The Fact Checker: Barack Obama
President Obama’s claim that insurance premiums ‘will go down’
(William Woody — Associated Press)
“The other thing we’ve done is to say, what are the critical needs of small business? A lot of time, one of the biggest challenges is to make sure that you, as a sole proprietor, that you can get health insurance for you and your family. So when you hear about the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — and I don’t mind the name because I really do care. That’s why we passed it. You should know that once we have fully implemented, you’re going to be able to buy insurance through a pool so that you can get the same good rates as a group that if you’re an employee at a big company you can get right now — which means your premiums will go down.”
— President Obama, campaign speech in Cincinnati, July 16, 2012
President Obama has embraced the phrase “Obamacare,” once originally intended as an epithet by the heath-care law’s opponents, but we were a bit surprised the other day when he declared that health insurance premiums were going to go down.
We have previously dinged Republicans for claiming that premiums have already gone up because of the law. And we have noted the president made what we called a “foolish, dubious” campaign promise with a huge asterisk — that premiums would be $2,500 lower than they would have been without the law.
But, here, the president is claiming that premiums actually will go down for people in the individual and small group markets. The health-care law is obviously a work in progress but are there data that back up this sweeping claim?
The Facts
Since the law has not taken full effect yet, we have to rely on studies that estimate the potential impact. A 2011 White House report, using Congressional Budget Office data, argues some small businesses (ie, sole proprietors with employees) will have access to a new marketplace where they can compare benefits and services and find a plan that works for them. The theory is that these new exchanges will help drive down costs for businesses.
Wind credits, part 1: The Obama campaign’s jobs projections
(Don Bryan/AP)
“By opposing an extension to the wind production tax credit, Mitt Romney has come out against growth of the wind industry to support 100,000 jobs by 2016 and 500,000 jobs by 2030. Meanwhile, he supports $4 billion in oil and gas subsidies for companies that have rarely been more profitable.”
-- E-mail to the media from Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher, July 31, 2012
Mitt Romney’s campaign last week expressed opposition to the federal tax break for wind energy, drawing a stark contrast with President Obama and alienating the Republican candidate from certain members of his party, namely Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who sponsored the original tax credit in 1992 and is pushing for an extension this year.
Romney campaign spokesman Shawn McCoy told the Des Moines Register that Romney would let the tax break expire in order to “create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.” He added that “wind energy will thrive wherever it is economically competitive, and wherever private sector competitors with far more experience than the president believe the investment will produce results.”
This newly stated position — if it sticks — could affect Romney’s chances in Iowa, where lots of wind-energy jobs have sprouted up in recent years, in part because of tax relief and targeted investments by the government.
Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher quickly seized on Romney’s position, saying the GOP candidate has come out against growth in the wind industry to support hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2030.
We’ll look at a response from the Romney campaign in a separate column, but first let’s examine this assertion from Team Obama. Would the wind credit really support hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2030?
The Facts
First of all, we should clarify that the wind-energy tax break refers to the Production Tax Credit, which dates back two decades to the final year of the George H.W. Bush administration. Each president since then has signed an extension of the policy, including George W. Bush, who made the credit available for additional forms of renewable energy when he approved the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
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.
New anti-Romney ad: same steelworker, tougher message (revised)
“When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare. And a short time after that my wife became ill….She passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”
— Former steelworker Joe Soptic, in a new ad by Priorities USA
(NOTE: Since we had previously examined at length the circumstances of this Bain investment, we originally had restated the main points of an earlier column. Frankly, we were a bit distracted trying to untangle the welfare charges and countercharges on Tuesday. But new information has come to light and we have updated the column with a Pinocchio rating.)
***
Joe Soptic, a former steelworker, makes yet another appearance in a pro-Obama ad, this time for the Super PAC Priorities USA Action.
We have examined this case before, and for the benefit of readers we repeat our main points from an earlier column that awarded the Obama campaign One Pinocchio for the use of this case study against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Most controversially, Soptic this time appears to blame Romney for the death of his wife after he lost his health insurance when the steel plant closed.
Romney was no longer actively managing Bain Capital 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. But a case can be made that he was involved in the initial investment and the overall direction of the company before he took on the job of running the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Bill Burton of Priorities USA Action said it would be “overstating” the point of the ad to say Soptic connected Romney to his wife’s death. “This is another in a series of ads that demonstrates how long it took for communities and individuals to recover from the closing of these businesses,” he said. “Families and individuals had to find new jobs, new sources of health insurance and a way to make up for the pensions they lost. Mitt Romney has had an enduring impact on the lives of thousands of men and women and for many of them, that impact has been devastating.”
The Facts
Unlike some of the tales of job-killing and factory-closings that have been thrown at Romney, 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.
Obama knocked for not visiting Israel
“Over the past four years president Obama has traveled all over the world. He traveled all over the Middle East. But he hasn’t found time to visit our ally and friend, Israel. …As the dangers to Israel mount, where’s Obama? Anywhere but Israel.”
— Voiceover in television ad by the Emergency Committee for Israel
“As President, Barack Obama has never visited Israel and refuses to recognize Jerusalem as its capital.”
--voiceover in new Mitt Romney television campaign ad titled “Cherished Relationship”
As Woody Allen once put it, “80 percent of success is showing up.”
A pro-Israel group last week began running ads knocking President Obama for failing to visit Israel. The ad is filled with the sounds of Chinese gongs and Arabian sounds, and postcard-like images showing Obama in his world travels, often arm-in-arm with Arab leaders.
Then, on Sunday, the Romney campaign echoed this charge with its own ad also calling attention to Obama not visiting Israel as president.
Obama visited Israel in 2008, as a presidential candidate, but thus far has not visited the Jewish state during his presidential term. So we wondered how Obama’s record compares to other presidents — and whether that matters.
The Facts
The State Department historian’s office maintains a list of presidential foreign travels, so we can quickly see which presidents have visited Israel — and when. Here’s the list since Israel’s founding:
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.
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.
An anti-Obama ad, featuring a Jewish Democrat
“I was a big Obama supporter. I had a fundraiser in my home, gave money to his campaign. I really believed in him and believed in what he stood for. When he gave the speech about the ‘67 borders, it was nothing that had come up in his campaign originally. That really changed my mind about him. When he had the prime minister of Israel, [Benjamin] Netanyahu, to the White House…he was disrespectful to him to the point that I’d never seen.”
— Disillusioned Obama voter Michael Goldstein, in an ad by the Republican Jewish Coalition
The Republican Jewish Coalition is launching a $6.5 million campaign to convince Jewish voters — among the most loyal segments of the Democratic coalition — that it is okay to vote against President Obama because of his stand on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The campaign is aimed at key Jewish areas in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, where the RNC hopes to swing just enough votes to tip those states in Mitt Romney’s electoral vote column.
RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks told us that the ad push will be accompanied by a Web site, www.mybuyersremorse.com, in which people can upload videos expressing their own thoughts on Obama and Israel. Brooks said the remarks by Goldstein were edited down from a 25-minute conversation.
Democrats are planning to fight back with their own operation. The National Jewish Democratic Council has launched a Web site that includes a quiz that invites visitors to guess which president said what about Israel. (Hint: Obama didn’t do any of the negative stuff.)
We obviously can’t fact-check opinions, but this is a fascinating example of how relatively incremental moments in the course of a presidency — and how they are portrayed by the media — can solidify into “facts” that erode support for that president. We spoke to Goldstein, who lives in East Brunswick, N.J., to gain a better understanding of how the two events he mentioned — the 1967 borders and the meeting with Netanyahu — turned him against the president.
The Facts
Obama entered office determined to finally achieve a historic agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, even appointing a special envoy on his second day in office. As documented in the authoritative report this month by our Washington Post colleague Scott Wilson, Obama’s efforts quickly ran aground, and within six months the administration’s policies were in tatters. The administration never really recovered from its early stumbles.
President Obama’s unspoken payroll tax increases
(Susan Walsh/AP)
“Congress faces a choice. On January 1, taxes are scheduled to go up for 114 million middle class families by an average of $1,600 as such tax cuts as the expanded Child Tax Credit, the 10 percent tax bracket, marriage penalty relief, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit all expire. A typical middle class family of four would see its taxes rise by $2,200.”
— White House report on President Obama’s proposal to extend middle-class tax cuts, released July 24, 2012
“We’ve got to do it in a balanced way by making sure that those of us who’ve been blessed by this country are giving back a little bit more and going back to the Clinton tax rates.”
— President Obama, remarks at a campaign event, July 23
“I’m also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton.”
— Obama, remarks at a campaign event, July 24
Usually, during discussions about who pays taxes in the United States, conservatives tend to ignore payroll taxes (such as for Social Security and Medicare) and focus on federal income taxes. A good example of that is an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal this week by former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.
If you only count income taxes, then you can argue that some 50 percent of Americans pay no taxes. Or, you can argue, as Fleischer does, that the top 20 percent of income earners “make 50 percent of the nation's income but pay nearly 70 percent of all federal taxes.”
But virtually all workers pay payroll taxes. When payroll taxes are included, as well as state and local taxes, the picture changes significantly. The tax burden is suddenly more evenly distributed.
But, interestingly, when talking about taxes these days, the White House is relatively silent about coming increases in payroll taxes — both for the rich and poor. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
The White House report released this week — ahead of the vote in the Senate Wednesday to extend tax cuts for household income below $250,000 — does mention two years of payroll tax cuts that Obama pushed through in 2011 and 2012, but only when talking about how much money the president has saved American families:
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:
‘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.)
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.
Did Romney back a law to ban all abortions?
“Every woman who believes decisions about our bodies and our health care should be our own is troubled Romney supports overturning Roe versus Wade. Romney backed a law that outlaws all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.”
— Voiceover from Obama campaign ad
President Obama’s reelection team launched this video Saturday as part of a new ad campaign in Virginia and seven other battleground states. It depicts Republican challenger Mitt Romney as a candidate who opposes abortion without exception.
This is familiar territory for the presumptive GOP nominee, who has weathered plenty of abortion-related attacks in the past. Former Republican primary opponent Newt Gingrich made the opposite point of this ad, earning two Pinocchios for a video that said Romney “expanded access to abortion pills.” An antiabortion group picked up three Pinocchios for saying the former Massachusetts governor “required hospitals to provide abortions.”
Let’s take a look at Romney’s record to determine whether the Obama campaign stated things more accurately.
The Facts
Romney hasn’t done himself any favors when it comes to his stance on abortion. He has made twist after turn on this issue during the course of his political career; former Fact Checker columnist Michael Dobbs produced the definitive list of all the flip-flops back in 2007.
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.
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.”
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.
Obama’s ad on Romney’s fee-hike ‘mosaic’
“As governor, Mitt Romney did reduce taxes — on millionaires like himself. But he raised taxes and fees on everyone else — $1.5 billion. Over a thousand fee hikes: on health care, on school-bus rides, on milk, on driver’s licenses, on nursing homes, on lead-poisoning prevention, on meat-and-poultry inspection, on fishermen, gun owners, on nurses, on electricians, on hospitals, on funeral homes, on health services, on hospice care...”
— Narration from Obama campaign ad
President Obama’s campaign team released this ad titled “Mosaic” last week, challenging the notion that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney reduced massive budget deficits without raising taxes. We wondered about the numbers it cited, as well as the specific increases named.
Let’s review what we found. Do Romney’s revenue hikes truly represent a 1,000-fee mosaic? While we’re at it, did the former governor really reduce taxes on Massachusetts millionaires?
The Facts
The tax reduction for millionaires refers to Romney repealing a law that would have applied a rate increase on capital gains retroactively — as in, you owe us for the past because we decided to raise the rate mid-year (and before Romney took office). The Boston Globe editorial board, the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and eventually the Democrat-led legislature ended up supporting the governor’s repeal, as FactCheck.org mentioned in a recent article.
Whopper: White House adviser David Plouffe on Romney’s jobs record and GOP strategy
“There was an amazing article the other day, I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal, where Republicans in Congress openly were saying, ‘we’re not going to do anything until the election on the economy, because we want to help Mitt Romney.’ ... With an economy that needs help right now, with the middle class that’s struggling, it’s an amazing thing.”
“For all of this talk about government, for every private-sector job created in Massachusetts by Governor Romney, six public sector jobs.”
— White House senior adviser David Plouffe on “Fox News Sunday,” June 17, 2012
White House senior adviser David Plouffe made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows this week, making appearances on all the major networks except one. He used the opportunity to defend and clarify President Obama’s campaign message, but he also took swipes at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
We wondered what article Plouffe was referring to when he said Republicans have talked openly about trying to improve Romney’s election chances by blocking economic progress. And what about the Republican challenger’s job-creation numbers? We wrote a column in the past about this issue, but Plouffe’s assertion about six government jobs for every private-sector job represented a new and inconceivable-sounding twist.
Let’s examine the veracity of these claims.
The Facts
In terms of the “amazing article” Plouffe referred to, we found no reports quoting Republicans talking openly about sitting idle on the economy to improve Romney’s election chances.
4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad
“Running for governor, Mitt Romney campaigned as a job creator. But as a corporate raider, he shipped jobs to China and Mexico. As governor, he did the same thing: Outsourcing state jobs to India.”
— Voiceover of new Barack Obama campaign ad
The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.
Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a “corporate raider.” Let’s look anew at this material.
The Facts
The phrase “corporate raider” has a particular meaning in the world of finance. Here’s the definition on Investopedia:
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:
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.”
Is Romney’s Massachusetts record really as bad as Obama says?
“When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts was Number One: Number One in state debt — $18 billion in debt, more debt per person than any other state in the country. At the same time, Massachusetts fell to 47th in job creation — one of the worst economic records in the country. First in debt, 47th in job creation: that’s Romney economics.”
-- Narration from President Obama campaign ad
President Obama’s campaign team has hammered Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts record for the past few weeks in an effort to dispel any notion that the GOP presidential candidate has proven his chops when it comes to job creation and financial stewardship — areas opponents argue that the president is weak.
Let’s see how Massachusetts fared while Romney was governor from 2003 until 2007. Did the state really distinguish itself with such unflattering numbers?
The Facts
It’s ironic that the Obama campaign would criticize Romney for adding state debt when under his presidency the national debt has reached the greatest level as a percentage of the gross domestic product since World War II. (See Office of Management and Budget historical tables, Table 7.1)
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.
Spinning the number of teacher layoffs
(JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“We have had 4.3 million private sector jobs created over the last 27 months, but we lost almost half a million public sector jobs, and most of them are teachers….We have lost 250,000 teachers in the last couple of years.”
— Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, on ABC’s “This Week,” June 10, 2012
Defending President Obama against his blooper that the “private sector is doing fine,” Axelrod stressed that government jobs at the state and local level have been hit hard ever since the president’s stimulus funds ran dry. He specifically mentioned huge declines in teaching jobs.
We wondered about the source of those figures. We also recalled that the White House, pushing the president’s jobs bill, had warned in a report last fall that “state and local funding cuts put as many as 280,000 teacher jobs at risk next year.” We were curious, now that the school year is nearly over, what actually happened to all those teacher jobs.
The Facts
Axelrod’s figures are derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment database. The number of jobs in state and local government has fallen by 450,000 since February 2010 — that’s Axelrod’s “almost half a million.” And then in a category known as “local government education,” the number of jobs has declined by 226,300.
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.
Obama and the national debt: The latest Crossroads GPS ad
“In the seconds it takes to watch this, our national debt will increase $1.4 million…He’s adding $4 billion in debt every day. He’s borrowing from China for his spending.”
— Voiceover from Crossroads GPS ad “Stopwatch”
The newest Crossroads GPS ad gives us yet another opportunity to examine the other side of the spending debate: How much is President Obama responsible for the sharp rise in the national debt during his presidency?
The Obama campaign has claimed that spending increases under this president are the lowest since the days of Dwight Eisenhower — a claim which we have found problematic for a number of reasons.
There was a sharp increase in spending at the start of the administration, largely in response to the Great Recession, but spending increases have moderated since then, especially after Republicans took control of Congress.
But the national debt is not just the result of spending; it is also because revenues are not high enough to pay for government outlays. It is that mismatch that creates the national debt.
The Facts
Once again, we will display our handy chart that illustrates this dynamic. The blue line represents spending; the red line shows revenues. The big shaded area at the right shows the recession.
The facts about the growth of spending under Obama, Part 3
“The truth is, the President’s supposed ‘spending binge’ is nothing but a myth, repeatedly debunked by independent fact checkers. Federal spending growth has actually been slower under President Obama than under any other president since Dwight Eisenhower.”
The Obama campaign is doubling down on claim that President Obama has the slowest spending growth of any president since Dwight Eisenhower. The Democratic National Committee is also jumping into the act, asserting in a news release this week that “under his leadership, we’ve seen the lowest spending growth in nearly 60 years—in fact federal spending growth has been slower than under any President since Eisenhower.”
The Obama campaign’s Web site displays a modified version of a chart to this effect that originally appeared in a column by Rex Nutting for MarketWatch. The charts lists as among its sources: “Congressional Budget Office (CBO), nonpartisan analysis for the U.S. Congress.”
This sourcing to the CBO — though it was not CBO’s analysis that formed the basis of this claim — and the reference to “independent fact checkers” gives this page a patina of authenticity. But it remains a tendentious assertion.
Let’s take a look at who the Obama campaign cites as “fact checkers” — and what various fact checking organizations actually have said about this claim. We will also look more closely at Mitt Romney’s claim that Obama has engaged in a “spending inferno,” which the Obama campaign is responding to.
The Facts
At the bottom of the page, the Obama campaign displays a “Fact Checkers Report.” Three quotes are listed, by The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch, Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, and Ezra Klein of The Washington Post.
Slanted take: Obama campaign on Romney’s Massachusetts record
“Romney Economics: It didn’t work in Massachusetts, and it won’t work now.”
— Slogan of a new series of Obama campaign ads
President Obama’s re-election team opened a new front last week in its effort to undermine the supposed strengths of Republican challenger Mitt Romney, shifting its focus from the candidate’s business background to his record as Massachusetts governor. The campaign is trying to convince voters that Romney’s executive experience is more of an embarrassment than a strong suit.
This ad, which came out Thursday, attacks the former governor in three core areas: jobs, taxes and debt. Former North Adams, Mass. Mayor John Barrett said Romney was an ineffective leader, claiming “the proof is in the pudding.” Let’s examine Romney’s record in the Bay State to see if he really left the state in such bad shape. We’ll focus on selected quotes that cover the main points of the ad.
The Facts
We should point out that the Obama campaign only sought commentary from Democrats for this ad. Every legislator in the video is a member of the Democratic Party, while the past and present mayors are all registered Democrats.
The White House’s use of data on the gender wage gap
(Carolyn Kaster/AP)
“Women still earn just 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. It's worse for African American women and Latinas.”
— President Obama, Remarks on Equal Pay for Equal Work, June 4, 2011 (The White House later corrected the president’s statement to 77 cents.)
“Women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn, with women of color at an even greater disadvantage with 64 cents on the dollar for African American women and 56 cents for Hispanic women.”
— White House Statement of Administration Policy on Paycheck Fairness Act, June 4
The debate over the latest legislation to address the gap in pay between men and women is a great opportunity to explore the various ways these data are collected and often used for political purposes. There is no perfect source of data — the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics come up with different numbers even though they can draw on similar data sets — but often advocates of action will tend to pick the worst possible figure to advance their cause.
We will ignore the president’s misstatement and assume he meant to say 77 cents. (We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.) But we also will probe how Obama and the White House come up with the claim that the gap is “worse” for black and Hispanic women.
The Facts
We were struck by the disparities in the data when we noticed that a news release by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) trumpeted the 77 cent figure, but it included a link to a state-by-state breakdown that gave a different overall figure: 81 cents.
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.
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.
Tweet-err: The Obama team’s faulty debt comparison
(Mary Altaffer/AP)
“@MittRomney giving another debt speech: will he say why he increased MA’s debt by $2.6B, leaving w/largest per capita debt in nation?”
-- Tweet from Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith
Lis Smith is the rapid-response director for President Obama’s campaign team. She issued this comment while engaged in one of those heated and decidedly modern tweet wars with Mitt Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul last week.
The Obama campaign didn’t explain which debt speech Smith was referring to, but we can safely assume she was tweeting about something similar to the rousing comments the presumptive GOP nominee made during a stop in Des Moines on May 15.
Romney, the former governor of perpetually debt-swamped Massachusetts, said, “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation, and every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.” He also accused Obama of feeding the fire with more spending and borrowing, and he promised, “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can’t even imagine, from foreign countries we’ll never even visit.”
For the moment, we will leave aside Romney’s claim of a “prairie fire of debt,” since we have previously examined whether Obama is responsible. This time, let’s take a look at Romney’s record in Massachusetts to determine whether Obama’s rapid-response team is on to something. Did the Republican candidate really speak hypocritically about debt?
The Facts
Romney served as Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007. Annual fiscal reports from the state show that debt increased from $18.5 billion to $16 billion during that time -- very close to the Obama campaign’s $2.6-billion claim.
So that’s the end of the story, right? Not at all.
Obama’s remarks on worst job growth: Did he end it or should he own it?
(Larry Downing/Reuters)
“The ideas that [Republicans are] putting forward have been tried. We tried them between 2000 and 2008, and it resulted in the most sluggish job growth that we’ve ever seen, resulted in all kinds of phony financial profits and debt, and resulted in the worst financial crisis and economic crisis we’ve seen since the 1930s.”
— President Obama during a campaign event in New York City, May 14, 2012
President Obama campaigned in New York City earlier this week, trying during a reception at an art museum to convince wealthy donors that he’s done the best he can to repair the broken economy he inherited. His message included a warning that voters shouldn’t trust the ideas Republicans have pushed during this election cycle.
It’s hard to argue that certain regulatory policies from the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton eras didn’t pave the way for the financial crisis and the severe recession that kicked in just before Barack Obama entered the White House. But deciding who deserves the most blame for today’s slow economic growth is up for debate.
We’ll set aside the issue of what caused the downturn — that argument could last forever — and focus instead on the president’s bold claim that the policies implemented between 2000 and 2008 “resulted in the most sluggish job growth that we’ve ever seen.” Let’s take a look at the data to find out who has the worst record, even though we’ve said many times that no one person in power controls all the economic levers.
The Facts
There’s no perfectly objective way of looking at employment numbers in this case, since people disagree about when to begin blaming Obama for the lackluster job growth of recent years and when to stop faulting Bush. Then there’s the question of when to start the clock on Bush, since he inherited a bit of a recession himself.
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.)
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:
Koch versus Obama
“I wanted to arm you with the facts about the latest attack from Big Oil.”
— Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, in a video release
“Koch takes exception to the President engaging in inappropriate personal attacks on private citizens.”
— Koch response video
It’s war!
Two dueling videos, one by the Obama campaign and one by Koch Industries, illustrates how bitter the fight has become between the White House and the billionaire brothers who have bankrolled many conservative causes, often rallying opposition to the president’s policies.
The recent tit-for-tat started with the latest ad by Americans for Prosperity, an organization which the New Yorker magazine, in a lengthy article, said “was micromanaged by the Kochs” and “has been instrumental in disrupting the Obama Presidency.” (Koch issued a long rebuttal to the article but did not dispute this point.)
The AFP ad, indeed, was riddled with falsehoods and misstatements. We gave it Four Pinocchios, PolitiFact labeled its assertions “mostly false,” “false,” and “pants on fire,” and FactCheck.org was also highly critical.
For the Obama campaign, the Koch brothers are a convenient foil, though as we have written before, the campaign goes too far to label them “Big Oil” because their privately held empire is comprised of many businesses, some not related to petroleum. (We also gave Two Pinocchios to Obama’s response ad to AFP, which was mostly aimed at Mitt Romney.)
Still, given how ludicrously wrong much of the AFP ad was, all Stephanie Cutter, the Obama deputy campaign manager, had to do in the campaign’s video was to highlight some of the errors that fact-checking organizations had already pointed out. (She made other assertions that we will examine below.) We will leave it to readers to decide if she went too far in labeling the political activities of the Koch brothers as “BS.”
Now Koch — pronounced “Coke,” not like the name of the former New York mayor — has responded in kind. Let’s take a deeper look at their video.
The Facts
The ad begins with a reference to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article criticizing the Obama campaign for highlighting the backgrounds of some of Mitt Romney’s political supporters, suggesting it was some sort of enemies list. The ad then quotes former solicitor general Ted Olsen — identified in the article as an attorney for Koch — as criticizing the practice as “abhorrent.”
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.
Does Mitt Romney love outsourcing?
“President Obama’s clean-energy initiatives have helped create jobs for projects across America, not overseas.”
“What about Mitt Romney? As a corporate CEO, he shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China. As governor, he outsourced state jobs to a call center in India. He’s still pushing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.”
— Ad from President Obama’s re-election campaign
President Obama’s campaign team fired back with this ad after the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity ran a commercial saying billions of dollars in stimulus funds went toward foreign jobs. We awarded that claim Four Pinocchios in a previous column, and the Obama crew quoted us in its rebuttal.
We certainly appreciate the mention, but we can’t let that stop us from checking the claims in this ad. Is presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney really such a fan of outsourcing? Let’s look at his record and proposals.
The Facts
The Obama campaign pointed us to a series of SEC filings and news accounts showing that three companies within Bain Capital’s portfolio sent jobs overseas. Romney served as chief executive of the firm, which specialized in private-equity investment and leveraged buyouts during his tenure there. He left the company in February 1999 to become president and chief executive of the committee that organized the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Over-the-top attacks on Obama’s green-energy programs
“Washington promised to create American jobs if we passed their stimulus, but that’s not what happened. . . . American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries.”
— New TV advertisement by Americans for Prosperity
“How exactly does President Obama spend your tax dollars?”
— New TV advertisement by the American Future Fund
Two well-funded Republican groups began running hard-hitting ads against President Obama last week, aiming to spend an estimated $8 million in key battleground states. The spots hit similar themes, attacking Obama on green-energy investments, and even cite similar sources.
Watching these ads is a depressing duty for The Fact Checker, because many of their claims — regarding “billions” of stimulus dollars going overseas — had been debunked two years ago by our colleagues at PolitiFact and Factcheck.org. Yet here the erroneous assertions emerge yet again, without any shame, labeled as “the truth” or “fact.”
The ads also use the old trick of blowing out of proportion small details and then leaping to grand conclusions.
Thus, in the Americans for Prosperity ad, questions about relatively small amounts of more than $800 billion in stimulus money turn into “American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries.”
And the American Future Fund, pegging its ad to the date when taxes are due to ask how Obama spends taxpayer money, focuses on the same green-energy investments and also the $800,000 spent on a lavish Las Vegas conference by the General Services Administration. That’s a scandal — with no known links to Obama — but it’s also a pittance compared with the money spent on national defense, health care and other government services.
Let’s take a look at some of the specific claims.
The Facts
First of all, we live in a globalized world. American companies make products overseas; foreign companies make products in the United States. Sometimes parts are made in a variety of places overseas and then assembled in the United States. That’s a fact of life, and these ads frequently confuse the difference, so that any hint of foreign involvement is depicted as a bad thing.
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.”
Does a majority of millionaires really support the Buffett Rule?
(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)
“This was an idea that was supported by a strong majority of the American people — including nearly half of Republicans. The majority of millionaires supported it. And Senate Republicans didn’t listen.”
— President Obama, Lorain County Community College in Ohio, April 18, 2012
Many surveys, by pollsters such as Gallup and Washington Post-ABC News, show strong public support for the president’s proposal — killed in the Senate this week — to impose a tax surcharge on people with adjusted gross income of more than $1 million, known as the Buffett Rule.
But we were struck by the president’s assertion that even a majority of millionaires support such a tax. The claim that two-thirds of millionaires back the plan is also promoted on the Obama campaign Web site, under the headline: “Millionaires stand in support of the Buffett Rule.”
How does the president know this?
The Facts
The White House directed us to an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which was headlined “Millionaires Support Warren Buffett’s Tax on Rich.” The article cited a study by Spectrem Group, which claimed that “68 percent of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income.”
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 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).
President Obama: Quoting Reagan out of context
(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)
“I’m not the first President to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong. So this President gave another speech where he said it was “crazy” -- that's a quote -- that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.
“He thought that, in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share, and he said so. I know that position might disqualify him from the Republican primaries these days but what Ronald Reagan was calling for then is the same thing that we’re calling for now: a return to basic fairness and responsibility; everybody doing their part. And if it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan Rule instead of the Buffett Rule.”
— President Obama, remarks on the Buffett Rule, April 11, 2012
The world has gone topsy-turvy when a Democratic president approvingly cites Ronald Reagan on tax policy — and even suggests naming his legislative proposal after the Republican icon, since, as Obama put it, he “traveled across the country pushing for the same concept.”
Obama is talking about the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which seeks to raise the taxes of the super wealthy so they don’t pay less than middle-class Americans. We have examined this concept earlier and concluded it was more of a “political argument” than an actual problem. (White House documents show just 22,000 wealthy households make more than $1 million and pay less than 15 percent of their income in taxes.) But no matter — a version is coming up for a vote next week in the Senate, though it has little chance of becoming law.
(As our colleague Ezra Klein has noted, the actual proposal is much more complicated than Obama suggests in his speeches. The Obama campaign’s “Buffett Rule calculator” does not get it right either — the full 30-percent rate does not kick in until after a taxpayer has much more than $2 million in adjusted gross income.)
YouTube clips of Reagan complaining about corporate executives paying less than secretaries or bus drivers have circulated on the Internet for a while. But are Reagan and Obama really talking about the same thing when they used similar anecdotes? As always, context is important.
The Facts
President Obama cited two specific Reagan speeches — one (June 28, 1985) in which Reagan quoted from a letter he had received from a wealthy executive and another (June 6, 1985) in which he said it was “crazy” for some multimillionaires to pay zero in taxes.
Are Obama’s job policies hurting women?
(BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“For far too long women have been left behind in Obama’s job market. Of the 740,000 jobs lost since Obama took office, 683,000 of them were held by women. That is truly unsustainable.”
— Statement by Sharon Day, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, April 6, 2012
In an effort to fight back against Democratic claims of a Republican “war on women,” the Republican National Committee has rolled out a new and startling fact—that under Obama, women have lost seven times as many jobs as men.
We found this statistic surprising because we had been under the impression that men had fared worse than women in the recession. So do the RNC’s numbers add up?
The Facts
First of all, readers know we frown on the somewhat arbitrary dividing line of measuring jobs statistics by presidential terms. It is a common journalistic — and political — metric. But restarting the employment clock from the moment the president takes the oath of office doesn’t tell you much about a his performance, especially since it takes time for the new president’s policies to take effect.
Obama’s selective memory of Supreme Court history
(Carolyn Kaster, AP)
“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”
-- President Obama, discussing the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision over his health care law, April 2, 2012
“Let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner. Right? So we’re going back to the ‘30s, pre-New Deal.
“And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.”
-- Obama, clarifying comments he made the previous day, April 3
President Obama made these remarks during a series of high-profile news conferences last week, taking the unusual step of commenting on a Supreme Court case — the challenge to the Affordable Care Act, in this case — while the justices are still deliberating.
It’s clear that Obama’s “unprecedented” comment was dead wrong, because the Supreme Court’s very purpose is to review laws that are passed by the nation’s democratically elected Congress — regardless of how popular or well-intentioned those laws may be. This concept of judicial review was established in 1803 with Marbury v. Madison, a case that Obama should have been familiar with as a former law school lecturer and previous president of Harvard Law Review.
Still, we don’t know whether the president’s factual error was a mere slip-up or a purposeful attempt to mislead, and we generally don’t beat people over the head for off-the-cuff remarks. Let’s take a look at the president’s message in light of his clarifying remarks to see whether it holds up any better under scrutiny.
The Facts
We took the liberty of re-phrasing the president’s initial remarks to get at his overarching message. We removed the word “unprecedented,” since Obama walked that back, and we inserted the word “economic” before “law,” since the president added that distinction in his follow-up. We kept the word “extraordinary” and the part about judicial activism, since Obama never backed away from any of that.
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.
Obama’s attack on the GOP budget
“I am not exaggerating. These are facts.”
— President Obama, April 3, 2012
With President Obama’s speech before the Associated Press on Tuesday, one can say the 2012 presidential contest has begun in earnest. For the moment, we will ignore some of his stylistic bloopers — “the Republicans running Congress right now” ignores the fact that the Senate is still in Democratic hands — and instead concentrate on how the White House backs up some of his claims about the House Republican budget. As usual, we will not judge the politics of the speech — just the facts. In this initial look, we will not award Pinocchios but simply explain how these figures were reached. We will also delve more deeply in other parts of the speech, such as the Medicare portion, later in the week.
“These proposed tax breaks would come on top of more than a trillion dollars in tax giveaways for people making more than $250,000 a year. That’s an average of at least $150,000 for every millionaire in this country — $150,000.”
The House Republican budget includes changes in tax rates, reducing the top rate to 25 percent, and also unspecified loophole closings. That possibly could result in a big tax cut for the very wealthy, but no one really knows because the House Budget Committee is leaving the precise plan up to the tax-writing committees.
Obama and new pipelines that ‘circle the Earth’
“Under my administration … we've added enough oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some.”
— President Obama, remarks on oil and gas subsidies, March 29, 2012
A number of readers have asked about this claim by the president, wondering if it was correct.
Well, yes, but it’s kind of meaningless — and it’s missing some important context.
Obama clearly made this claim in order to rebut suggestions that the administration is opposed to building pipelines, principally the Keystone XL pipeline. We have explored some of the erroneous claims made about that pipeline project before.
But is the president straining too hard with this claim? Let’s explore.
The Facts
The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 24,091.55 miles, so we will use that as our guidepost.
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.
Who has the better regulatory record — Obama or Bush?
(Michael S. Williamson — Washington Post)
“Over the Obama administration’s first three years, the net benefits of regulations reviewed by OIRA and issued by executive agencies exceeded $91 billion — 25 times the corresponding number in the [George W.] Bush administration and more than eight times the corresponding number in the Clinton administration.”
“In the last 10 fiscal years, the highest costs were imposed in 2007. The last three years of the Bush administration saw higher regulatory costs than the first three years of the Obama administration. If you're looking for the year with the highest regulatory costs on record, you'll have to go all the way back to 1992, under President George H.W. Bush.”
— From an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune by White House regulatory chief Cass Sunstein, March 19, 2012
“In terms of just the facts, the Obama administration’s issued fewer final rules in the first three years than the [George W. Bush] administration did in the first three years.
— Sunstein during Politico breakfast, March 20, 2012
The president’s opponents have accused him of stunting the economic recovery with a barrage of harmful new regulations ranging from a supposed “permatorium” on offshore oil drilling to stricter rules aimed at reducing farm dust — neither of which has actually taken effect during Obama’s term.
Cass Sunstein, who heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House budget office, argued against these critics in a Chicago Tribune opinion article titled “Why regulations are good — again.” He wrote that the number of new rules has decreased under President Obama and that estimated net monetary benefits of major rules has reached a staggering level in comparison with the first three years of the previous two administrations.
We don’t take issue with Sunstein defending the president’s regulatory policies. He has every right to do that, especially if he provides valid data to back up his claims — which he did in this case. But his op-ed, along with all the numbers he mentioned, suggest that the current administration has achieved far greater results than those of the past 20 years. He was especially hard on the Bushes in this regard.
We reviewed Sunstein’s claims to find out whether his figures tell the whole story. (Note: all figures are inflation-adjusted 2001 numbers and the years mentioned are fiscal years that end on Sept. 30.)
The Facts
Obama has issued several executive orders directing federal agencies to avoid redundant, conflicting and excessively burdensome regulations, presumably to avoid any chilling effect that such rules would have on an already mild economic recovery. The past three presidents have issued similar orders.
‘Obamacare:’ Twice as much as estimated?
“The health care law “is going to come with a price tag pretty hefty, of $1.76 trillion. That’s twice as much as originally thought.”
— Voiceover in new National Republican Senate Committee Web ad, March 22, 2012
With the Obama health care law now being argued before the Supreme Court, perhaps it is time for a refresher course on its costs.
A Web ad — titled “Obamacare Fact Check” — released last week by the NRSC is a case in point. Among its many charges of “promises broken” is the suggestion that the health care law already costs twice as much as originally estimated. Is that really the case, given that key provisions of the law have not even taken effect?
The Facts
First of all, a caveat: all of these budget numbers must be examined with the skepticism. The Congressional Budget Office does as good a job as possible, but its numbers are only estimates — and no one can truly predict the state of the economy and health care years from now, let alone the real impact of the law.
Obama’s Solyndra shuffle
(JASON REED/REUTERS)
“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand: This was not our program, per se. Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for startups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help startup companies get to scale.”
— President Obama, interview with American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” March 21, 2012
“We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans… Before the Recovery Act, we could build just 5 percent of the world’s solar panels. In the next few years, we’re going to double our share to more than 10 percent.”
— Obama, remarks at Solyndra Inc., Fremont, Calif., May 26, 2010
Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan.
We were reminded of that aphorism when we saw Obama’s comments this week regarding the origin of the government loan program that funded now-bankrupt Solyndra. What was once touted as an administration achievement is now cast as a bipartisan effort that preceded Obama — in effect, the reverse of that aphorism.
Which is it? As it happens, there is a bit of a fact-checker dispute on this matter, with Politifact saying it mostly started under George W. Bush and Factcheck.org arguing that the administration is parsing its words because the loan to Solyndra was funded through Obama’s stimulus bill. So Obama’s statement gives us an opportunity to weigh in on the matter.
The Facts
The Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed into law by Bush, under section 1703 of Title XVII, included loan guarantee funding to promote innovative clean energy technologies. Solyndra had applied for a loan under 1703, but no loans were made by the time Bush left office.
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.
Did Obama delay stimulus spending to aid his reelection?
(Carolyn Kaster/AP)
“Stimulus was supposed to be quick. In fact, they never intended to spend it and will not completely have effectively spent it until after the president’s re-elect. Always looking at how do you get the maximum hit when the president was up for re-elect.”
— Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, March 19, 2012
This is a pretty serious charge by a senior member of the House of Representatives, made on “Fox and Friends” earlier this week. The president’s opponents usually say the stimulus was a failure and a waste of money, not that money was purposely held back. We immediately thought he must have some damning evidence that his investigators had turned up.
But when we asked for more information, we only got a statement blasting President Obama (more on that below). That wasn’t very illuminating, but as we will see, perhaps there is a reason his staff could not provide much information.
The Facts
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus, was passed into law just weeks after Obama became president. It was valued at about $800 billion — the precise number varies depending on when the estimate was done — and contained new spending, tax cuts and grants to municipalities and states.
‘The Road We’ve Traveled:’ A misleading account of Obama’s mother and her insurance dispute
Narrator Tom Hanks: “He knew from experience the cost of waiting [on health care reform].”
President Obama : “When my mom got cancer, she wasn’t a wealthy woman and it pretty much drained all her resources”
Michelle Obama: “She developed ovarian cancer, never really had good, consistent insurance. That’s a tough thing to deal with, watching your mother die of something that could have been prevented. I don’t think he wants to see anyone go through that.”
Hanks: “And he remembered the millions of families like of his who feel the pressure of rising costs and the fear of being denied or dropped from coverage.”
--series of statements with images of Obama and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in the Obama campaign film “The Road We’ve Traveled”
“The Road We’ve Traveled” is a very slick and impressively produced campaign film—sheer catnip for Obama fans. There are a number of facts and figures that could be challenged, but for now we are going to focus on this sequence. The series of words and images is an excellent example of how such films can create a misleading impression, while skirting as close as possible to the edge of falsehood.
The sequence, in fact, evokes a famous story that candidate Obama told during the 2008 campaign—that his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, fought with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.
But the story was later called into question by Dunham’s biographer. The fact that Obama’s initial claim is not directly repeated suggests the filmmakers knew there was a problem with the campaign story, but they clearly wanted to keep some version of it in the film.
The Facts
During the 2008 campaign, Obama frequently suggested his mother had to fight with her health-insurance company for treatment of her cancer because it considered her disease to be a pre-existing condition. In one of the presidential debates with GOP rival John McCain, Obama said:
President Obama’s ‘bumper-sticker’ claims on oil
President Obama used his visit to a Maryland community college to address one of the hottest campaign topics of the day: energy. During his speech, he talked about his plan for achieving energy independence and investing in alternative technologies. He also discussed his proposal to strip away tax benefits from the oil industry to help close the nation’s gaping budget deficit.
Since the president mentioned “cute bumper-sticker lines” that don’t match the facts, we decided to hold him to his own standards. Is the oil industry really making higher profits than ever before while snatching up $4 billion in U.S. tax dollars every year? Have its tax deductions truly been in place for 100 years?
The Facts
The president has targeted a select few industries for major tax reforms — or, if you prefer, tax hikes — in his proposed 2013 budget. The industries include fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), finance and insurance. His plan would also eliminate certain tax breaks for individuals making more than $250,000 a year, a group that some categorize as the wealthy.
Obama’s whopper about Rutherford B. Hayes and the telephone
(LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS)
“Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. … There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don't believe in the future, and don't believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can't do something, instead of why we can do something.”
— President Obama, remarks on energy, Largo, Maryland, March 15, 2012
In a speech on energy Thursday, the president took aim at the “cynics and naysayers” who dismiss potential new sources of energy, such as wind and solar. Leave aside the canard about most Europeans believing the earth was flat before Columbus — that’s an elementary-school tale with little basis in fact.
What about President Hayes? Was he really so dismissive about the invention of the telephone?
The Facts
Hayes, the nation’s 19th president, served only one term, 1877-1881, after a very close and disputed election that needed to be settled by an electoral commission. (He went to bed thinking he had lost to Democrat Samuel Tilden.) He was a master politician who banned liquor from the White House for political purposes (and to curb boorish behavior by members of Congress).
U.S. oil resources: President Obama’s ‘non sequitur facts’
(JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“As a country that has 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, but uses 20 percent of the world's oil — I'm going to repeat that — we've got 2 percent of the world oil reserves; we use 20 percent. What that means is, as much as we're doing to increase oil production, we're not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices. Anybody who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they aren’t telling you the truth.”
— President Obama, speech in North Carolina, March 7, 2012
“The United States consumes more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but we only have 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves — 20 percent we use; we only produce 2 percent. And no matter what we do, it's not going to get much above 3 percent. So we're still going to have this huge shortfall. That's why if we really want energy security and energy independence, we've got to start looking at how we use less oil, and use other energy sources that we can renew and that we can control, so we are not subject to the whims of what's happening in other countries.”
— Obama, speech on American energy, March 1, 2012
“After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.”
— Obama, remarks on the BP oil spill, June 15, 2010
This appears to be one of President Obama’s favorite facts — he says it almost every time he speaks about energy issues — but readers are getting confused. We have received repeated queries from readers asking for an explanation of this startling bit of information.
This is actually an interesting area of inquiry. On the surface, the president’s numbers are correct, based on official government data. But this is a good example of what we call “non sequitur facts” — two bits of information that actually bear little relationship to each other.
The president is trying to make the case that the world has finite oil resources, and the United States — the world’s biggest oil consumer — needs to use less oil in the future. But using “oil reserves” as a key metric gives an incomplete picture of U.S. oil resources. (Note: the analysis that follows draws in part on a comprehensive Congressional Research Service report on oil resource definitions. We have embedded a copy at the end for readers seeking more information.)
The Facts
“Proven reserves,” whether for oil, natural gas or coal, has a very strict definition, in part because reserves are considered actual assets owned by companies. The oil must have been discovered, confirmed and economically recoverable, with at least 90 percent certainty. The level of reserves, in fact, may vary depending on the price of oil, since a higher price may suddenly make some finds economically viable.
The claim that won’t die: Did Obama want higher gas prices?
(J. Scott Applewhite — AP)
Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise is toeing the Republican Party line here, accusing the president of consciously trying to raise gas prices to wean Americans off carbon fuels. Earlier this month, we determined that Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels deserved three Pinocchios for making similar claims.
We mentioned in our previous column that we hadn’t found a single instance in which President Obama advocated higher gas prices. A reader later mentioned that he’d found an example, pointing out a June 2008 interview in which then-Sen. Obama discussed energy policy on CNBC. The trading and investment blog TownHallFinance.com used that same video to suggest we’d missed the mark with our analysis of Daniels’s remarks.
We reviewed the 2008 interview (which you can view below) and took yet another look at the current state of U.S. oil production to determine whether anything should change about our previous determination. If not, Scalise would deserve just as many Pinocchios as Daniels.
The Facts
First, we’ll discuss the interview between then-Sen. Obama and CNBC’s John Harwood. Here’s an exchange from that meeting:
Obama’s $8,000 in gas savings a year — oops, over a car’s life
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Now, because of these new standards for cars and trucks, they’re going to — all going to be able to go further and use less fuel every year. And that means pretty soon you’ll be able to fill up your car every two weeks instead of every week — and, over time, that saves you, a typical family, about $8,000 a year.”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “We like that.”
OBAMA: “You like that, don't you?”
AUDIENCE: “Yes!”
OBAMA: “Eight thousand dollars — that's no joke. … It looks like somebody might have fainted up here.”
— Exchange during President Obama’s speech in Mount Holly, N.C., March 7, 2012
It is certainly possible to get carried away at a rally with adoring supporters. And every politician misspeaks from time to time. But these remarks stand out because the president engaged in conversation with the audience about his figure – savings of $8,000 a year in gasoline costs – and declared “that’s no joke.”
Oops. No wonder folks were fainting. The average annual cost for gasoline is less than $3,000, according to the Consumer Federation of America.
Let’s take a closer look at this figure.
The Facts
To be fair to the president, he has gotten this $8,000 figure correct on a number of occasions — at least four times in the past two weeks.
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 Syria: What’s an ‘international community’?
“What’s happening in Syria is heartbreaking and outrageous, and what you’ve seen is the international community mobilize against the Assad regime.”
— President Obama, at a news conference, March 6, 2012
Befitting a one-time community organizer, the president likes to use the phrase “international community” a lot. In his news conference on Tuesday, the president 12 times used the phrases “international community,” “world community,” or “community of nations.”
But some international communities are clearly more robust than others. When asked by a reporter why the United States could stand by as a “massacre” takes place in Syria, the president did a diplomatic dance that made that “international community” seeking to help the Syrian rebels appear more impressive than it is.
The Facts
During the news conference, Obama used virtually the same phrasing to describe the struggle against the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi and the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad: “What happened in Libya was we mobilized the international community” versus “What you’ve seen is the international community mobilize against the Assad regime.”
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.”
Obama, Israel and AIPAC: two dueling videos
“When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
— President Obama, before the AIPAC policy conference, March 4
President Obama spoke on Sunday before the annual policy conference of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The somewhat defensive speech appeared to be part of an effort to reassure Jewish voters in this election year that “when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
When Obama spoke to AIPAC in 2008, as a senator on the verge of securing the Democratic presidential nomination, he made a rookie mistake in talking about the status of Jerusalem. A day later, he felt compelled to clarify his comments in response to Palestinian complaints.
It was not an auspicious beginning for Obama’s venture into Arab-Israeli diplomacy — an issue that has caused him much heartache during his presidency. We have explored earlier whether his problems in this arena were deliberate (as some Republicans charge) or mainly the result of diplomatic ineptitude.
From nearly a decade of covering Middle East diplomacy, we think it is difficult to reach definitive conclusions on this question; it is in the eye of the beholder. We tend to lean toward diplomatic ineptitude as the primary explanation, considering that Palestinians are as irritated with Obama as Israelis are.
Indeed, readers who want to see different views of Obama’s handling of the Israeli diplomatic portfolio can watch two new Web videos. One is a lengthy, negative take by a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel and was released over the weekend; the other is a defense of Obama by the Democratic National Committee that was released last week.
The two videos offer a case study in how certain facts can be assembled to make an argument — while other facts are ignored.
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.)
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:
Gassy rhetoric on gasoline prices
(Alex Brandon/Associated Press)
“Gas prices have more than doubled since the president took office.”
— House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Feb. 16
“We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance — algae. You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right? . . . Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.”
— President Obama, in his speech about energy, Feb. 23
If it’s an election year, politicians must be talking about gas prices.
We remember covering the 1996 presidential campaign, when Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), the eventual Republican nominee, called for repealing a gasoline tax designed to reduce the deficit to give car owners a break because of predictions that gas might top $1.31 a gallon over the summer.
That number seems almost quaint now, even if Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) was wrong when he said in a GOP debate last week that gas already exceeded $6 a gallon in Florida.
Readers should immediately discount anything politicians say about gas prices. Let’s take a look at two common rhetorical tricks, involving statements that are more or less true on their face.
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.
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.
A guide to dueling claims about the Obama budget
(Susan Walsh/AP)
“When you look at the budget, you’ll see $1.9 trillion worth of new tax revenue and $1.5 trillion worth of more spending.”
--House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Feb. 15, 2012
“The president’s budget has $1 of revenue for every $2½ of spending cuts.”
--White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, Feb. 12, 2012
Are these guys even talking about the same document?
All presidential budgets are political documents—and it is easy to play politics with numbers. That’s why such a gap in the rhetoric is even possible. Each side can make a case for their spin, though much of it is dubious.
Let’s take a look at how they do it.
The Facts
First of all, notice that Boehner and Lew are only speaking about one side of the ledger--either spending increases or spending cuts. The Republicans then emphasize the tax increases, while the White House deemphasizes them. We also are working with 10-year budget forecasts, even though the budget is rewritten every year, which increases the chance for mischief.
The Obama campaign’s misleading graphic: Super PACs threaten fair election
(Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images)
“Republican Super PACs and outside groups pose a brutal threat to a fair election in November. These groups are already spending millions of dollars on negative ads attacking President Obama.”
— From the Obama for America campaign Web site
President Obama’s campaign ran this statement alongside a graphic illustrating the sharp rise in pro-GOP advertising by special-interest groups. It shows a whopping 1,600 percent increase compared with the 2008 election, with the phrase “threat to a fair election” appearing three times on the Web page. (See screen grab below.)
The Post’s campaign-finance reporters have written extensively about the impact of super PACs, a new breed of fundraiser that can gather unlimited amounts of money to support political causes. These organizations came about after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that corporations have the same right to protected speech as individuals.
We’ll refrain from weighing in on the debate over the Citizens United ruling, but it seemed appropriate to review the data from the Obama campaign graphic to determine whether his campaign put the numbers in perspective. Does the astronomical increase in super PAC advertising really spell doom for the next election? Did the campaign leave anything out?
The Facts
The Obama graphic uses data from a report by the Wesleyan Media Project, a group that analyzes political advertising. The study covers Jan. 1 through Jan. 25 of 2008 and 2012, so the chart doesn’t represent the entirety of both election cycles.
Obama’s gifts to charity: Just 1 percent?
(Chip Somodevilla/GETTY IMAGES)
“All respect due, he [President Obama] reported giving one percent of his income away to charity and he wants to lecture me about being responsible as a steward of my resources. Mr. President, the last time I checked, the bare minimum for a believer is a dime out of a dollar that is supposed to go to take care of the widows, the poor, the orphans.”
--Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Feb. 10, 2012
Onetime presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee made this statement after claiming that the president had said at the national prayer breakfast that “Jesus would want us to pay higher tax rates.” We will leave it to readers and theologians to decide if Obama actually said that, or if his use of the relevant scripture was correct.
But we were curious if Huckabee was right in asserting that Obama gives so little to charity. Huckabee framed it as a sign of a person’s character, urging the audience to vet every candidate, Republican or Democrat, for how much they give in charitable contributions.
The Facts
Every year, the president releases his tax returns, so there is little mystery about the extent of his contributions to charity.
President Obama and the defense budget
(Win McNamee/GETTY IMAGES)
“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow, because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.”
— President Obama, speaking at the Pentagon , Jan. 5, 2012
We’ve been wondering about this quote every since the president said it six weeks ago, when he spoke about the Defense Strategic Review at the Pentagon. We had previously questioned one of the statements in his speech, but we were not able to fully check this one until we could actually see the numbers in the White House budget proposal for the 2013 fiscal year released Monday.
We take no position on the right level for the defense budget. But, with numbers in hand, let’s examine the president’s assertions and whether there has been any sleight of hand. Warning: Lots of budget numbers ahead.
The Facts
Under the debt ceiling deal reached by the president and congressional leaders last summer, the defense budget must be cut by $487 billion over the next 10 years. Additional cuts may be mandated because a deficit-cutting congressional committee could not reach agreement, but since all concerned say they want to avoid that scenario, let’s keep our focus on the initial round of defense spending reductions.
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.”
President Obama’s Google Plus ‘hangout’ claims about engineering demand
(Saul Loeb - AFP/Getty Images)
"There's a huge demand around this country for engineers. . . . Where you’re seeing a lot of specialized demand is in engineering that’s related to the high-tech industries.”
-- President Obama, during a Google Plus video conference, Jan. 30
Obama’s comments came in response to a question from Fort Worth resident Jennifer Wedel, who asked why the government has extended and continues to issue H-1B visas when people such as her engineer husband, Darin Wedel, can’t find work.
The president said that not all engineering fields have equal demand at the moment but that “what the industry tells me is that they don’t have enough highly skilled engineers” for work in the high-tech domain.
Obama seemed perplexed after Jennifer mentioned that her husband was a semiconductor engineer. He asked her to forward his resume and said he was interested in “finding out exactly what’s happening there.” We decided to look into the matter as well.
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.
President Obama’s claim that some wanted to let the auto industry die
(SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“It’s good to remember that the fact that there were some folks who were willing to let this industry die. Because of folks coming together, we are now back in a place where we can compete with any car company in the world.”
--President Obama, at the Washington Auto Show, Jan. 31, 2012
“On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen.”
--Obama, in the State of the Union address, Jan. 24, 2011
The apparently successful rescue of the auto industry is obviously going to play a central part in President Obama’s reelection narrative. Vice President Biden put it this week: “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”
As our colleague Charles Lane pointed out recently, this effort has sometimes included what he called “an unfortunate, and remarkably ungracious, tendency to distort the record” of George W. Bush on the auto industry rescue. After all, Bush loaned billions of dollars to GM and Chrysler (with strings attached), in opposition to much of his party, so Obama was not confronted with an auto-industry collapse in his first days in office.
The president has also demonstrated a fondness for using rhetorical straw men in his speeches. So we wondered: Did anyone really say the auto industry should simply die?
The Facts
Many reporters have assumed that the president’s words were aimed at his likely GOP rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who famously (or infamously) penned an opinion article that was titled: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” The basic thrust of the article was that the companies should go through a managed bankruptcy, mainly to shed labor costs, rather than just get a “bailout check.”
Did Obama run the most negative ads in U.S. history?
(Susan Walsh/AP)
“No candidate in American history has ever run more negative ads than Barack Obama.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), speaking on CNN, Jan. 31, 2012.
A reader asked us about Rubio’s statement, saying, “I do not recall Obama being overly negative in his campaign.”
But it appears to be an article of faith for Republicans. Joe Scarborough, a former GOP member of Congress who hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” declared on Wednesday: “Barack Obama won ugly in 2008; he ran more negative ads than anyone else in the history of television.”
But is this really the case?
The Facts
The nasty campaign of 2008 actually was raised in one of the presidential debates at the time. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s Republican rival, complained that Obama had “spent more money on negative ads than any political campaign in history.” Obama responded that almost all of McCain’s ads were negative.
President Obama’s small business bobble
“I elevated the SBA [Small Business Administration] administrator to a Cabinet level position so that they are talking directly to me, so that there is no one in between me and the SBA when they are advocating on behalf of small business. …And [even after a reorganization] I’ll still have an SBA administrator in my Cabinet who’s advocating directly for small businesses.”
--President Obama, in the Google Plus Hangout/YouTube interview, Jan. 30, 2012
During President Obama’s live video chat on Google Plus, Ramon Ray of Montclair, N.J. expressed concern about the administration’s plans to fold the Small Business Administration into a super-department that includes the business functions of the Commerce Department, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and three other agencies.
The president gave a reassuring answer. (Look at 14:00 mark). But his remarks were not accurate, judging from the administration’s own briefings on the plan.
The Facts
As it happens, SBA administrator Karen Mills for the first time attended a Cabinet meeting as a full-fledged Cabinet member on Tuesday. In remarks before the media, Obama said: “I’m very pleased that we’ve got Karen Mills here, who has participated in our meetings before, but is now an official member of the Cabinet.”
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.
Fact-checking the 2012 State of the Union speech
A State of the Union address is often difficult to fact-check, no matter who is president. The speech is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted, so major errors of fact are so relatively rare that they sometimes can become big news (think of George W. Bush’s “sixteen little words” about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger). At the same time, State of the Union addresses are very political speeches, an argument for the president’s policies, so context (or the perspective of opponents) is often missing.
Here is a guide through some of President Obama’s more fact-challenged claims, in the order in which he made them. As is our practice with live events, we do not award Pinocchio rankings, which are reserved for complete columns.
“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”
The killing of bin Laden, which Obama used to open and close his speech, is an achievement that few partisans would quibble with. But the story about Iraq and Afghanistan is much more muddled.
Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address: Fact Checker video
This is the video companion to our analysis of what happened to President Obama’s proposals in the 2011 State of the Union address.
Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address: an accounting
(Associated Press)
Every president announces a slew of initiatives in his State of the Union address. Here, in order of delivery, is a summary of the key proposals, pledges or priorities announced by Obama a year ago —and what happened to them.
When we did this exercise a year ago, Obama had an impressive success rate in 2010, which was a clear benefit of having commanding majorities in both houses of Congress. We predicted then that with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, his batting average in 2011 was sure to fall, and this accounting demonstrates that to be the case. In this election year, one can expect even more gridlock and stalled initiatives.
The Proposals
Obama: “We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology -- an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”
The administration’s budget ideas were dead on arrival in 2011, with House Republicans especially targeting the administration’s plans to spend more on clean energy technology. The high-profile bankruptcy of Solyndra, for which the administration had guaranteed $535 million in loans, certainly did not help matters. The House and Senate both cut the administration’s clean-energy proposals, though the Democratic-controlled Senate was more sympathetic.
Obama ad cherry-picks fact checking organization
President Obama “kept a campaign promise to toughen ethics rules”
--new Obama campaign ad
We love ads that cite fact checkers, but President Obama’s first campaign ad contains a real blooper. It cites a positive fact check by PolitiFact, while ignoring a subsequent column taking away that original ruling. (UPDATE: There were two PolitiFact rulings that same day, and Obama choose the one most favorite, so we are revising our original ruling.)
The Facts
The ad attempts to push back against a slashing ad attack on Obama’s clean-energy initiatives by a group called Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and accurately quotes from an ABC analysis that said the ad “contains claims that are not tethered to the facts.”
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.
President Obama and the defense budget: a factoid that falls short
(Mark Wilson/GETTY IMAGES)
“And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand, that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.”
— President Obama, remarks on the Defense Strategic Review, Jan. 5, 2012
Many questions remain about the Obama administration’s plan to reduce defense spending, most of which cannot be answered until the formal budget plan is released. But in making the case for his plan last week, the president cited a “fact” that we have seen uttered time and again by various politicians: The $550 billion U.S. military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next [fill in the blank] countries combined.
The president chose the number 10. We’ve also seen the number 14, or similar figures in the past.
But how relevant is this statement and does it really say something significant about the relative strength of the U.S. military?
The Facts
Without a doubt, the United States has the most powerful military in the world, in part because it is the world’s only global power with global responsibilities. The Web site Globalfirepower.com ranks countries based on 45 factors, and the United States tops many of the charts. Here’s one small statistic: The United States had 11 aircraft carriers, as of the end of last year; no other country had more than two. The United Kingdom even is mothballing its single aircraft carrier.
The fine print in Obama’s ‘Promises Kept’ ad
One of the key issues in any president’s reelection campaign is whether he has kept his promises. So a web video released this week by the Obama campaign, in conjunction with the Iowa caucuses, can be seen as an example of the White House laying the groundwork for making the case that the president has kept his promises.
The video shows Obama making his victory speech four years ago in Iowa, and then interjects it with headlines showing how the president has met his pledge. The overall result is slick, but a careful viewer will note that the words that follow in the headlines do not always quite match up with the president’s words.
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!
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.
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.
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.
White House budget spin on the House GOP payroll tax bill
(AP)
“Their proposal ... makes harmful cuts to things like education, that strengthen middle-class security. Their plan seeks to put the burden on working families, while giving a free pass to the wealthiest and big corporations, by protecting their loopholes and subsidies.”
--White House spokesman Jay Carney, Dec. 9, 2011
“What I understand is that in the Republican proposal you're talking about, they didn't spell out where the cuts would come. And I get that they were trying to hide the fact that this would be the result. … The result would be cuts in nondefense discretionary programs, education and clean energy, veterans programs. That's the effect of their proposal.”
--Carney, Dec. 12, 2011
There are few areas more confusing than the federal budget. In many ways, it is a funhouse mirror of numbers, allowing politicians to make claims that are designed to mislead and confuse voters.
The above quotes by White House spokesman Jay Carney provide a case study of this technique.
On Friday, reading from a prepared statement, he accused the House Republicans of making “harmful cuts” to education in order to fund their version of an extension of the payroll tax cut. On Monday, he said that “they didn’t spell out where the cuts would come from.” But, he still insisted the result of their plan would be cuts in “education and clean energy, veterans programs.”
It sounds pretty dreadful. Is it true?
The Facts
The House Republican bill to extend the payroll tax for one year has a number of elements that concern the White House, but let’s keep the focus on the spending cuts. The best source for this information is the Congressional Budget Office estimate of the legislation, since the CBO is the nonpartisan scorekeeper.
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.)
Obama’s Kansas speech: some suspect facts
“I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century.”
-- President Obama, Dec. 6, 2011
Channeling his inner Teddy Roosevelt, President Obama on Tuesday gave a feisty speech in Osawatomie, Kan., that sought to rebut Republican arguments that he is waging class warfare. He argued that the issue was one of fairness for the broad middle class, drawing repeated contrasts to the presidency of George W. Bush.
We’ll leave the politics to others, but how accurate were some of his facts?
“I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class: things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.”
Inserting the words “for the wealthy” was interesting phrasing by the president, since he suggests these tax cuts were intended to benefit only the rich.
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”
How much time is Obama spending on his reelection campaign?
(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Question: “How much time is he focused on the campaign on a given day?”
White House spokesman Jay Carney: “On a given day? I can’t do it on a given day. I would say on a given week about 5 percent of his time.”
--White House press briefing, Nov. 29, 2011President Obama obviously is seeking to be re-elected. But the question raised at one of this week’s news briefings is an interesting one: How much time is he spending on getting re-elected? He has a pretty important day job right now, after all.
We asked a White House official for an explanation of how Carney derived his estimate, and were told it was based on Carney’s knowledge of the president’s schedule. That did not seem like a particularly rigorous accounting (though Carney did not try to claim it was). So we decided to investigate further.
The Facts
The precise details of how the president spends his day are a bit fuzzy, but the White House does release a daily schedule which the Washington Post’s POTUS tracker has meticulously cataloged, day in and day out. The tracker lists every event the White House makes public. Excluding events that turn up as “departing,” “leaving” and “no public events scheduled,” we discover that as of Dec. 1, the president has held 1,134 events this year. (We kept our focus on just this year because that was the context of the question asked of Carney.)
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.
Steven Chu’s Solyndra testimony: Misleading jobs stats and missing context
(Evan Vucci/AP)
“Through the loan programs, the Energy Department is supporting 38 clean energy projects that are expected to employ more than 60,000 Americans, generate enough clean electricity to power nearly 3 million homes and displace more than 300 million gallons of gasoline annually.”
— Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Nov. 17, 2011, in testimony on Capitol Hill
“When the bottom of a market falls out and the price of solar decreases by 70 percent in two and a half years, that was totally unexpected, not only by us — if you look at the range of predictions that were being made by financial analysts from the last quarter of 2008, 2009, they — the average — there are some outliers. But the average of those were not expecting these prices to plummet. And so fundamentally this company [Solyndra] and several others got caught in a very, very bad tsunami, if you will.”
— Chu, Nov. 17
In his defense of the Energy Department’s handling of the $535 million loan guarantee to the now bankrupt Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu made some bold claims about the overall effectiveness of the department’s clean-energy loan programs. He also made the case that the collapse in solar panel prices — which helped sink Solyndra — was “totally unexpected” by most financial analysts at the time when the department went forward with the loan in 2009.
There are a number of issues in dispute concerning Solyndra, but these two statements by Chu appear to be the most ripe for a fact check because they get to the heart of the issue about whether the clean-energy program is creating many jobs and whether the Energy Department should have seen the red flags concerning the Solyndra investment.
The Facts
We always warn readers to be wary of claims about the number of jobs created by some government, congressional or corporate initiative. These are almost always suspect and based on dubious assumptions. (Chu, we should note, carefully used the word “employ” instead of “create.”)
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