The Fact Checker: Congress
Four Pinocchios for Harry Reid’s claim about Mitt Romney’s taxes
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
“The word's out that he [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years.”
— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Aug. 2, 2012
Reid has generated a lot of controversy with his claim that presumptive GOP nominee did not pay any taxes for 10 years. He originally told the Huffington Post that a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this. Then, he told reporters in Nevada that “I have had a number of people tell me that.”
Reid has refused to identify his source (or sources). Romney and his campaign aides have emphatically denied the charge but Reid has stood firm. “I don't think the burden should be on me,” he said. “The burden should be on him. He's the one I've alleged has not paid any taxes.”
This whole exchange poses a fact-checking conundrum. Generally, we maintain that the person or the campaign making the charge must back it up. Reid has refused to provide any evidence, except for the (unproven) fact that someone called him up and told him something that may be true — or simply a rumor.
But we can still examine how credible this rumor might be.
The Facts
Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns, citing a precedent that is not very credible; he earned three Pinocchios for that claim. Most presidential candidates in recent years have released more than two years of returns, so Romney may be paying a political price for failing to release more.
A GOP ‘assault’ on women’s health?
(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“In order to pay for it, [House Republicans] are going to make an assault on women’s health, make another assault on women’s health, continue our assault on women’s health and pay for this with prevention initiatives that are in effect right now for childhood immunization; for screening for breast cancer, for cervical cancer; and for initiatives to reduce birth defects – a large part of what the Center for Disease Control does in terms of prevention.”
--House Minority Leader Nancy Perlosi (D-Calif.), April 26, 2012
“I’ll guarantee you that they’ve not spent a dime out of this fund dealing with anything to do with women’s health.”
--House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), April 30, 2012
This is why Americans hate politics. How can two serious, major-league politicians have such a vehement disagreement over even basic facts?
At dispute is how to provide funding that would prevent a jump in the interest rates for subsidized loans made by the federal government to undergraduate college students. The House of Representatives voted last week to keep the rate from doubling, but funded it by eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund that is part of President Obama’s health care law. (The House measure has little chance in the Senate controlled by Democrats.)
There is a bit of budget gamesmanship going on here, as well as a relentless messaging campaign by the Democrats. Just look at some of these quotes:
--“The only way they can find to pay for it is to attack women’s health and children’s health” (Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts).
--“Under the cover of being for student loans, they now are attacking women’s health in the most cynical fashion.” (Rep. George Miller of California.)
--“The way to pay for this assistance for students is not to shut down health for the women of this country.” (Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey).
--“House Republicans have demonstrated their complete disregard and contempt for women’s health.” (Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois)
We are not going to get into an argument about whether the preventive health fund is a good or bad thing — Democrats say it provides steady funding for preventive health, Republicans say it is a “slush fund” to get around regular appropriations — but we do think it would be useful to examine how much money in this fund goes to women’s health programs.
The Facts
First of all, it makes a difference whether you look at the current fiscal year (2012) or proposals for the next fiscal year (2013). In the current fiscal year, there is very little money specifically allocated to women’s health programs.
Four Pinocchios: small business tax cut will ‘create 100,000 jobs a year’ (Part 2 on claims about the bill)
(Alex Wong, Getty Images)
“According to a study, the small business tax cut act will help create more than 100,000 new jobs a year once fully in place.”
“Mr. Speaker, while we continue to work toward tax reform that broadens the base, brings down the rates for everybody, and gets rid of loopholes, Washington assumes the role of picking winners and losers. We need to take incremental steps to give job creators tax relief right away. This Small Business Tax Cut Act is a step in that right direction.”
— House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), arguing in support of the Small Business Tax Cut Act during a House floor debate, April 19, 2012
In a previous column, we awarded three Pinocchios to Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) for saying that the “rich and famous” would receive the lion’s share of the savings from the Small Business Tax Cut Act, which would reduce taxes by 20 percent for firms with fewer than 500 employees. Now it’s time to take a look at a claim from Rep. Cantor, who sponsored the bill.
From the way Cantor described it, this policy would provide a boost to jobs numbers every year. Let’s examine that claim in detail.
(Readers can listen to this mp3 from C-SPAN Radio to hear Cantor’s comments, which begin at about the 3:30 mark.)
The Facts
We’re always suspicious when someone cites “a study” without providing attribution. Cantor’s office backed up the congressman’s claim by pointing to an analysis by Fiscal Associates, the same group that analyzed former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s “999” tax proposal and said it would be revenue-neutral.
Claims about the small-business tax cut (Part 1)
(Jim Watson: AFP/Getty Images)
“When you hear small business, what comes up in your mind first? The corner drug store, the tech troubleshooting start-up, my daughter’s martial arts instructor. How about Donald Trump — Trump Sales and Leasing — or Paris Hilton Entertainment? What about Larry Flynt Publications? Not that any of these latter companies have volunteered to show me their tax returns, but by all accounts, these are the businesses that will devour the lion’s share of the tax breaks in this legislation. Mr. Speaker, three percent of the businesses in America will get 56 percent of the tax breaks provided. The rich and famous will get most of the money. 125,000 millionaires in America will get 58,000 in tax breaks within their first year of this tax break.”
— Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) arguing against the Small Business Tax Cut Act during a House floor debate, April 19, 2012
The Small Business Tax Cut Act would provide a 20-percent tax deduction for companies with fewer than 500 employees. The House passed the measure by a vote of 235-173, and it’s up to the Democrat-controlled Senate now to decide whether the legislation should go to the president’s desk.
Rep. Becerra argued that the “lion’s share” of the $40 billion in tax savings will go to the rich and famous, and he cited some rather infamous people as examples of who would benefit. We haven’t seen the tax receipts for those individuals or their companies, but it’s safe to assume that at least some of their stripe could fit into the federal government’s small-business category and qualify for the tax cut. (Listen to Becerra’s comments with this mp3 from C-SPAN Radio, starting at about the 6:42 mark.)
Still, we wondered how the congressman came up with the notion that the rich and famous would receive the greatest benefit, as though highly profitable landscaping businesses, restaurant owners, construction companies and the like wouldn’t rack up nearly as much in savings.
Since House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sponsored the bill, we will examine his comments in a follow-up column.
The Facts
Becerra’s staff pointed us to a report from Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation to prove that the representative’s numbers were correct. The analysis shows that he is right about 125,000 firms making more than $1 million receiving $58,000 in tax breaks during the first year. But let’s look at his assertion that “three percent of the businesses in America will get 56 percent” of the overall savings. (See page 3 of the study.)
Hyping stats about the ‘Buffett Rule’
“Last year, there were 7,000 millionaires who didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes. Instead, ordinary Americans footed the bill — and that’s not fair.”
— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), April 16, 2012
Before the Senate failed to advance to a vote on the so-called Buffett Rule, Reid made the case for the bill, saying it concerned “the basic fairness of our country’s tax system.” The proposal — named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary — would impose a surcharge on people with gross adjusted income over $1 million, eventually reaching 30 percent.
As we have noted, the problem is more symbolic than real. Most very wealthy people pay a good chuck of their income in taxes. Reid in his statement pointed to “7,000 millionaires” who paid no federal income taxes, which is not very much out of the nearly 250,000 taxpayers who file income taxes with adjusted gross income of $1 million or more.
Still, even that “7,000” figure seemed fishy to us.
The Facts
The White House, in its briefing paper on the Buffett Rule, includes this statement: “Of these millionaires, over 22,000 families paid less than 15 percent of income in Federal income and employee payroll taxes — and 1,470 managed to pay no federal income taxes on their million-plus-dollar incomes, according to the IRS.”
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 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:
Is the health care law already running a deficit?
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.): “The original estimate for deficit reduction in the first 10 years was $143 billion, correct?”
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “Yes–”
Johnson: “So now we, we’ve reduced that $143 billion by $86 billion – by not getting revenue from the CLASS Act – and now $111 billion because we’ve increased the mandatory costs of the exchanges, correct?”
Sebelius: “I’m assuming the numbers are correct. I’m sorry I don’t have them.”
Johnson: “So, when you add those together, that’s $197 billion added to the first 10-year cost estimate of Obamacare, so now we are instead of saving $143 billion, we are adding $54 billion to our deficit, correct?”
Sebelius: “Sir, I –”
Johnson: “We’ll submit that to the record. But, that’s basically true. So instead of saving $143 billion, by this administration’s own figures and budget, we’re now adding $54 billion to our deficit in the first 10 years.”
— Exchange during congressional hearing, March 7, 2012
A reader asked us to fact-check these claims by Sen. Johnson, a trained accountant who won election in part on clever ads that played up his experience in the real world of budget numbers. (See ad at bottom of the column.)
Secretary Sebelius certainly appears to be a bit clueless as Johnson tosses a bunch of numbers at her, clearly trying to show that the Obama health care law is now projected to show a deficit. But he gets his own facts and figures mixed up, as we will demonstrate.
To the senator’s credit, he called us directly to talk through these numbers and conceded that some may not add up.
“I am not hung up in the math here,” he said, saying that his larger point is that “previous estimates of entitlements have been wildly underestimated.” He cited, as an example, a McKinsey Quarterly study concluding that the Congressional Budget Office vastly underestimated how many employers will stop offering insurance as a result of the health care law, which has the potential to increase the cost of the law.
“It is the large numbers, not the small numbers” that are important, Johnson said, and it “is my job to press administration officials” for more information. He noted that Sebelius said she assumed the numbers he used were correct. (Note to Secretary Sebelius: Don’t assume the numbers are correct when you aren’t really sure.)
The Facts
When the health care law was passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would reduce the deficit by $143 billion over ten years. That number has been controversial ever since the estimate was released, and we certainly acknowledge it should be accepted with a large caveat. Such ten-year figures are subject to change, and depend greatly on assumptions that may or may not be sound.
Eric Cantor’s First Amendment arguments against contraception mandate
(Mark Wilson — Getty Images)
“What we have here is a rule by this president and this administration that goes really after our First Amendment rights to the practice of our religion. As a member of minority faith in this country, obviously the ability to practice my religion is very important to me as it is for everyone in this country.”
— House Majority Leader Eric Cantor during an interview on Fox News, Feb. 10, 2012
“It is about the administration and the president saying to the Catholic Church that we know what your faith holds, and you have to abide by that. It would be like saying to the — those of us in the Jewish faith that we know what the laws of kashrut, being kosher, means, and we’re going to tell you what that means. That’s not who we are in this country. That’s what the rule is about, and that’s why it has no place in American politics.”
— Cantor during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” March 4, 2012
Members of both political parties are trying to convince voters that their rights are at stake with the federal contraceptive mandate, which requires employers or their insurance companies to cover birth control costs with no out-of-pocket charges for the insured.
Last week, we addressed some over-the-top rhetoric from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who said the GOP has tried to turn back the clock on women’s rights by opposing the new health regulation. Now we’ll examine recent comments by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who claims the mandate represents a government incursion into the free exercise of religion, and that it amounts to meddling in religious doctrine.
We originally thought Cantor’s remarks could be put to the Pinocchio test. After much consulting with experts, however, we determined that the congressman stated opinion rather than asserting fact. As such, we can’t apply our standard rating scale to his remarks. Instead, we’ll use this opportunity to provide readers with more insight into this complex issue.
We realize some readers might say that we should have treated Schumer’s observations the same way, but Cantor’s remarks are different. His logic could be used as the basis for a legal argument against the contraception mandate, whereas Schumer’s comments represented severe exaggerations.
The Facts
Religious institutions are exclusively and fully exempt from the contraception mandate. The Obama administration last month amended the policy so that church-affiliated groups — Catholic hospitals and schools, for instance — won’t have to contribute toward birth control coverage. Instead, their insurers have to foot the bill on their own.
A whopper ad for John Boehner’s GOP opponent
We’ve heard a lot of arguments in recent weeks that certain forms of contraception — especially emergency contraception — cause abortion, and that the government shouldn’t force church-affiliated employers to provide them for workers. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich claims the mainstream media doesn’t want to address this issue, even though the Fact Checker column alone has touched on that topic in several recent columns.
Putting aside any questions about adequate media coverage, David Lewis’s ad features some of the strongest imagery and language we’ve seen a candidate use to suggest that the Obama administration’s contraception mandate is immoral. The video shows photos of what Lewis claims to be aborted fetuses, while accusing President Obama of forcing religious organizations to pay for drugs that murder the unborn.
We examined how emergency contraception works to determine whether the language and visuals in this ad were accurate. As usual, we’re not going to wade into the debate over exactly when life begins. As you’ll see, that’s not even necessary to determine whether Lewis’s ad deserves Pinocchios.
The Facts
David Lewis is a 26-year-old full-time activist and self-described “devout Christian” from suburban Cincinnati who challenged Ohio’s John Boehner and lost in the Republican primary. Lewis claims the House speaker isn’t living up to his antiabortion words, since he has voted for spending bills that provided funding for Planned Parenthood. The political newcomer lost Tuesday with just 16 percent of the vote.
Blunt Amendment: Schumer’s over-the-top rhetoric
(Win McNamee - GETTY IMAGES)
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York made these remarks while speaking against the Blunt Amendment, a Senate proposal that would have undermined President Obama’s controversial mandate requiring employers or their insurance companies to cover the cost of contraceptives, as well as other preventive health services. Lawmakers effectively killed the Blunt measure on Thursday by a vote of 51-48.
Republicans have argued that the contraception-coverage rule violates the religious liberty of faith-based organizations that oppose birth control. Democrats contend that the real issue is women’s health. Both sides are trying to seize control of the debate and convince voters that their rights are in jeopardy.
We realize this is a controversial issue, with emotions running high on both sides, and we take no stand on it. But we were curious if Schumer stretched the truth with his remarks. Did the Senate just save women from a return to the 19th century? Would the measure truly ban contraception coverage when employers object to it?
The Facts
The mandate in question comes from the 2010 health care reform law, which required employers to provide coverage of certain preventive health services without charging the insured. Churches have been exempt from the provision, but some religious leaders still object to it on grounds that church-affiliated institutions — such as Catholic hospitals — will have to pay for health services that violated their principles.
Will the Keystone XL pipeline lower gasoline prices?
(Gene J. Puskar/AP)
“The [Keystone XL] pipeline will bring secure energy to America, support the creation of thousands of jobs, and help bring down prices at the pump.”
--Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Feb. 16, 2012
We have been looking this week at various claims made by politicians on both sides of the aisle about energy prices. This comment by Rep. Upton was made after the House of Representatives passed a bill requiring swift approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s Alberta province to the Gulf Coast. (The Obama administration has claimed it needs more time to study the possible environmental impact.)
We had previously dinged both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for making outlandish claims about the number of jobs that would be created by the pipeline, but we have no dispute with Upton’s “thousands of jobs.” That’s the right way to frame it.
But we are interested in his assertion that Keystone “will…help bring down prices at the pump.” Is this correct?
The Facts
First of all, even if the Keystone XL pipeline were suddenly approved, it would not be completed until at least 2014, so building it would have no impact on gasoline prices this summer, predicted to be near record highs. We could not find any experts, even those referred to us by Upton’s staff, to say that the prospect of the pipeline being built in the future would somehow impact the price of gasoline today.
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.
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.
Nancy Pelosi’s misfire on job and tax-cut claims
(Alex Wong/GETTY IMAGES)
“The payroll tax cut that the president proposed would put $1,500 in the pockets of 160 million Americans. The unemployment insurance extension is not only good for individuals, it has macroeconomic impacts. As the Macroeconomic Advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Dec. 15, 2011
With the days ticking toward the end of the year, Democrats and Republicans have been battling over the best way to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed.
In a news conference Thursday, appearing to look at notes, Pelosi laid out her case for swift action. How well did she make it?
The Facts
Pelosi cited two key figures — how much money the tax cut would bring to working Americans and how many jobs would be created from extending unemployment insurance. She managed to mangle both.
Keystone pipeline jobs claims: a bipartisan fumble
(Alex Wong/GETTY IMAGES)
“The Keystone energy project would create tens of thousands of American jobs.”
— House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Dec. 10, 2011
“At a time when many are without work, it is time that we come together in a bipartisan way to pass this legislation which will create tens of thousands of new jobs.”
— Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Dec. 12, 2011
“The privately financed Keystone XL pipeline project is projected to create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in construction and manufacturing.”
— Mark H. Ayers, president of the building and construction trade department, AFL-CIO, Nov. 3, 2011
"My administration will stand behind the Keystone pipeline, creating more than 100,000 American jobs while reducing our dependence on overseas imports."
— Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman (R), Nov. 1, 2011
There is bipartisan consensus: The Keystone XL pipeline means jobs, jobs, jobs.
The Obama administration last month announced that it was taking more time to consider how to balance environmental concerns and economic issues in deciding whether to approve the pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s Alberta province to the Gulf Coast. (Skeptics would suggest the White House wanted to avoid angering two key allies during an election year.)
Ever since, advocates of the pipeline have pressed the case that thousands of shovel-ready jobs are being delayed by the administration’s inaction, with House Republicans including a shortened timeline for a permit in legislation extending the payroll tax cut.
We’ve repeatedly warned that many “job creation” statistics are often guesstimates of estimates, and should be viewed skeptically. By some accounts, the number of jobs that would be created could be as many as 150,000. But the State Department in August put the number of construction jobs at just 5,000 to 6,000.
The Facts
TransCanada Corp., which is pushing to build the pipeline, claims that Keystone XL “was poised to put 20,000 Americans to work to construct the pipeline.” The company also cites another figure — 118,000 spin-off jobs Keystone XL would create through increased business for local restaurants, hotels and suppliers — that comes from a study commissioned by the company. The study even suggested that under “normal” oil price assumptions, the number of permanent jobs would top 250,000.
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.
Grover Norquist: a misleading accounting of recent history
(Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)
“Raising taxes slows the economy. Raising taxes kills jobs. Government spending does not create jobs. The idea that if you take a dollar out of the economy from somebody who earned it, either through debt or through taxes, and give it to somebody who is politically connected, that there are more dollars around? That if you stand on one side of the lake and put a bucket into the lake and walk around to the other side in front of the TV cameras, pour the bucket back into the lake and announce you’re stimulating the lake to great depths. We just wasted $800 billion on stimulus spending that added to debt that killed jobs. There are fewer jobs than before.”
— Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, on “Meet the Press,” Nov. 27, 2011
“In 1982, the Democrats said, ‘Gee, if you let us raise taxes, we’ll cut spending $3 for every $1 of tax increase.’ Taxes were raised. Spending didn’t go down, spending went up. The same thing happened in 1990, although George Bush -- Herbert Walker Bush -- was promised $2 in phony spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. Taxes went up, spending actually increased. It wasn’t cut. Twice the Democrats have said let’s raise taxes and cut spending; twice taxes were increased, spending was not reduced at all.”
— Norquist, later in the same program
“They weren’t real reductions in rates. The 2003 rate reductions you had on cap gains and others -- that gave you four years of strong economic growth that lasted until the Democrats won the House and Senate, and you knew those tax cuts were going away.”
— Norquist, in the same program
Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has been in the news lately because Democrats charge (without much evidence) that he is single-handedly responsible for the collapse of the debt supercommittee because Republicans are afraid of violating his no-new-taxes pledge.
We don’t fact check political philosophies, but Norquist’s appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday gives us an opportunity to look at some of the facts that he uses to make his case. As can be seen from the excerpts of the interview above, Norquist is unabashedly partisan — in his view, economic growth literally ends the day Democrats win power in Congress. That already begins to stretch the bounds of economic logic, but what about some of his other assertions?
The Facts
A key part of Norquist’s case is that government spending is always bad and that, despite repeated promises of cuts by Democrats, it always goes up. We take no position on his economic argument about spending, but the notion that spending has always gone up only makes sense if you look only at raw dollar spending — which does not make much sense at all.
The debt supercommittee: A guide to the rhetoric
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
"Despite our inability to bridge the committee's significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation's fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve. We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee’s work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.”
— Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), joint statement, Nov. 21, 2011
To no one’s surprise, the debt “supercommittee” on Monday officially gave up in its efforts to forge a bipartisan agreement. The process was magically designed to almost certainly fail, given the vast divide between the two parties on issues such as taxes and entitlement programs. In theory, Congress is now obligated to go forward with $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending, but the cuts do not take effect until January 2013 — meaning Congress gets time to adjust the numbers.
Given all of the fingerpointing, here is a guide to some of the Pinocchio-laden rhetoric.
“Simpson-Bowles worked for thousands of hours, bipartisan, Republican, Democrat, people outside of the Senate and elected politics. They came out and said in order to do a deal, you need $4 trillion and you need 2 trillion [dollars] of it as revenue.”
— Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), on Meet The Press, Nov. 20, 2011
Kerry is referring to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was co-headed by Alan Simpson, a former GOP senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
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