fact, we’d swear some of the people interviewed for “King of Bain,” who are identified as working for Ampad in Marion, Ind., are the same as those interviewed for the Kennedy ads at SCM, which Ampad acquired. They just look two decades older. (We have embedded a collection of the Kennedy ads at the end of this column.)
Let’s take a look at some of the claims in “King of Bain.” The video clip above is from a 60-second commercial aired by “Winning Our Future.” The full video can be found here. As we will demonstrate, at least some of the interviews of ordinary citizens appear to have been conducted under misleading pretenses and have been selectively edited to leave a false impression.
The Facts
First of all, it is a stretch to portray Romney as some sort of corporate raider, akin to Carl Icahn (whose image is briefly seen). Bain Capital initially was in the business of providing venture capital — seed money — for start-ups, such as Staples. Then it moved to the more lucrative business of private equity, in which Bain won control of firms, reorganized them and then sold them for profit. (Our colleague Suzy Khimm earlier this week did an excellent job of explaining the two sides of Bain Capital.)
Rick Santorum and welfare reform (Fact Checker biography)
(Chris Keane, Reuters)
“I wrote the welfare reform bill in the Contract with America. I was the ranking member on that subcommittee. And when I came to the Senate, through a quirk, I ended up managing the bill on the floor of the United States Senate and working with President Clinton and getting a bill signed after he vetoed it twice to end welfare. We bloc-granted the program, got rid of the federal entitlement -- the only one in the history of the country that’s ever been done. And I was the principal author of it in the United States Senate, managed the bill on the floor.”
-- Rick Santorum, remarks during the GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire, Jan. 4, 2012
Santorum’s debate comments echo a claim from a campaign ad that portrays him as a “full-spectrum conservative” who has the best chance to beat President Obama in the general election. Our colleagues at PolitiFact already covered this issue, calling the former Pennsylvania lawmaker’s assertion about welfare reform “Half True.” We have a different take.
Santorum isn’t the only Republican candidate to tout the 1996 welfare-reform act as one of his own accomplishments. Fellow presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich talks up his own involvement, having pushed hard for the overhaul while serving as speaker of the House after the 1994 Republican Revolution.
We examined the comments Gingrich made on welfare and Medicare reform, determining that he deserved one Pinocchio for exaggerating the impact of those measures. Santorum’s statement is different because he isn’t talking about impacts. He’s bragging about his role in the reform effort. We looked back at how the welfare overhaul became law to determine whether Santorum was involved in pushing the legislation as much as he claims.
The Facts
Santorum is one of many 1990s politicians who pushed for welfare reform, and not all of them were Republicans. In fact, President Bill Clinton vowed during his first run for office to “end welfare as we know it,” among other promises, such as resurrecting the economy.
Rick Santorum: His record on winning the political center (Fact Checker biography)
(Evan Vucci, AP)
“I'm the only one in this race that has a track record of winning elections in tough states. I had a million more registered Democrats than Republicans, and in two statewide elections, running against very strong candidates, I was able to win the state of Pennsylvania, something a Republican hasn't done for president since 1988. And so if you look at everybody else in the field, no one has ever run as a conservative and been able to attract independents and Democrats to win.”
— Former Sen. Rick Santorum, during an interview with NBC News, Dec. 29, 2011
“Iowa is a tough state. Pennsylvania is tougher as far as Republicans to win. And here I am, and I went out and not just once, but twice won a heavily Democratic congressional district, not once but twice went out and won a state with a million more Democrats than Republicans.”
— Santorum, during campaign stop in Marshalltown, Iowa, Dec. 30, 2011
Santorum insists he can defeat Barack Obama in the general election, despite the fact that he polls poorly against the president in comparison with other GOP candidates. He’s banking on the notion that blue-collar voters — in particular conservative Democrats — will rally behind him in every swing state from Pennsylvania to Iowa, with the exception of Illinois, which is the president’s home state and a Democratic stronghold.
The GOP candidate, who nearly won the Iowa caucuses, touts his record of winning elections in Pennsylvania as proof that he’ll fare well from the nation’s Rust Belt to its Breadbasket. He claims his conservative values and his plan to eliminate the corporate tax on manufacturers — an attempt to bring jobs back from overseas — will appeal to middle-class voters across the spectrum, making him the most electable candidate in the Republican field.
We examined Santorum’s electoral record to find out whether he’s done as well as he claims in attracting Pennsylvania’s Democrats and independents.
THE FACTS
Santorum has won four elections in a Democrat-leaning state, mainly by courting values voters and the working class. He won his first bid for election in 1990, edging out seven-term Democratic incumbent Doug Walgren for a seat in the U.S. House with 51 percent of the vote compared to his opponent’s 49 percent.
Newt Gingrich’s claim that Romney governed as a ‘pro-abortion’ governor
"What happened after Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney changed his position from pro-abortion to pro-life? He governed pro-abortion. Romney appointed a pro-abortion judge, expanded access to abortion pills, put Planned Parenthood on a state medical board but failed to put a pro-life group on the same board.”
— Newt Gingrich ad attacking Mitt Romney
Gingrich, still justifiably angry at a tough ad by a Romney-affiliated Super PAC that mischaracterized his position on abortion, has counterattacked with his own ad that calls into question Romney’s support for restrictions on abortion.
Romney, of course, has spoken openly about his conversion on the abortion issue, so Gingrich must prove that Romney was an inconsistent convert to the cause of fighting abortion. Romney’s record was certainly inconsistent but was it indeed “pro-abortion”? Let’s look at some of the claims in this ad.
The Facts
The definitive list of Romney flip-flops on abortion was compiled in 2007 by our predecessor as The Fact Checker, the estimable Michael Dobbs. After meticulously examining Romney’s twists and turns on the issue, Dobbs awarded Romney Three Pinocchios for his comments on abortion, saying he has “changed his position so often on abortion that he lacks much credibility” to claim that every piece of legislation he signed as governor was “on the side of preserving the sanctity of life.”
Santorum’s record on fiscal policy (Fact Checker biography)
(Mary Ann Chastain/Reuters)
“I’ve voted toughly over the years to cut spending and to rein in entitlements. I’ve led on those things.”
— Rick Santorum, during Dec. 29, 2011, interview on NBC’s “Today Show”
“What happened after I left Congress was budgets began to explode. When I was in the Senate I voted for tough budgets, I voted for restrictions on spending, and made sure that that didn’t happen.”
— Santorum answering a question about his record of earmark spending during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Jan. 1, 2012
“I’m the only one in this race who didn’t increase an entitlement like Gov. Romney did in Massachusetts.”
-- Santorum, during campaign stop in Amherst, N.H., Jan. 7, 2012
Santorum’s comments suggest that he pushed conservative fiscal policies while serving in Congress. Fellow GOP presidential hopefuls Ron Paul and Rick Perry have challenged him on his record of promoting earmarks spending, and the first two quotes above represent his typical defense. The last comment represents a jab he took at Romney, suggesting he never increased entitlements as the former governor did with his Massachusetts health-care reform law.
Mitt Romney and 100,000 jobs: an untenable figure
(BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS)
“In the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs.”
— Mitt Romney, Jan. 7, 2012
Last week, when we first looked at the former Massachusetts governor’s claim that “we helped create over 100,000 new jobs,” his campaign provided a list that included the growth in jobs from three companies that it said Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs).
As we noted, “This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain.”
Glenn Kessler live chatted with readers on this topic. Read the chat transcript now.
In Saturday’s ABC News-Yahoo debate, Romney expanded on the list: “There’s a steel company called Steel Dynamics in Indiana, thousands of jobs there; Bright Horizons Children's Centers, about 15,000 jobs there; Sports Authority, about 15,000 jobs there, Staples alone, 90,000 employed. That's a business that we helped start from the ground up.”
Last week, when we looked at this 100,000 figure, we evaluated it along with Romney’s claims about President Obama’s job creation figures, which overall earned One Pinocchio. Earlier, we had ruled that it was all but impossible to prove or disprove Romney’s claims on job creation. But in light of Romney’s comments during the debate and some additional research, we have come to a new assessment.
The Facts
By all accounts, Romney was a highly successful venture capitalist. While running Bain Capital, he helped pick some real winners, earning his investors substantial returns. High finance is a difficult subject to convey in a sound bite, so Romney evidently has chosen to focus on job creation.
Rick Santorum and the K Street Project (Fact Checker biography)
(Eric Thayer, Reuters)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column will be the first in a series of columns this week examining how factual former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has been in describing his career in politics. Reporter Josh Hicks has spent weeks examining Santorum’s statements and deciding which ones best represent how Santorum talks about his past. Hicks has previously examined biographical statements by Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.
--Glenn Kessler
***
“I had absolutely nothing to do -- never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything -- with Grover Norquist and the, quote, K Street Project.”
-- Rick Santorum, during an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Jan. 25, 2006
“I have never called anybody or talked to anyone to try to get anybody a position on K Street with one exception, and that is if someone from my office is applying for a job and an employer calls me.”
-- Santorum, in an interview with The Washington Times, Jan. 30, 2006
Santorum made these comments while trying to distance himself from the so-called “K Street Project,” an effort by key Republicans to place party loyalists in top lobbying positions. The program, led by conservative activist Grover Norquist and former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), took place to varying degrees from roughly 1995 until about 2006. Its name refers to the D.C. corridor where lobbyists have set up shop in large numbers.
Fact checking the ABC News and ‘Meet the Press' debates
Boy, three- and-a- half hours of debates to check this weekend! The candidates were up to their usual tricks and so the list of suspect statements is long and varied. We will go through them quickly, in the order the statements were made, beginning with the ABC News/Yahoo debate on Saturday night. After that, we tackle the Meet the Press/Facebook debate from Sunday morning. As always, we may take a deeper look at some assertions later in the week.
***
THE ABC NEWS/YAHOO DEBATE, JAN. 7, 2012
“But in the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs.”
--Mitt Romney
Last week, when Romney mentioned this statistic, his campaign said the 100,000 figure was based on the number of employees at three companies with which Bain Capital was involved.
McCain versus McCain on lying
(Charles Dharapak/AP)
“I have never called an opponent of mine a liar. That's just sort of a line that you don't usually cross.”
--Sen. John McCain, Jan. 5, 2012, speaking about Newt Gingrich’s complaint about Mitt Romney
When we saw this quote by John McCain, we were a bit surprised because we remember this Associated Press article from the 2008 campaign.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Republican John McCain is calling Democratic rival Barack Obama a liar.
The GOP presidential candidate told a campaign rally: "Sen. Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed."
In some of the harshest language yet, McCain said the campaign comes down to a simple question: Who is the real Barack Obama?
McCain drew the loudest cheers when he said the Democrat has written two memoirs but "he's not exactly an open book."
Trailing in the polls, McCain and his advisers say they will hammer that theme as the campaign heads toward the Nov. 4 election.
Here’s a video of the McCain’s speech.
When we asked McCain spokesman Brian Rogers for comment, he replied: “There’s a clear and obvious difference between name-calling (which Senator McCain was referring to this morning) and defending against false attacks.”
Gingrich was defending himself against what he views as false attacks by Romney supporters, but we will leave this question to readers: Is this a distinction without a difference?
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Rick Santorum’s claim that ‘no Palestinian’ lives in the West Bank
(Charles Krupa/AP)
“All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis. They are not Palestinians. There is no Palestinian. This is Israeli land.”
— Former senator Rick Santorum, Nov. 21. 2011
A blog on The Jewish Week Web site highlighted this statement on Monday, which was also captured on tape and posted on YouTube. (See clip at the end of the column.) The statement is somewhat reminiscent of former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s comment that the Palestinians are an “invented people.”
Gingrich’s comments spawned outrage at the time, but Gingrich actually spoke a couple of weeks after Santorum’s remarks, which were made in the context of defending Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank. As Jewish Week noted, Santorum’s “views got little attention at the time because he was considered a hopeless back-of-the-pack candidate and not being taken very seriously.”
In many ways, Santorum’s remarks have even more important policy implications than Gingrich’s statement, which was a historical observation (though a highly debatable one).
The Facts
In the conversation captured on tape, Santorum argues that the West Bank belongs to Israel because Arab nations launched an “aggressive attack” in 1967 but Israel defeated them and acquired the land as part of the spoils of war.
“It was ground that was gained during war,” he said, similar to the United States gaining territory after defeating Mexico in the 19th century. “Should we give Texas back to Mexico?” he asked. “Bottom line, it is legitimately Israeli country.”
Romney vs. Obama on job creation
(BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS)
“And I'm very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs. By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country. So if the president wants to talk about jobs, and I hope he does, we’ll be comparing my record with his record and he comes up very, very short.”
— Mitt Romney, Jan. 3, 2012
It’s a new year, and we already have new claims about job creation. The Romney campaign was sufficiently proud of this quote, made on “Fox and Friends,” that it blast-e-mailed it to reporters.
As we have mentioned before, the notion that a president – or particularly a governor – can magically create jobs with a set of policies is a bit of a stretch. Broadly speaking, presidential policies can certainly have an impact, but even a president is at the mercy of the business cycle. Obama became president in the midst of the worst recession in memory, so obviously that is going to be a drag on his “job-creation record.”
The Facts
The Romney campaign provided a link to Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that during Romney’s four-year term as Massachusetts governor, the number of jobs went up 61,000. By contrast, the number of jobs under Obama has dropped by 1.86 million.
Ron Paul biography: the complete collection
Reporter Josh Hicks compiled the following look at Ron Paul’s claims about his life and career. Click on the headlines to read the original column.
Ron Paul and racist newsletters
Paul earned three Pinocchios for offering implausible explanations about why so many racist statements made into his publications.
Paul earned two Pinocchios for his claim that he “stood with” Ronald Reagan during Reagan’s presidency.
Ron Paul’s constitutionalist record
Paul earned a prized Geppeto’s Checkmark for his assertion that he is an unwavering constitutionalist. Whether you agree with him or not, he is certainly consistent.
Ron Paul on earmarks and ‘corporate welfare’
Paul earned three Pinocchios for suggesting he never supports favoritism in the form of subsidies and earmarks.
One year of fact checking--an accounting
It’s been one year since The Washington Post relaunched The Fact Checker column as a permanent feature, and so it seems an appropriate point to review and reflect on a year of fact-checking claims made by politicians. Most important, where did we go wrong and how can we improve?
Readers frequently ask: Do you rate more Republicans than Democrats? (Or vice versa). Which party gets the most Pinocchios? We had no idea until we sat down this week and did some calculations.
Let’s do the numbers!
Ron Paul on earmarks and ‘corporate welfare’ (Fact Checker biography)
(Charlie Riedel, AP)
“My priorities, you cut off all foreign welfare and foreign militarism and corporate welfare before you go after child health-care.”
-- Ron Paul remarks during Bloomberg TV interview, June 3, 2011
“I’ve never voted for an earmark in my life.”
-- Remark by Paul on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Dec. 23, 2007
Paul addresses a number of issues with these comments, but the common thread is government favoritism. The congressman portrays himself as a strict budget hawk and a candidate who never supports corporate subsidies or special funding for his congressional district.
Lots of politicians blast earmarks but find ways to justify them for their own constituents. And plenty of lawmakers support tax breaks and corporate subsidies -- so-called corporate welfare -- as a way to create jobs, foster innovation, and even protect the environment in certain cases. We examined Paul’s record to find out whether he’s truly any different.
THE FACTS
Paul’s campaign-finance record shows little indication of a politician who is tied to special interests. Individuals have provided the vast majority of his campaign cash, supplying 91 percent of the money since his first bid for office.
Ron Paul’s constitutionalist record (Fact Checker biography)
(Joshua Lott, Reuters)
“Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the ‘one exception to the Gang of 535’ on Capitol Hill.”
-- Biographical excerpt from the Ron Paul campaign site
“I have something different to offer. I emphasize civil liberties. I emphasize a pro- American foreign policy, which is a lot different than policemen of the world. I emphasize monetary policy and these things that the other candidates don’t talk about. But I think the important thing is, the philosophy I’m talking about is the Constitution and freedom.”
-- Paul, during Fox News GOP debate, Dec. 15, 2011
Paul has long portrayed himself as a constitutionalist, one who supports limited government and who values individual liberty above all else.
The term constitutionalist holds various meanings and incorporates numerous philosophies, but the main premise is that the government derives its powers from the Constitution. Paul applies the definition strictly, calling for the abolition of all federal programs not expressly authorized by the document.
We examined Paul’s record to find out whether he has lived up to his rhetoric. Could he really spend nearly 22 years in Congress without violating his principles?
THE FACTS
Paul has earned the nickname “Dr. No” for refusing to cut deals and for opposing virtually every piece of legislation that could be interpreted as government overreach or interference with the free market.
Ron Paul and Ronald Reagan (Fact Checker biography)
(Charlie Riedel/AP)
“America must decide who to trust: Al Gore’s Texas cheerleader, or the one who stood with Reagan.”
— An ad from the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign Committee
We pulled this comment from an ad that accuses Rick Perry of trying to “undo the Reagan Revolution” when he backed Al Gore for president in 1988. Photos show Ron Paul looking chummy with the Gipper as a deep-voiced narrator describes the Texas congressman as a bold Reagan supporter. The gist: Paul has impeccable Reaganite credentials; Perry does not.
We examined Paul’s relationship with Reagan during the late 1980s to find out whether he was really so supportive of the Republican icon. Our colleagues at FactCheck.org covered this topic before, but we figure it’s worth another look as we continue our series on biographical claims of the 2012 Republican candidates.
THE FACTS
Paul has little room to criticize politicians for changing their party affiliations. He campaigned for president as a Libertarian in 1988, after running for office seven times as a Republican and serving as a GOP member of the U.S. House for more than six years at that point.
Ron Paul and the racist newsletters (Fact Checker biography)
(Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column will be the first in a series of four columns this week examining how factual Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has been in describing his career in politics. Reporter Josh Hicks has spent weeks examining Paul’s statements and deciding which ones best represent how Paul talks about his past. Hicks has previously examined biographical statements by Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.
— Glenn Kessler
******
“I’m not a racist. As a matter of fact, Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero — because they practiced the libertarian principle of civil disobedience, nonviolence.”
— Ron Paul, responding during a Jan. 10, 2008, CNN interview to questions about racially charged articles published in the “Ron Paul Political Report” during the 1990s.
“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this.”
— Ron Paul, responding to more questions about the newsletters during an interview with CNN, Dec. 21, 2011
Accusations of racism against Paul first surfaced during the candidate’s 1996 congressional campaign, when Democratic opponent Lefty Morris unveiled racially tinged quotes from a newsletter the Texas libertarian had published during his 12-year hiatus from public office.
The national media latched onto the issue during Paul’s 2008 presidential bid, after the New York Times and the New Republic highlighted derogatory statements about blacks and gays from the bulletins.
The issue resurfaced as Paul moved to the front of the GOP pack in recent weeks, and the congressman appeared to be fed up with the matter as he walked away from an interview in which a CNN reporter pressed for more answers. (See the video below).
We won’t be the judge of whether Paul is a bigot, but we can examine the extent to which he had control over his publications. Are we to believe he never reviewed the newsletters that bore his name? Would he have eliminated the messages if he’d seen them?
THE FACTS
Paul helped form the Ron Paul & Associates corporation in 1984, and the now-defunct company, for which he served as president, began publishing newsletters the following year. The monthly publications included Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report, the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.
The biggest Pinocchios of 2011
Fact checkers are under assault!
Before we present our list of the biggest Pinocchios of the year, we would like to address the torrent of criticism addressed at fact checkers (primarily PolitiFact, Factcheck.org and The Fact Checker) in recent weeks. The Weekly Standard last week had a cover story denouncing fact checkers as a liberal plot to control the political discourse. This week, PolitiFact’s decision to award its “Lie of the Year” trophy to Democratic claims that the GOP “killed” Medicare has earned it and its fact checking brethren additional scorn from the left.
As a writer at Gawker put it: “Politifact is dangerous. Stop reading it. Stop reading the ‘four Pinocchios’ guy too. Stop using some huckster company's stupid little phrases or codes or number systems when it's convenient, and read the actual arguments instead. You're building a monster.”
Ouch.
My colleague Ezra Klein even opined that “the ‘fact checker’ model is probably unsustainable,” based on the questionable belief that “half of the public leans towards one party and about half of the public leans toward the other” and thus will tune out commentary with which they disagree. That’s a pretty depressing commentary on the state of our politics. Thankfully, it bears little relationship to the reality we experience every day at The Fact Checker.
Romney versus Gingrich: a Super PAC’s over-the-top ad
Source: CMAG
“As Speaker, Gingrich supported taxpayer funding of some abortions.”
--from a new ad in Iowa sponsored by “Restore Our Future”
Super PACS will cause endless headaches for fact checkers this political season. The advertisements they produce are often insidiously inaccurate.
A good example is the latest advertisement trashing Newt Gingrich, “Smile,” by Mitt Romney’s Super PAC--Restore Our Future--which is spending more than $3 million just in Iowa in the weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses. The former House Speaker certainly has some baggage from his long political career, as the ad asserts, but that would be all the more reason not to need to twist the truth.
Brittany Gross, a Restore Our Future spokesman, declined to answer questions. “We aren’t commenting on the ad,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Thanks for reaching out.”
Let’s take a tour through some of the more egregious fouls in the ad.
“Freddie Mac, which helped cause the economic collapse, paid Newt Gingrich $30,000 an hour for a total of at least $1.6 million.”
The suggestion here is that Freddie Mac caused the 2008 economic crash, which is a simplistic assertion. Restore Our Future cited as a source an opinion article written by Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute.
An Iranian ‘terrorist’ in the White House?
(JIM YOUNG/REUTERS)
“Last week, when [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki visited the president, one of the people in his entourage is a commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
--Newt Gingrich, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Dec. 18, 2011
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, when he made this comment on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, was referring to Iraqi Transportation Minister Hadi al-Amiri. Gingrich apparently based his comments on an article in The Washington Times—headlined “Ex-Iran Guard commander visits White House with Iraq leader”-- that generated some attention in the blogosphere. One report headlined it this way: “President Welcomes Suspected Terrorist to the White House.”
But this is a simplistic version of a complex story involving U.S. relations with the current government of Iraq. Let’s explore what’s going on here.
The Facts
First of all, there is a long tradition of militants aspiring to become statesmen. Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army leader, this year ran for president of Ireland. And, as House speaker in 1995, Gingrich hosted a lunch at the capital that include Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA—at a time when Britain regarded the IRA to be a terror group.
Newt Gingrich biography: the complete collection
(Charles Krupa/AP)
Reporter Josh Hicks compiled the following look at Newt Gingrich’s claims about his life and career. Click on the headlines to read the complete report.
Gingrich and health-care mandates
Gingrich earned Two Pinocchios for his shifting statements of support for an individual health-care mandate.
Gingrich and statements about 1990s fiscal success
The House Speaker received Three Pinocchios for overstating his impact on the federal budget surpluses in the 1990s.
Gingrich on welfare and Medicare reform
Passing welfare reform was a significant achievement but Gingrich got a Pinocchio for overselling what happened on Medicare.
Gingrich, historian
The former speaker earned Three Pinocchios for overstating his credentials as “an historian”
Gingrich and ethics
Gingrich ended up with Four Pinocchios for highly misleading statements about the partisan nature of the ethics probe while he was House Speaker.
Newt Gingrich tries to rewrite history of his ethics scandal (Fact Checker biography)
(Jim Young, Reuters)
“It tells you how capriciously political [the House ethics] committee was that she was on it. It tells you how tainted the outcome was that she was on it.”
— Newt Gingrich, Dec. 5, 2011, talking to reporters about suggestions from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that she could reveal secret information from a 1990s House ethics investigation of the current GOP front-runner.
“I think what it does is it reminds people who probably didn't know this that she was on the ethics committee, that it was a very partisan political committee, and that the way I was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than the ethics.”
— Gingrich, Dec. 6, 2011, answering questions about Pelosi and the ethics investigation during interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News.
“The attrition effect on your members of that many ads and that many charges just gradually wore down people, and I gradually lost the ability to lead, because I was so battered by the process.”
— Gingrich, Dec. 7, 2011, during a meeting with the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Gingrich made these comments after Pelosi hinted that she could reveal damaging information about him “when the time’s right,” thanks to her involvement with a 1990 ethics investigation of the now-surging GOP candidate — a case that led to the first congressional reprimand of a House speaker.
We don’t question that Democrats relished the chance to nail Gingrich for ethics violations, especially after he gave the same treatment to former Democratic House speaker Jim Wright in 1988. But justice can still run its course fairly and impartially when enemies have blown the whistle, even if they enjoy watching you squirm.
We examined the congressional ethics committee that reprimanded Gingrich to find out more about its makeup. Was the panel truly as partisan as the Republican front-runner suggests, or has this prolific alternative-history writer crafted yet another fiction?
THE FACTS
The congressional ethics panel that investigated Gingrich — when the GOP controlled the House — consisted of four Democrats and four Republicans, a perfectly bipartisan group that voted 7-1 to reprimand the then-speaker. Furthermore, the House voted 395 to 28 to support the committee’s decision, with backing from 196 Republicans.
Fact checking the Fox News debate in Iowa
(Eric Gay/AP)
It’s the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses. Let’s take a tour of the factually dubious statements made by the candidates, in the order in which they said them. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios during debate round-ups, though we will mention if a candidate has repeated something that we have previously rated.
“I balanced the budget for four straight years, paid off $405 billion in debt — pretty conservative. The first entitlement reform of your lifetime — in fact, the only major entitlement reform to now is welfare.”
— Newt Gingrich
Gingrich loves to make this claim, but it is simply not correct and is lacking context.
Listening to Gingrich, you would be forgiven for forgetting there was a president (Bill Clinton) in office at the time the nation started running a budget surplus.
Newt Gingrich: historian? (Fact Checker biography)
(Brian Snyder / Reuters)
“My advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, ‘We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that's what the government wants us to do,’ as I said to them at the time: ‘This is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.’”
-- Newt Gingrich, defending his contract with Freddie Mac during a CNBC debate in Michigan, Nov. 9, 2011
“There's a whole issue about whether or not government-sponsored enterprises have any legitimacy. Well, I can tell you as a historian they have been used in a variety of ways over all of American history. There are times they've been very, very useful and very valuable.
And so part of the question was, ‘Can you make that case? Can you put in context the history of these institutions?’”
-- Gingrich, again defending his contract with Freddie Mac during an interview on Fox News, Nov. 17, 2011
“I didn't speak for the people of Israel. I spoke as a historian who has looked at the world stage for a very long time. I've known [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] since 1984. I feel quite confident an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of and the casualties they're taking and the people who surround them who say, ‘You do not have the right to exist, and we want to destroy you.’”
-- Gingrich, defending remarks he made during an Iowa debate on Dec. 10, 2011, suggesting that Palestinians had based their “right of return” on an historically false story.
That’s at least three times that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has referred to himself as a historian during the 2012 election cycle. He’s gone a step further at times, suggesting that his knowledge of the subject gives him superior qualifications for policy -- and decision-making.
“What it does is, it gives you a really rich background to go to, to analyze things, to think about things, to put in context what you would do in a way that if you don’t know history, you can’t possibly reinvent it,” he told Iowa Public Radio this year.
So how did the GOP front-runner develop his supposed acumen? We analyzed his résumé and his life in academia to find out just how much experience the former House speaker draws from, and whether he has any credibility as a self-proclaimed authority.
THE FACTS
Gingrich spent the great majority of his professional life in politics, serving as a member of Congress for 20 years. He devoted just eight fulltime years to academia and history -- 18 if you include his time as a student.
Gingrich on welfare and Medicare reform (Fact Checker biography)
(Jeff Haynes/Reuters)
“But even with Clinton in the White House, we passed the first major entitlement reform welfare, two out of three people went to work or went to school. We reformed Medicare and saved it for more than a decade financially.” — Newt Gingrich, during the Iowa Faith and Freedom Dinner, Oct. 22, 2011
These comments suggest the Gingrich-led Congress nudged welfare recipients toward increasingly productive lives and helped rescue Medicare from certain catastrophe. They fit with the image he has tried to project during the 2012 election cycle — one of an anti-socialist, money-saving innovator who recently called himself the “candidate of paychecks” while describing Barack Obama as “the finest food stamp president.”
We researched the Medicare and welfare reforms of the 1990s to determine whether Gingrich spoke accurately about his accomplishments as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
THE FACTS
Medicare today consists of four parts: Part A, which pays for hospital, nursing and hospice care; Part B, which helps pays for doctors, outpatient health bills and other services; Part C, which is “Medicare Advantage,” a competitive alternative to Parts A and B; and Part D, which provides prescription drug coverage. People frequently confuse these parts, but the government funds them differently.
Pinocchio Tracker: Fact-checking the presidential candidates
We are pleased to announce a new retooled Pinocchio Tracker , which was produced inhouse by Kat Downs of The Washington Post graphics staff. It replaces an earlier version that was created a couple of months ago by our friends at Tableau Software.
The new Pinocchio Tracker has a fun feature: It brings up quotes and asks you to guess how many Pinocchios it received from The Fact Checker. Then you can find out if your ruling matches ours--and see why we decided the statement was faulty.
As before, the Pinocchio Tracker will take you to every column that examined a statement by a GOP candidate, President Obama or Vice President Biden. It will also show you the average Pinocchio rating each person has received.
Enjoy!
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Get the latest campaign news on PostPolitics.
Keystone pipeline jobs claims: a bipartisan fumble
(Alex Wong/GETTY IMAGES)
“The Keystone energy project would create tens of thousands of American jobs.”
— House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Dec. 10, 2011
“At a time when many are without work, it is time that we come together in a bipartisan way to pass this legislation which will create tens of thousands of new jobs.”
— Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Dec. 12, 2011
“The privately financed Keystone XL pipeline project is projected to create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in construction and manufacturing.”
— Mark H. Ayers, president of the building and construction trade department, AFL-CIO, Nov. 3, 2011
"My administration will stand behind the Keystone pipeline, creating more than 100,000 American jobs while reducing our dependence on overseas imports."
— Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman (R), Nov. 1, 2011
There is bipartisan consensus: The Keystone XL pipeline means jobs, jobs, jobs.
The Obama administration last month announced that it was taking more time to consider how to balance environmental concerns and economic issues in deciding whether to approve the pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s Alberta province to the Gulf Coast. (Skeptics would suggest the White House wanted to avoid angering two key allies during an election year.)
Ever since, advocates of the pipeline have pressed the case that thousands of shovel-ready jobs are being delayed by the administration’s inaction, with House Republicans including a shortened timeline for a permit in legislation extending the payroll tax cut.
We’ve repeatedly warned that many “job creation” statistics are often guesstimates of estimates, and should be viewed skeptically. By some accounts, the number of jobs that would be created could be as many as 150,000. But the State Department in August put the number of construction jobs at just 5,000 to 6,000.
The Facts
TransCanada Corp., which is pushing to build the pipeline, claims that Keystone XL “was poised to put 20,000 Americans to work to construct the pipeline.” The company also cites another figure — 118,000 spin-off jobs Keystone XL would create through increased business for local restaurants, hotels and suppliers — that comes from a study commissioned by the company. The study even suggested that under “normal” oil price assumptions, the number of permanent jobs would top 250,000.
Restore our Future PAC recycles questionable claims in Romney ad
“Mitt Romney turned around dozens of American companies and helped create thousands of jobs. He rescued an Olympics hit by scandal; took over a state facing huge deficits, and he turned it around without raising taxes, vetoing hundreds of bills.”
— Comments in recent ad by pro-Romney PAC Restore our Future
The claims in this ad cover just about about everything we fact-checked for the Mitt Romney biographical series, minus the comment about vetoes. The commercial has been running frequently in Iowa, so we’ll rehash some of the issues we found with its assertions, all of which echo previous remarks by the former Massachusetts governor.
THE FACTS
Romney co-founded and led the investment firm Bain Capital, which made an incredibly pretty penny as a pioneer in the field of leveraged buyouts, according to a prospectus obtained by the L.A. Times.
Newt Gingrich’s changing stance on health-care mandates (Fact Checker biography)
(Rainier Ehrhardt, AP)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column will be the first in a series of five columns this week examining how factual former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been in describing his past achievements. Reporter Josh Hicks has spent weeks examining Gingrich’s statements and deciding which ones best represent how Gingrich talks about his past. Hicks has previously examined biographical statements by Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.
— Glenn Kessler
***
“If you explore the mandate, it ultimately ends up with unconstitutional powers. It allows the government to define virtually everything. And if you can do it for health care, you can do it for everything in your life, and, therefore, we should not have a mandate.”
— Remarks by Newt Gingrich during GOP debate in Manchester, N.H., June 13, 2011
“I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.”
— Recorded statement by Newt Gingrich, from the GOP candidate’s Web site.
Gingrich has voiced resounding opposition to the “Obamacare” insurance mandate during his 2012 campaign, describing the policy as unconstitutional. He says he fought hard against it with the Center for Health Transformation, a health-care industry think tank he helped establish.
Fellow GOP front-runner Mitt Romney challenged this point, insisting that Gingrich inspired the insurance mandate he implemented as part of a health-care reform bill in Massachusetts. We took a look at the former House speaker’s past to find out whether the conservative icon known for innovative and often shape-shifting ideas might have experienced a change of heart.
The Facts
Gingrich and Romney engaged in a brief but heated spat during the Oct. 18 GOP debate after the former speaker criticized Massachusetts’s health-care reform program as a big-government, high-cost solution for covering the uninsured. Here’s how the exchange unfolded:
Fact checking the ABC-Yahoo Republican presidential debate in Iowa
It may have been bad politics for Mitt Romney to offer a $10,000 bet to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but it’s a good thing Perry didn’t take it. He would have lost a fair chunk of change. Here’s our round-up of misses and bloopers committed by the GOP candidates in Saturday’s ABC-Yahoo debate, held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, in the order in which they made them.
“Well, I think that there’s a clear record, I worked with Ronald Reagan in the early ‘80s and his recovery program translated into today’s population of about 25 million new jobs in a seven-year period. As Speaker of the House, I worked with President Clinton and he followed with a very similar plan. And we ended up with about 11 million new jobs in a four-year period.”
--Newt Gingrich
The former House Speaker conveniently ignores the fact that Bill Clinton pushed through a major tax increase on the wealthy in 1993 which, combined with the boom in technology stocks, brought forth a gusher of tax revenue that helped eliminate the budget deficit. Gingrich at the time predicted economic disaster when Clinton won approval of his tax increase with not a single Republican vote.
Obama ‘bowing to foreign dictators’ — and his golf game
(Alex Wong/GETTY IMAGES)
"He has bowed to foreign dictators"
— Mitt Romney, Dec. 7, 2011
“1,584 holes since 2009”
— Romney campaign Web site fortyfore.com
In recent days, the Romney campaign has attacked President Obama on two seemingly trivial matters that seek to undermine his character — his alleged “bowing” to foreign leaders and his propensity to play golf. As the Web site says, “It’s time to have a president whose idea of being ‘hands on’ doesn’t mean getting a better grip on the golf club.”
So what’s story behind these claims?
Bowing to foreign dictators
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said that “the term ‘bowed to foreign dictators’ is metaphorical but the leaders Obama literally bowed to were the Saudi King, Emperor of Japan, and Chinese President Hu Jintao.”
Barack Obama: the ‘food-stamp president’?
(JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS)
“We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food stamp president in American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.”
— Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Dec. 6, 2011, on CNBC
As speaker, Gingrich helped push through the signature welfare overhaul that then President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996. When Clinton, after two vetoes, agreed to accept the legislation, he shrewdly noted that he was eliminating the welfare system forever more as a campaign issue.
“After I sign my name to this bill, welfare will no longer be a political issue,” Clinton said. “The two parties cannot attack each other over it.”
Having eliminated welfare as a campaign issue, Gingrich now appears to be trying to breath life into “son of welfare” by attacking President Obama as the “finest food stamp president.” But he has explicitly rejected the idea that this is a no-so-subtle form of racial imagery.
(As is usual, Gingrich’s rhetoric excess got the better of him last month when he also declared people can use food stamps “to go to Hawaii,” a claim that our colleagues at PolitiFact correctly labeled “Pants on Fire.”)
In any case, how accurate is the claim that Obama is “the food-stamp president”?
The Facts
Officially, the food stamp program is now formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is broadly available to almost all households with low incomes, though most of the benefits go to families with children. (It also has massive support from the farm lobby, which is why GOP efforts to cut it back have often failed.)
Barack Obama: the ‘food-stamp president’?
(JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS)
“We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food stamp president in American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.”
— Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Dec. 6, 2011, on CNBC
As speaker, Gingrich helped push through the signature welfare overhaul that then President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996. When Clinton, after two vetoes, agreed to accept the legislation, he shrewdly noted that he was eliminating the welfare system forever more as a campaign issue.
“After I sign my name to this bill, welfare will no longer be a political issue,” Clinton said. “The two parties cannot attack each other over it.”
Having eliminated welfare as a campaign issue, Gingrich now appears to be trying to breath life into “son of welfare” by attacking President Obama as the “finest food stamp president.” But he has explicitly rejected the idea that this is a no-so-subtle form of racial imagery.
(As is usual, Gingrich’s rhetoric excess got the better of him last month when he also declared people can use food stamps “to go to Hawaii,” a claim that our colleagues at PolitiFact correctly labeled “Pants on Fire.”)
In any case, how accurate is the claim that Obama is “the food-stamp president”?
The Facts
Officially, the food stamp program is now formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is broadly available to almost all households with low incomes, though most of the benefits go to families with children. (It also has massive support from the farm lobby, which is why GOP efforts to cut it back have often failed.)
Revisiting Romney’s ‘deceitful, dishonest’ ad about Obama
“Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’”
— Then-Sen. Barack Obama, Oct. 16, 2008
We resisted writing about Mitt Romney’s first television ad when it was released just before Thanksgiving, on the grounds that the issue — whether the ad misquoted President Obama — had been thoroughly and quickly discussed. We sometimes also see little need to fact check items that have been already debunked by one political faction or the other.
But readers have repeatedly asked us to weigh in, and the ad was once again in the news this week after a report in The New York Times by our former colleague Thomas Edsall quoted an anonymous “top operative” in the Romney campaign as defending the ad because “ads are propaganda by definition…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing…. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”
Excuse us for appearing cynical, but Romney’s supposed adviser is simply stating a truth practiced by both political parties. We’ve seen plenty of Four-Pinocchio ads in our time, and this Romney ad does not make the cut.
The Facts
The ad opens with a headline: “On October 16, 2008, Barack Obama Visited New Hampshire.” Then grainy scenes flash by of Obama speaking as more headlines flash by, such as: “He Promised He Would Fix the Economy…. He Failed”
Gingrich and cap-and-trade: a flip-flop?
“I’ve said publicly, sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi is the dumbest single thing I’ve done in the last few years. But if you notice, I’ve never favored cap and trade, and in fact, I actively testified against it. I was at the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee the same day Al Gore was there to testify for it, I testified against it and through American Solutions we fought it in the Senate and played a major role in defeating it.”
— Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Dec. 3, 2011
“I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.”
— Gingrich, Interview on PBS’s “Frontline,” Feb. 15, 2007
Every politician makes mistakes, although few are willing to admit it. Gingrich’s ad with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on climate change is certainly amusing in retrospect.
But what of the Republican presidential candidate’s claim that “I’ve never favored cap and trade”? Rival campaigns immediately pounced, sending around quotes from a PBS interview in which Gingrich appeared to say the opposite, suggesting support for a limit on greenhouse emissions. The conventional wisdom holds that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has a flip-flop problem, but does Gingrich?
The Facts
As Slate columnist David Weigel has noted, cap and trade was once a very respectable conservative position and several of the GOP contenders have a history of expressing interest in it, to varying degrees.
Romney’s claim that Gingrich has spent ‘40 years’ living in D.C.
(Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)
“I don’t think I want to characterize Newt at this point, other than to point out our very distinct difference with regards to background. I think if America feels that we need somebody who’s lived in Washington for the last 40 years to run the country, he’s a good choice.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, on “Fox and Friends,” Dec. 2, 2011
Romney, trying to draw a contrast with the surging Newt Gingrich, not once but twice said that Gingrich had spent 40 years in Washington during a 10-minute appearance on “Fox and Friends.”
Four decades? We were immediately skeptical of this figure.
The Facts
Gingrich, who rose to become speaker of the House of Representatives, was first elected to Congress in 1978. Subtracting that from 2011, you end up with 33.
Mitt Romney: Flip-flopper or not?
“And there's no question, but that people are going to take snippets and take things out of context and try and show that there are differences.”
— Former governor Mitt Romney on Fox News, Nov. 29, 2011
Mitt Romney has a flip-flop problem. Slowly but surely, the conventional wisdom is solidifying that the former Massachusetts governor often has changed his position to suit the politics of the moment. The story line has been advanced by his opponents, in both parties, but also in the media. Take a look at this wicked cartoon by our colleague Tom Toles, in which Romney tells an elephant dressed as Santa Claus: “What would you like me to ask for?”
Of course, politicians have every right to change their minds. An inflexible attitude is not always the sign of an effective leader. But too many flips without enough explanation may give voters pause. In Romney’s case, many of his moves have been from the left — when he was governor of Massachusetts — to the right, as he has run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Now the Democratic National Committee has assembled some of its best evidence of Romney-as-flip-flopper in a four-minute video ad. The DNC helpfully provided a detailed explanation of where each clip came from (see below), and we have picked through them to see whether the flip-flop charge holds up. We give a Pinocchio rating to each claim, in the order in which it is made in the commercial.
Michele Bachmann’s claim that she never said ‘anything inaccurate’ during the GOP debates
“I'm happy to say I don't think that I've said anything inaccurate in any of the debates. And I'm extremely grateful for that. It's a high-profile stage and so I'm grateful that I don't think I've made a blunder.”
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann.
(Paul Sancya - Associated Press)
— Rep. Michele Bachmann, on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Nov. 25, 2011
In an interesting interview last Friday (which we missed as we recovered from Thanksgiving dinner), Bachmann acknowledged that she is sometimes truth-challenged.
“I wish I was perfection walking on air, but I'm not,” she told Steve Inskeep. “I've gotten things wrong. But I try very hard to get my facts right, and there's times when I've said things that are inaccurate and I regret that.”
But then she made the statement she said above. Nothing inaccurate in the debates? Let’s review the record.
The Facts
The Republican candidates for president have already held at least 10 full-fledged debates, and we have watched them all. Here are a few highlights of Bachmann’s performance during those sessions. During the debates, we don’t award Pinocchios unless we go back and write a fuller column on the statement. In that case, we will note whether she received any — or if a similar statement had already received Pinocchios.
Fact checking the CNN national security debate
Hello, “Steve Gates.” While Rep. Michele Bachmann may have trouble living that blooper down, here are some of the more dubious assertions and facts we heard at the fascinating CNN debate Tuesday night, organized with the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. We examine 15 statements in all, and as is our practice, may come back to do a deeper look in the coming days.
“This is one thing we know about Barack Obama: He has essentially handed over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU. He’s outsourced it to them. Our CIA has no ability to have any form of interrogation for terrorists.”
— Rep. Michele Bachmann
Bachmann’s rhetoric is over the top here. The American Civil Liberties Union has actually been critical of President Obama for continuing many Bush-era anti-terror policies. On the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the ACLU issued a report entitled, “A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties Ten Years after 9/11.”
Did Obama call Americans ‘lazy’ and ‘soft’?
“Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy? That’s pathetic. It’s time to clean house in Washington.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in a new television ad attacking President Obama
“Sometimes, I just don’t think that President Obama understands America. I say that because this week — or was it last week? — he said that Americans are lazy. I don’t think that describes America. Before that, I think it was in October, he was saying we have lost our inventiveness, and our ambition. Before that he was saying other disparaging things about Americans. I just don’t think he understands — he was saying we just weren’t working hard enough. I don’t think he gets what’s happening in this country.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Nov. 15, 2011
Republican president candidates have begun attacking President Obama for supposedly insulting Americans by calling them “lazy.” Perry has even framed a new television ad around the idea.
Since we once gave a Pinocchio to Obama for what we called unsubstantiated boosterism — “We have the most productive workers, the finest universities and the freest markets” — we were a little surprised to learn that he had suddenly turned so anti-American.
What’s going on here?
The Facts
When a president makes a similar offhand comment at least two times, our experience tells us that something is on his mind. Maybe he read a book, perhaps there was a briefing, perhaps he even saw a television documentary. A clear sign that this notion has begun to sink in is that he begins to muse about it in public.
Rick Perry biography: the complete collection
(Alice Keeney/AP)
Reporter Josh Hicks compiled the following look at Rick Perry’s claims about his life and career. Click on the headlines to read the complete report.
Rick Perry’s job creation record
Perry earns two Pinocchios for presenting only favorable and exaggerated facts while not providing adequate context for his claims.
Rick Perry’s record on taxes
Perry earns two Pinocchios for misleading voters about his record on taxes.
Rick Perry’s record on cutting spending
Perry earns one Pinocchio for misleading rhetoric on how he “cut” spending.
Rick Perry’s record on education
Perry earns three Pinocchios for saying he invested more in education.
Rick Perry’s record on the environment
Perry gets two Pinocchios for failing to tell the whole story about his environmental record.
Did Texas improve air quality, lower emissions as much as Rick Perry claims? (Fact Checker biography)
Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during a stop in Jackson, Miss. Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011.
(Greg Campbell - AP)
“We cleaned up our air in Texas more than any other state during the decade of the 2000s. And no it wasn’t the EPA’s regulations. As a matter of fact, they tried to come into Texas after we cleaned up our air and take it over, and what they’ll do is just kill a bunch of jobs and won’t clean up the air at all. We lowered our ozone levels by 27 percent during the decade of the 2000s and we lowered our nitrogen oxide levels by 58 percent.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, during a town hall speech in Derry, N. H., Sept. 30, 2011
Perry claims Texas topped the charts in terms of air-quality improvements, and his remarks suggest that the state knows how to clean up just fine without oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency, thank you very much.
We wondered where Perry found his data and how bad Texas was doing before he took office. We also wondered whether federal regulations really kill jobs — a subject the Post already covered this week.
The Facts
Perry cited data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The state agency calculates its ozone numbers based on a three-year average of the monitors that showed the fourth-highest eight-hour emissions concentration for each of the three years.
Mitt Romney biography: the complete collection
(MOLLY RILEY/REUTERS)
Reporter Josh Hicks compiled the following look at Mitt Romney’s claims about his life and career. Click on the headlines to read the complete report.
Romney’s fiscal policies as governor
Romney receives one Pinocchio for his claims about taxes and spending during his tenure.
Romney’s claims of reducing health care subsidies
Romney earns three Pinocchios for suggesting he reduced the cost of uncompensated care as part of his health plan.
Romney’s claims of job creation at Bain Capital
Romney says he created more jobs than were lost. The picture is mixed and at this point we cannot reach a definitive conclusion.
Romney’s claim of saving the 2002 Winter Olympics
Overall, Romney earns a rare Geppetto Checkmark
Romney’s explanation for slow job-growth in Massachusetts
He gets one Pinocchio for misleading people about his turnaround claims.
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