The Fact Checker: Issues
Romney’s economic scorecard: Promising success, comparing records
Presidential Accountability Scorecard
(ROMNEY CAMPAIGN)
“My Plan for a Stronger Middle Class will get our economy moving again, and Americans can use this scorecard to hold me accountable.”
— From the Mitt Romney campaign Web site
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week unveiled an “accountability scorecard” that invites voters to track his performance on the economy if he defeats President Obama in November. A quote on the sheet reminds potential scorekeepers that the president predicted that his administration would be “a one-term proposition” if his policies didn’t turn the economy around in three years.
The scorecard outlines Romney’s goals for future measurements, but it also compares Obama’s presidency with Romney’s term as governor of Massachusetts, using simple up and down arrows to signify the two men’s respective records on various economic indicators: jobs, unemployment, home prices, budget deficits and family income.
For what it’s worth, Romney’s campaign first presented its scorecard after the Tax Policy Center released a report saying that the net effect of the GOP candidate’s tax proposals would be a higher burden for the middle class. We deemed that study to be fair after examining it for a column that covered an Obama campaign ad.
Romney also unveiled a new five-point “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class” that essentially repackages his older and relatively detail-deficient proposals for boosting the sluggish economy. His points include trimming the deficit, expanding trade, improving education and job-training programs, achieving energy independence and promoting small-business growth — pretty standard campaign fare.
As for the scorecard, let’s go through it to determine whether Romney’s simple arrows paint an accurate picture of the candidates’ records.
The Facts
Jobs and Unemployment
Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics shows that Massachusetts added 50,000 jobs during Romney’s tenure in office. But that number represents only 1.5 percent growth for the Bay State, compared to a higher 5 percent increase for the nation as a whole during the same period. (We used seasonally adjusted data for our comparisons).
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 2: the Romney campaign’s attacks on current policy
(Bill Roth — Associated Press)
“President Obama’s promise to ‘easily’ create 5 million green energy jobs has become a particularly depressing punch line amidst the endless disappointments of the last four years. The president spent $90 billion in taxpayer stimulus dollars, some of which went to his donors and political allies or was sent to create jobs overseas instead of here in America. Now we have American wind and solar energy sectors that combine to produce only one percent of our energy — and our wind industry has actually lost 10,000 jobs.”
— Remarks from Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams, July 31, 2012
Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams made these remarks last week as he responded to criticism of the campaign’s newly stated opposition to tax breaks for the wind-energy industry. We covered a claim from President Obama’s campaign in a previous column, and now it’s time to examine this follow-up from Romney’s team.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) authored the original tax credit in 1992, and he is seeking an extension for it. He expressed disbelief over the Romney campaign’s statement, telling reporters on Tuesday that he would reach out to the former governor’s campaign for answers.
“I have got to get to the bottom of what they are doing,” Grassley said, “because I think people that didn’t know what they were doing said it, because [Romney] was over in Poland, he obviously wasn’t thinking about wind energy.”
The Romney campaign showed no signs of reversing its position. Instead, Williams described Obama’s green-energy promises as a joke, claiming that success of the federal investments had been minimal and that much of the funding went to the president’s allies. He added that the wind-energy sector lost 10,000 jobs while the wind and solar industries have produced only 1 percent of America’s electricity.
Let’s examine Williams’s claims to find out how much truth they contain.
The Facts
In terms of Obama promising 5 million green-energy jobs, Williams was referring to an October 2008 debate in which then-Sen. Obama talked about climate change as one of the biggest challenges of our time. Here’s what the Democratic nominee said:
“It’s absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it’s an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.”
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.
Is Obama challenging voting privileges of Ohio military members?
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage … If I’m entrusted to be the commander in chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”
-- Facebook message from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Aug. 4, 2012
“In their lawsuit, the Obama campaign and the DNC argue it is ‘arbitrary’ and unconstitutional to provide three extra days of early, in-person voting to military voters and their families. At least 20 times in their legal papers, they argue that there is no good reason to give special flexibility to military voters – and that this policy adopted by the Ohio legislature is so wrong it is unconstitutional.”
-- Memo from Katie Biber, general counsel for the Romney campaign, Aug. 5, 2012
These statements concern a lawsuit that Democrats filed against Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general to stop a new law that pushes the state’s early voting deadline back by three days for everyone except military personnel and their families. The measure, which was passed by a Republican-controlled legislature in 2011, changed a previously uniform deadline for all residents of the Buckeye State.
Ohio is a closely contested battleground state where the presidential candidates need every vote they can get to win the 2012 election. The state went to Barack Obama in 2008, with more than 1.4 million Ohio voters casting their ballots early, according to the United States Election Project of George Mason University.
Right-wing bloggers have weighed in on the Democratic lawsuit, with Breitbart saying that the president was seeking to “restrict [service members’] ability to vote in the upcoming election.” The Romney campaign fed that notion with its recent comments.
Plaintiffs in this case include Obama’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Ohio Democratic Party. Meanwhile, a group of 15 fraternal military organizations filed a motion last week seeking to add themselves to the list of defendants officially fighting the suit.
We read the court documents for this case and researched Ohio’s new voting law to determine whether Romney and his campaign’s general counsel hit the mark with their comments. Does the Democratic lawsuit really try to undermine the voting rights of service members, arguing, as Biber contends, that “there is no good reason to give special flexibility to military voters – and that this policy adopted by the Ohio legislature is so wrong it is unconstitutional”?
The Facts
Ohio changed its voting laws after the 2004 election, allowing voters to cast early ballots until the Monday before Election Day — mainly to prevent long lines at polling stations. Obama seems to have benefitted from this during his 2008 presidential run, as many African-American churches drove congregants to the polls after Sunday services.
Four Pinocchios for Harry Reid’s claim about Mitt Romney’s taxes
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
“The word's out that he [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years.”
— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Aug. 2, 2012
Reid has generated a lot of controversy with his claim that presumptive GOP nominee did not pay any taxes for 10 years. He originally told the Huffington Post that a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this. Then, he told reporters in Nevada that “I have had a number of people tell me that.”
Reid has refused to identify his source (or sources). Romney and his campaign aides have emphatically denied the charge but Reid has stood firm. “I don't think the burden should be on me,” he said. “The burden should be on him. He's the one I've alleged has not paid any taxes.”
This whole exchange poses a fact-checking conundrum. Generally, we maintain that the person or the campaign making the charge must back it up. Reid has refused to provide any evidence, except for the (unproven) fact that someone called him up and told him something that may be true — or simply a rumor.
But we can still examine how credible this rumor might be.
The Facts
Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns, citing a precedent that is not very credible; he earned three Pinocchios for that claim. Most presidential candidates in recent years have released more than two years of returns, so Romney may be paying a political price for failing to release more.
Four Pinocchios: Giuliani’s anti-Obama remarks in Florida
(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
“Remember Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber asked [then-Sen. Barack Obama]: ‘Would you raise taxes even if it didn’t bring any more money to the government? Like the capital gains tax. If you raise the capital gains tax — the government did this once 20 years ago — if you raise the capital gains tax, you actually make less money for the government, because people stop doing investments, or they’ll do investments overseas.’ He [Obama] said, ‘Well I would do it anyway because it’s only fair.’ ”
— Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani during a pro-Mitt Romney speech at the Florida GOP headquarters in Tampa, July 26, 2012
“I don’t think the president of the United States has any idea how much damage he does when he does these ad hominem attacks on business. I mean, he basically destroyed Las Vegas by saying, ‘shouldn’t have junkets to Las Vegas.’ He put a lot of poor people out of work. All of a sudden, conventions are down 20, 30, 40, 50 percent.”
— Giuliani during private meeting with reporters after pro-Romney speech, July 26, 2012
Rudy Giuliani made these comments while stumping for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney at Florida’s Republican headquarters in Tampa last week. The former New York City mayor focused largely on the economy, telling the crowd that they could help spark an economic recovery by electing Romney.
Giuliani described President Obama as “anti-business” and “anti-profit,” specifically when it comes to taxes and regulations. He harped on the president for suggesting business owners don’t build successful companies without help from others, such as the government, and he mentioned an old exchange between then-candidate Obama and “Joe the Plumber,” an aspiring business owner the president met on the 2008 campaign trail.
During a private meeting with reporters, Giuliani brought up another example of Obama’s supposed hostility toward business, including the president’s 2009 and 2010 remarks about Las Vegas.
Let’s examine the exchange with Joe the Plumber and find out what’s happened with Las Vegas in recent years to determine whether Giuliani’s comments were accurate.
The Facts
Joe the Plumber
Joe the Plumber is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, an Ohio resident who asked then-Sen. Obama during a 2008 campaign stop to explain his tax policy and how it would affect him as an aspiring small-business owner. The Tampa Bay Times has provided a full transcript of the exchange, which is also posted on You Tube.
Romney’s pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
“A Republican administration will ensure that the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem by May 1999.”
— Republican Party platform of 1996
“Immediately upon taking office, the next Republican president will begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem.”
— Republican Party platform of 2000
“Republicans continue to support moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem.”
— Republican Party platform of 2004
“We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”
— Republican Party platform of 2008
“My understanding is the policy of our nation has been a desire to move our embassy ultimately to the capital. That is something which I would agree with. But I would only want to do so and to select the timing in accordance with the government of Israel.”
— Mitt Romney, interview with CNN, July 29, 2012
Like Lucy and the football, the pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is a campaign promise that is never fulfilled. But once again it is in the news, particularly after White House spokesman Jay Carney last week could not answer whether Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, so let’s take a closer look at this issue.
The Facts
The Israeli government is located in Jerusalem, including the prime minister’s office and parliament, and yet all but two countries have chosen to locate their embassies outside of Jerusalem, most commonly in Tel Aviv. The United Nations also does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
An 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.
Fact checking the presidential candidates
For interested readers, above is a video of a recent speech given by Glenn Kessler on fact checking the statements of President Obama, former governor Mitt Romney and their allies during this presidential season. In the June speech before the National Capital Area Skeptics, Kessler describes the Pinocchio ranking system, explains how he evaluates various claims and provides commentary on various television advertisements that he shows to the audience. He also answers questions — some skeptical — from the audience.
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.
‘Obamacare’ tax hikes vs. tax breaks: Which is greater?
(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
“The Supreme Court looked at what the structure of the law was, and they saw that 1 percent of the people would be paying this charge if they chose not to avail themselves of health insurance. But more middle-class people are going to get a tax cut in this law. There’s a tax cut of $4,000 for people who need help paying for health insurance.”
— White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on ABC’s “This Week,” July 1, 2012
Republicans have seized on the Supreme Court’s health-law ruling to blast the Affordable Care Act as a giant tax on the middle class. Rush Limbaugh went so far as to call it the “biggest tax increase in the history of the world,” a preposterous claim we debunked in a previous column.
On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew refused to acknowledge that the individual mandate represents a tax, even though the majority of the Supreme Court justices defined it as such. He called the enforcement measure a “charge” that would apply only to a small fraction of the population, and that “more middle-class people are going to get a tax cut.”
Let’s look at the numbers to determine whether tax breaks or tax hikes — including the mandate — will be greater under “Obamacare.” We’ll focus on the number of people affected by both aspects of the law, since that’s what Lew talked about. But we’ll also review the monetary totals, just for good measure.
The Facts
Before diving into the numbers, let’s remember why both campaigns need to play the semantics game: the“penalty-tax” can make either one of candidates look bad.
The first six months of 2012: An accounting
Every six months, we provide an accounting of The Fact Checker ratings.
We do this in response to persistent questions from readers: Do you rate more Republicans than Democrats? (Or vice versa). Which party gets the most Pinocchios? Our Pinocchio Tracker provide a daily update of the ratings of the presidential candidates, but not of the political parties.
We frankly have no idea until we sit down and do some calculations. Many of the columns are generated by what’s in the news. (Hence, in March, there were lots of columns about political hot air concerning rising gas prices.) We do not consciously choose to focus on one party or another, believing it will all even out in the end.
While some readers in both parties are convinced we are either a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican, depending on who we are dinging that day, the truth is that we pay little attention to party affiliation when evaluating a political statement. We have learned through long experience that both parties will twist the facts if they believe it will advance their political interests.
Still, it is clear that the average Pinocchio ratings this period have tended to be higher for Republicans than Democrats. We suspect it is because of the hard-fought primary battle on the Republican side, when many of our columns were about claims that Republicans made about each other. (Remember Newt Gingrich’s “King of Bain”? That was probably worse than anything the Obama campaign has thrown at Mitt Romney yet.)
The month of January, for instance, had 13 columns that resulted in Pinocchio ratings about Republican statements, compared to just four for Democrats—and that’s not even counting the debate round-ups. Things have evened out in recent months, with June featuring 11 Pinocchio-rated statements by Democrats and 10 by Republicans. Not all of our columns result in Pinocchio ratings, so those are not counted.
4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge
(mittromney.com)
“Promise: President Obama promised to lower annual health insurance premiums by $2,500…Result: Annual health insurance premiums have increased by $2,393....Gap: health premium costs are $4,893 higher per family than President Obama promised.”
— new Facebook/Twitter post by the Romney campaign
Promises made during the heat of an election campaign sometimes come back to haunt politicians.
The campaign of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is trying to nail President Obama for making an iffy promise during the 2008 campaign — that premiums will be $2,500 lower under his health care plan. Instead, the Romney campaign argues in an effort to create a viral Facebook post, the swing has gone $4,893 the other way.
The Romney graphic is false on several levels, though Obama certainly left himself open to scrutiny with imprecise language in the 2008 campaign. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
The Romney campaign cites a statement from a 2007 speech by Obama, but it’s a pledge that was repeated often: “When I am president, we will have universal health care in this country by the end of my first term in office. It's a plan that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year.”
Tim Pawlenty’s losing bet: Obama’s had no entitlement proposals
“We have in the White House now the president of the United States, the leader of our nation, who has not put out any specific proposals on some of the most pressing issues of the day. For example, where is President Obama’s specific proposal on reforming Medicaid and Medicare? Anyone who understands the budget crisis facing this country understands that entitlements have to be talked about. And we need a leader to address that in detail.
I’ll come to your house, Bob Schieffer, and mow your lawn if you can find President Obama`s specific proposals on reforming entitlements in this country.”
— Tim Pawlenty on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 24, 2012
In an interview on ”Face the Nation” Sunday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty issued a light-hearted but bold challenge while suggesting that President Obama hasn’t done anything to address the skyrocketing costs of entitlement programs. (His remarks begin at the 5:45 mark of the video).
Host Bob Schieffer laughed about the wager, noting that he lives in an apartment and wouldn’t be able to hold Pawlenty accountable.
We’re not going to let his guest off the hook so easily.
Let’s take a look at Obama’s record on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to determine whether the president has made any “specific proposals” for reforms during his tenure.
The Facts
We’ll deal with Medicare and Medicaid first, since Pawlenty named those entitlements during his interview. Obama didn’t just propose changes to those programs; he enacted some of them by signing the Affordable Care Act — which the Supreme Court upheld this week.
Spinning the Supreme Court ruling on ‘Obamacare’
(Luke Sharrett/AP)
“The highest court in the land has now spoken.”
— President Obama, June 29, 2012
“What the Court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it's good policy.”
— Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, June 29, 2012
Soon after the Supreme Court ruling upholding the health-care law, President Obama and his presumed GOP rival Mitt Romney emerged with talking points so dissimilar you’d wonder if they were speaking about the same law. We will try to disentangle some of the differences.
But, first, a word about the claim, advanced by Rush Limbaugh and others, that because of the ruling that the individual mandate is a tax, “Obamacare” is now the biggest tax increase in history. That’s an absurdity.
The health-care law did include substantial taxes, such as an additional tax on investment income for the wealthy, but those were always disclosed and never hidden. The penalties it included for failing to get health insurance — which the Supreme Court has now labeled a tax — amounted to just about $13 billion a year, or $65 billion in the first 10 years of the law, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. (See Table 2.)
That compares to a total of $525 billion in new revenues contained in the bill. (The CBO always listed the penalties as a revenue, along with the other taxes and fees contained in the bill.)
As to whether this is the biggest tax increase in history, the best way to measure the impact of taxes over a long period is to consider a tax increase or decrease as a percentage of the overall economy, also known as the gross domestic product.
A 2006 Treasury Department study listed a tax increase passed in 1942 as the clear winner for the title of biggest tax increase — worth more than 5 percent of GDP. (Yikes, now that’s a tax increase. But the United States was fighting a world war at the time.)
The health-care law doesn’t even come close — 0.49 percent of GDP. That’s one-tenth the size of the 1942 tax cut. Essentially, the health-care law’s taxes are about the size of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase and significantly smaller than Ronald Reagan’s 1982 tax hike. (Our friends at PolitiFact beat us to the punch on this, awarding “Pants on Fire” to Limbaugh, and they have all of the math, plus other statistics.)
Now, let’s review the political statements.
Romney’s claim that Obama did ‘nothing on immigration’ until now
“Well, as you know, he [Barack Obama] was president for the last three and a half years, did nothing on immigration. Two years, he had a Democrats’ House and Senate, did nothing of permanent or long-term basis.”
-- Mitt Romney during interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 17, 2012
President Obama announced last Friday that his administration would no longer deport some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Former governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee, did not condemm or support Obama’s initiative, but criticized the president for failing to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform. Obama ”did nothing of permament or long-term basis,” he said.
Obama promised such reform while making his bid for the White House in 2008, and he has indeed failed to deliver on that pledge. But how much is the president to blame for the government’s inaction? After all, it takes more than just the executive to implement anything more than piecemeal reforms, and even then the options are limited.
Let’s review what’s happened with immigration reform during Obama’s term to determine whether the president has truly done “nothing.”
The Facts
Obama pushed for passage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act before Republicans won the House majority in November 2010. The bill would have made children of illegal immigrants -- technically up to age 35 -- eligible for residency if they attend college or serve in the military and don’t have criminal records.
A fierce tax debate, without much light
"Now, an independent study says that about 70 percent of this new, $5 trillion tax cut would go to folks making over $200,000 a year. And folks making over a million dollars a year would get an average tax cut of about 25 percent.”
— President Obama, June 14, 2012, speaking about Romney tax plan
“One of the absolute requirements of any tax reform that I have in mind is that people who are at the high end, whether you call them the 1 percent or 2 percent or half a percent, that people at the high end will still pay the same share of the tax burden they’re paying now. I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest. I’m looking to bring tax rates down for everyone.”
— Former governor Mitt Romney, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” June 17, 2012, also speaking about his tax plan
How are such opposing statements even possible?
The president declares on Thursday that his GOP rival will give the rich a 25 percent tax cut, citing an “independent study.”And then three days later, Romney insists that the rich will still “pay the same share of the tax burden.” In other words, no real tax cut.
Part of the explanation is that Obama is trying to nail Romney with specifics — and Romney is trying to avoid them. Let’s take a closer look.
The Facts
First, let’s examine the tax burden under current law. When it comes to federal income taxes, the wealthy already pay most of the taxes. (The percentages change a bit when payroll taxes are included, but not much.) People at the lowest levels have a negative share because they get refundable tax credits. Here are the figures from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center:
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.
Mitt Romney’s nonsensical claim about ‘Obamacare’
(Nati Harnik — Associated Press)
“Today, government at all levels consumes 37 percent of the total economy or GDP. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, government will reach half of the American economy.”
— Mitt Romney, economic speech, June 7, 2012
This is a startling assertion by the presumptive GOP candidate, which he has made in several forms in recent weeks.
David Corn of Mother Jones first spotted it when Romney made a victory speech in New Hampshire, arguing, “With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.” Corn quoted a number of economic experts finding fault with Romney’s reasoning, such as former Ronald Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett saying “this analysis is so stupid it is hard to know where to begin.”
FactCheck.org then weighed in when Romney had tweaked the language somewhat, but also found it wanting, saying it was “a pure partisan fantasy” and “patently false and misleading.”
With such harsh reviews, one would think that Romney might drop the assertion from his speeches. But now a new iteration has appeared, so we will examine it.
The Facts
The Romney campaign says this line is based on three separate claims. First, that in 2011, government expenditures amounted to 37.34 percent of the gross domestic product. Second, that with the president’s health plan in place in 2020, government expenditures are projected to climb to 39.18 percent. Finally, private health-care expenditures are projected to be 10.03 percent of GDP in 2020, so adding that altogether gets you to 49.21 percent.
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.
Romney’s unsubstantiated quote from union leader
(Mary Altaffer/AP)
“The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, ‘When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of children.’ ”
— Mitt Romney in an education speech at the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit in Washington, D.C, May 23, 2012
Mitt Romney veered from his standard talking points about the sluggish economy Wednesday to talk about education reform, a subject he said would be the top issue of the 2012 election if it weren’t for the housing crisis and the state of the economy. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee claimed that President Obama has bowed to powerful teachers unions, which he blamed for maintaining the status quo with failing schools.
The quote Romney cited could represent a serious indictment of teachers unions and their priorities, but only if the Republican candidate is correct in saying that it came from a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers. We searched for evidence that a former head of that educators’ group, the second-largest of its kind in the United States, had really made such a statement.
For what it’s worth, the quote has appeared on a Madison, Wis.-area billboard sponsored by the self-proclaimed nonpartisan group Reforming Education And Demanding Exceptional Results in Wisconsin (READER-WI), according to a blogger for the left-leaning site Daily Kos.
The Facts
A search on Wikipedia reveals that the quote in question appears in an entry for the late Albert Shanker, a teachers union icon who served as president of the American Federation of Teachers for more than 20 years. The statement is listed under the heading “Disputed quote,” which should have been an immediate red flag for the Romney campaign.
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.
The latest Crossroads GPS attack on Obama
“Obama started spending like our credit cards have no limit ... his health-care law made health insurance even more expensive.”
— Voiceover of new Crossroads GPS television ad
The latest entry by Republican-leaning Crossroads GPS in the campaign ad wars is aimed directly at disillusioned supporters of President Obama. It depicts an older (presumably) single mother who had voted for the president now worried about how her grown children can’t get jobs, especially in a world of higher government debt.
But the ad uses some of the oldest tricks in the book to create a misleading impression. Let’s examine two key points — about the debt and the health-care law.
The Facts
One can have a long argument about whether Obama — or the dreadful economy he inherited — is mostly responsible for the sharp rise in the national debt. The ad displays a chart showing the national debt increasing from $9 trillion to $15 trillion, but it’s one of those asymmetrical charts (starts at $9 trillion) that overemphasizes the increase.
A missing fact in the suspension of sanctions on Burma
(Saul Loeb/AP)
“We have an SDN [Specially Designated Nationals] list that will be regularly updated — it’s not simply a one-time thing — that we will continue to refine.”
— “Senior administration official one,” Background briefing on Burma, May 17, 2012
We do not normally examine anonymous statements, but an interesting briefing was given last week by a pair of administration officials as part of the historic announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States was “suspending” sanctions on Burma, also known as Myanmar. The rules set by the State Department would not permit reporters to quote these officials by name.
But the officials’ comments about the list of so-called “bad apples” — individuals and companies which are blocked from doing business with U.S. firms — are a case study of the choices made in diplomacy. When an administration is looking to tout what it considers to be a diplomatic achievement — in this case, opening up the possibility of reform in what was a brutal military dictatorship — sometimes inconvenient facts get played down.
Some background: The pace of change in Burma has been remarkable, with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and activist long under house arrest, recently winning a seat in parliament. (She is pictured above with Clinton.)
Before the sanctions announcement, human rights groups had pressed the administration to “gradually relax sanctions,” paying close attention to conducting “a comprehensive update” of the SDN list. “If these precautions are not taken, new U.S. business activity permitted under the relaxation may directly benefit individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses, who contribute to corruption, or are otherwise acting to obstruct political reform,” nine groups said in a letter to President Obama sent on April 24.
Ethnic groups, meanwhile, pleaded that no sanctions be lifted as long as the government continues to wage war against them. Aung San Suu Kyi also urged caution in lifting sanctions.
The Facts
When Clinton made her announcement on May 17 — on the same day Burma’s foreign minister was visiting Washington — the scope of the sanctions easing was unexpectedly broad. “Suspending” is a bit of a misnomer, because once U.S. firms flock to the energy and mineral rich nation, it may be rather hard to close the door again and force them to forsake their investments.
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 losing young adults?
(Timothy A. Clary — AFP, Getty Images)
“The unemployment rate for Americans 18-29 is 11.6%.”
“When new graduates find jobs, their starting salaries tend to be lower than those who graduated a decade earlier, and may never catch up.”
“Student loan debt is now over $1 trillion.”
“According to the most recent Harvard Institute of Politics study, just barely half of young people approve of Obama’s job as president, and only 41% approve of his handling of the economy.”
— From a fact sheet on the Crossroads Generation Web site
The Super PAC American Crossroads has teamed up with the Young Republican National Federation and the Republican State Leadership Committee to produce a spinoff super PAC known as Crossroads Generation. That group launched a social-media initiative this week to “reach, persuade, and mobilize young voters for change in the 2012 elections.”
The Web site for this group shows a number of videos featuring young adults who complain about various ways in which their quality of life has deteriorated during President Obama’s time in office. It also includes a fact sheet with 11 negative claims, five of which we’ve listed above.
The goal for Crossroads Generation is clear: peel away some of the youth voters who supported Obama so strongly in the 2008 election. We examined the source information for some of the group’s claims to determine whether they painted an accurate picture.
The Facts
The unemployment rate for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 was indeed 11.6 percent in April, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Note: compiling this data requires multiple queries, since the BLS does not track the 18- to 29-year-old demographic by itself.)
Joe Biden’s flubbed jobs numbers, again
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed more lackluster jobs numbers in the April unemployment report last week, prompting much discussion on the Sunday talk shows about whether the economic recovery has stalled under President Obama. Vice President Biden defended the administration’s handling of the employment situation by suggesting that the numbers are just fine,considering how bad things had become before he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, and before “we got our first economic initiative passed.”
In a previous column, we awarded Biden two Pinocchios for similar assertions that missed the mark. Let’s take a look at the jobs numbers again to determine whether the vice president avoided past mistakes.
The Facts
Biden said 700,000 jobs disappeared before he lowered his right hand and that another 3.5 million were lost before the Obama administration’s big economic bill became law. Biden’s overall statement, taken at face value, means the United States lost a total of 4.2 million jobs between Jan. 20, 2009, and the date when the president approved his first major economic legislation.
Mitt Romney’s claim of credit for the auto industry turnaround
(Jae C. Hong/AP)
“My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what the president did. He finally took them through bankruptcy. That was the right course I argued for from the very beginning. It was the UAW [United Auto Workers] and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.”
— Mitt Romney, May 7, 2012, in an interview with Cleveland’s WEWS-TV
What should we do when a politician keeps repeating a Pinocchio-laden claim — or even makes its worse?
We have examined previously the former Massachusetts governor’s claim that he set the course for the managed bankruptcy of the auto industry—and also have examined critically some of President Obama’s claims on the bailout. But clearly it’s time for a refresher course.
Did Obama try to block teens from working on family farms?
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Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a first-term U.S. senator and former state attorney general from New Hampshire, has been mentioned as a potential pick to become the vice presidential running mate of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. During her interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” she lauded Romney’s business credentials as proof that the Republican candidate can rescue the economy from its relative malaise.
Ayotte suggested that President Obama has proven himself incapable of smart governance, mentioning two incidents that administration critics like to cite as examples of regulatory overreach. Let’s review those matters to determine whether they back up the senator’s claims.
The Facts
In August, the Department of Labor proposed revisions to child labor rules that apply to the agricultural sector. Among the most significant changes: banning children under age 16 from operating power-driven equipment such as tractors and prohibiting people under the age of 18 from working in grain silos, feed lots and stockyards.
The ‘Backwards’ anti-Obama ad from American Crossroads
“Under President Obama, is America moving forward or backward?”
“It’s getting more expensive for healthcare, more expensive for gas, more expensive overall.
“Four years of Obama moving America ... backward.”
— Narration from American Crossroads ad
This ad, titled “Backward,” came from the conservative political advocacy group American Crossroads. It appears to be the organization’s answer to the “Forward” video released by President Obama’s campaign.
The ad flashes numbers to back up its claims about rising costs under the current administration: medical costs up 11.2 percent, gas prices have doubled, consumer prices up 8.6 percent.
Let’s take a look at the numbers to see whether American Crossroads proved anything negative about Obama’s tenure.
The Facts
Health care costs have indeed risen 11.2 percent under Obama, but that’s not an extraordinary number in terms of the historic trend. Medical costs have skyrocketed for decades, threatening to reach unsustainable levels as they take up an increasingly larger percentage of GDP.
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.
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.
Romney campaign’s misleading stats: women in the Obama economy
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The debate over which party promises a better future for women continued on Sunday, with NBC’s “Meet the Press” pitting various strategists and pundits against each other throughout the show. Host David Gregory pointed out that the female voting bloc represents the “deciders” in the 2012 election. President Obama holds a clear advantage with this demographic, but Romney chipped away at the double-digit lead last month.
Democrats have pushed for free contraceptive coverage, equal pay and renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, while Republicans such as Ed Gillespie, one of the top advisors for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, try to drive home the notion that women have fared worse than men during the Obama administration. As Gillespie put it, “It’s still the economy, and women aren’t stupid.”
Let’s look at the numbers Gillespie brought up. Are they accurate? Do they tell the whole story?
The Facts
Gillespie relied on data from the U.S. Census Bureau for his insurance numbers. Just like he said, the number of uninsured women has increased by about 2.7 million under Obama, according to the most recent data. But the latest Census numbers come from 2010, so that figure doesn’t represent the president’s entire tenure.
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.
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.)
Mitt Romney’s correct stat on the ‘Buffett Rule’
(Jessica Kourkounis/GETTY IMAGES)
“Someone calculated that the taxes he [Obama] would raise in his Buffett Rule would pay for 11 hours of government.”
— Mitt Romney, April 16, 2012
President Obama’s proposal to add a tax surcharge to adjusted gross incomes over $1 million, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, has generated scorn in Republican ranks, such as the comment above by the presumptive GOP nominee and former Massachusetts governor. (Romney was borrowing an observation first made by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.)
It would seem to be a simple math exercise to check this fact. But this is Washington…..let’s have some fun with “baselines.”
The Facts
The Republican calculation is based on the fact that in 2013, the Buffett Rule would raise $5.1 billion in revenue in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. (Alternatively, you can use the 10-year revenue figure of $47 billion and come up with an annual average of nearly $5 billion a year.)
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.”
Romney and Iran’s ‘route to the sea’
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
(AFP/Getty Images)
“Maybe one of the few bright spots in the Middle East developments in the last year has been the rising of the people in Syria against [President Bashar al-] Assad. Obviously, as you know, Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally in the region. Syria is the route that allows Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons in Lebanon. Syria is Iran’s route to the sea.”
— Mitt Romney, question and answer session at AIPAC conference, March 6, 2012
We’ve puzzled over this comment for a while. When the presumptive GOP nominee referred to Syria as Iran’s “route to the sea” during the Arizona GOP debate in February, we figured it was just a slip of the tongue.
But then a reader counted at least five times in which Romney has used this phrase, including in the Feb. 22 debate, at last month’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference, in a TV interview (MSNBC, Dec. 21), on the radio (Kilmeade & Friends, Feb. 14) and even in a Washington Post interview (Feb. 10).
Considering that Syria shares no border with Iran — Iraq and Turkey are in the way — and that Iran has about 1,500 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, leading to the Arabian Sea, the reader wanted to know: What’s Romney talking about?
The Facts
This is the explanation provided by the Romney campaign: “It is generally recognized that Syria offers Iran strategic basing/staging access to the Mediterranean as well as to terrorist proxies in the Levant. This is a large reason why Iran invests so much in Syria.”
Grover Norquist’s economic blame game
“Throughout 2001, 2002, 2003 and so on, the United States actually every month, 5.3 million started new jobs and about 5.1 million would end jobs, so you had tremendous turnover. So in the course of a year, 60 million would start jobs and 58 million people would retire or move to other jobs, so when you netted 2 million new jobs, it wasn’t that everybody stayed in place and 2 million people walked into the room and got jobs. A lot of people were shifting back and forth. A lot of new jobs were being created.
During the recession, that 5.3 million per month number dropped to 4.3, which is bad — recession. Since the recovery took hold 33 months ago, that number has fallen to 3.9. It’s actually gotten worse, we’re starting fewer new jobs than during the recession. That’s how damaging the threat of tax increases — not only the tax increases that have hit already, but the tax increases that start in a year.”
— Grover Norquist, during a Tax Day meeting with reporters, April 17, 2012
For those who don’t recognize the name, Grover Norquist is president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform and architect of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a promise to oppose virtually all forms of tax increases. More than 90 percent of Republican lawmakers have signed it. Norquist made these remarks when asked to explain how taxes affect the ability of young people to enter the job market.
The notion that monthly new hires have declined since the recession struck us as odd, especially when the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported growth in jobs for the past 25 months. How could net employment turnover be negative when the economy is adding jobs?
We dug into the BLS data to determine whether Norquist’s claims have any merit. We also looked at the assumption that companies aren’t hiring because of a “threat of tax increases.”
The Facts
We spoke with John Lott, an economist and Fox News contributor who helped Norquist come up with his numbers. The gist of Norquist’s figures appears to be correct, according to our own calculations of seasonally adjusted BLS data on job openings and labor turnover.
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.”
Romney campaign attaches Hilary Rosen remarks to ‘Democrats’
(CNN)
“If you’re a stay-at-home mom, the Democrats have a message for you: You’ve never worked a day in your life. That’s exactly what Obama adviser Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney last night.”
— From a blog post on the official Mitt Romney campaign site
Republicans last week tried shifting the supposed “war on women” to an alleged “war on moms” in an effort to win back female voters who are supporting Democrats in overwhelming numbers. Liberal pundit Hilary Rosen provided a big assist when she said Wednesday that Ann Romney, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and one-time stay-at-home-mom, can’t understand the economic concerns of women because she “hasn’t worked a day in her life.”
Rosen’s remarks opened an old wound from the culture wars, casting doubt on the value of stay-at-home moms. Some argue that women betray themselves by not pursuing careers, a controversial stance that feminist Linda Hirshman took with her 2006 book “Get to Work.”
Rosen apologized for her remarks, but not until 18 hours had passed, and not before she’d blamed Romney for bringing his wife into the debate and accused the candidate of hiding behind his wife’s skirt.
We won’t weigh in on which party loves women and moms, but we think it’s important to look at whether Rosen truly spoke on behalf of “the Democrats” during her CNN appearance and whether she is truly an Obama adviser — meaning her comments would be somewhat representative of the president’s campaign thinking.
The Facts
The Romney campaign pointed out a number of news articles that connect Rosen with President Obama and the Democratic Party, including reports that she worked for the Democratic National Committee and made some 35 visits to the Obama White House.
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.
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.
‘Obamacare’ or the GOP: Which would throw granny off a cliff?
“President Obama began throwing seniors off the cliff when they voted to cut Medicare’s budget by $575 billion.”
— Narration from an ad by AmericanDoctors4Truth
This ad parodies a previous video from The Agenda Project, which ran a similar spot suggesting that Republicans were trying to end Medicare and privatize it with a proposal from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Our colleagues at FlackCheck.org ran a film-noir parody covering both of these commercials.
The AmericanDoctors4Truth video shows a senior in a wheelchair explaining that she needs a pacemaker, while a fictional President Obama pushes her toward a scenic overlook. “You know what, maybe this isn’t going to help,” the president says. “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”
The fictional president then dumps granny over the cliff, and a narrator explains that the Affordable Care Act strips $575 billion from Medicare. The ad then cuts to a series of brief commentaries by two physicians, who plead with viewers to join in their fight against the health-care law. A longer four-minute version on the Doctors4Truth Web site explains that the law will lead to rationing of medical services.
We examined the Affordable Care Act and talked with experts to determine whether the claims in this ad are true.
The Facts
The Affordable Care Act didn’t exactly “cut” $575 billion from Medicare. Instead, it laid out plans to wring that much in savings, from projected spending, over a 10-year span. What’s the difference? The government is still on the hook to pay the difference if it doesn’t reach its goal.
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.
Romney’s attack on Obama
(Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Mitt Romney’s appearance this week before the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, a day after President Obama addressed the same group, lacked the bevy of new “facts” that Obama rolled out as he lashed out at the House Republican budget plan. Instead, the increasingly likely GOP presidential nominee repeated versions of a number of claims that we have previously called into question. In the interest of fair play, as with Obama, we won’t award an overall Pinocchio rating for his speech.
“The administration pledged that it would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It has been above 8 percent every month since.”
Romney has subtly changed the wording here, dropping a reference to President Obama making this statement and instead attributing it to “the administration.”
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.
Oil war, Part 3: Another pro-Obama video lashes Romney and ‘Big Oil’
Here we go again: Another group that supports President Obama is suggesting that the oil industry somehow bought GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney to do its bidding.
This all started late last week, when the Democratic National Committee responded to a $3.6 million ad campaign from the anti-Obama American Energy Alliance denouncing the president’s energy policies. Both the DNC and the alliance earned three Pinocchios in previous columns for shaky and sometimes unfounded claims.
Now the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action has taken a turn, with of its own with a video titled “Romney’s Big Oil Trail.” Let’s see whether this group’s ad holds up to scrutiny any better than the others we reviewed.
The Facts
The message from the Priorities USA video boils down to this: Romney has deep ties to the oil industry, which is behind the anti-Obama ad, and “Big Oil” has pledged $200 million to the Republican candidate so he’ll support its tax breaks. We’ll examine those claims one by one.
‘Obamacare’ and rising health insurance premiums
“Six in 10 Americans are seeing their [health insurance] premiums rise. The average cost of a family policy is up $1,300. Another part of President Obama’s health care takeover will cost $111 billion more than promised.”
--Voiceover in a Republican National Committee TV ad about the Obama health care law
Be wary of the single data point, exploited either by Democrats or Republicans.
This new RNC ad slams the Obama health care law for already causing a boost in health care premiums, even though much of the law has not been implemented. (The ad frames this as breaking President Obama’s already dubious promise that the health care overhaul will result in average family premiums declining by $2,500.)
The ad, repeating the myth that the law is a “health care takeover,” also asserts that costs in one part of the the health care law are soaring, a claim we have debunked before.
The Facts
The RNC based its claims about premiums on the 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation annual survey of employer health benefits. We laughed out loud when we saw that, since it was only a year ago, on the first anniversary of passage of the law, that Democrats were citing the 2010 survey to make an equally absurd claim about the health care law.
Oil War: The ad battle between ‘Big Oil’ and DNC, Part 2
The Democratic National Committee quickly rallied to the president’s defense after the American Energy Alliance aired its attack ad. The group released a video of its own that references the commercial and tells viewers to remember “what they bought” as an image of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney appears.
DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) teamed up with Democratic Party communications director Brad Woodhouse to push some rhetoric of their own in a news conference.
We’ve already examined the DNC claims that deal with a rise in oil production and with so-called oil subsidies, but we’ll do it again. We also looked into the issue of whether “Big Oil” or the American Energy Alliance somehow bought Romney.
The Facts
U.S. domestic oil production has indeed reached an eight-year high, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. In addition, the U.S. drilling-rig count is “higher than any year since the early 1980s,” as The Washington Post noted in an article earlier this month.
Oil war: the ad battle between ‘Big Oil’ and DNC, Part 1
The pro-oil American Energy Alliance and the Democratic National Committee exchanged barbs this week over the president’s energy policies, providing a preview of the hard-hitting rhetorical campaigns and rapid-response reactions that will take place as the general election nears.
AEA claimed that it will spend $3.6 million airing the 30-second advertisement in eight states “in the largest effort of its kind in AEA’s history.”
We’ll examine these ads in the order they were released, looking at the American Energy Alliance commercial first and moving to the DNC video in a later column.
The American Energy Alliance ad mostly recycled and consolidated a number of claims we’ve already fact-checked, but it’s easy to see why this group dragged them back out. The price of gas is at the forefront of voters’ minds, and it’s likely to stay that way until November, with economists predicting that prices will remain high through the summer.
Let’s review the facts one more time, knowing it probably won’t be our last.
The Facts
The first claim in this ad suggests that the president opposed oil drilling in Alaska. A Washington Post article from April 2010 reported that Obama actually approved what was perhaps “the biggest expansion of offshore energy exploration in half a century” when he opened the door to drilling in areas that included waters off Alaska’s coast.
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.
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.
Romney and the individual mandate, again
There’s been a considerable amount of discussion lately about whether Mitt Romney’s old campaign comments and op-eds provide proof that he actually supports a federal mandate, contrary to what he claims and what Fact Checker Glenn Kessler determined about the matter in a previous column. Still, critics such as Rick Santorum continue to pound home the notion that the former governor advocated a national insurance requirement.
Romney has stood firmly behind his Bay State mandate but swears that he doesn’t support such a policy at the federal level. He has said states should decide for themselves how to improve their health-care systems. Our previous column noted that he has shown consistency on this issue, despite a tendency to explain his stance in convoluted terms.
Let’s once again review key remarks that Romney opponents have highlighted to determine what the GOP delegate leader really said, as opposed to what people assume he meant.
The Facts
First, opposing the federal health-care law is perfectly compatible with expressing a love for insurance mandates and thinking they can work for states that want to adopt them, as Romney has done. It’s like saying “Cardinals are pretty, and I think every state should adopt that species as its state bird, but I would never force them to do that — I don’t have the right.”
Mitt Romney’s misfire on light bulb standards
(M. Spencer Green/AP)
"And the government would have banned Thomas Edison’s light bulb. Oh yeah, Obama’s regulators actually did just that."
— Mitt Romney, March 19, 2012
During an economic speech on Monday, the former Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful charged that the Obama administration “banned” Thomas Edison’s light bulb.
Really?
Let’s take a look at this contentious issue.
The Facts
Thomas Edison did not invent the incandescent light bulb, but he did make it commercially viable, filing his first patent for improvements in 1878. And, then 129 years later, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
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.
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.
More ‘Mediscare’ hooey, GOP version
“This IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments so Washington can fund more wasteful spending. ...Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years.”
— Musician Pat Boone, in a television ad sponsored by the 60 Plus Association
A number of readers asked us to examine the latest claims about Medicare, made this week by both GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and a conservative advocacy group called the 60 Plus Association.
Actually, there is little new in either the 60 Plus Association’s $3.5 million ad campaign, featuring the venerable Pat Boone, or the “Five Questions for President Obama on Medicare” issued by the Romney campaign. We feel we have dealt with similar claims in the past, but apparently that has not deterred such attacks.
The Romney statement is amusing because it constantly repeats the phrase “ending Medicare as we know it”—which in turn has been a Democratic attack line against a House GOP plan for Medicare. (Democrats used to simply say “end Medicare” or “kill Medicare” until The Fact Checker and other fact checking organizations called them on it.)
Indeed, both parties are absolutely shameless about Medicare. (For instance, the Democratic National Committee attacked Romney on Medicare this week.) Both claim that other party would kill/destroy/ruin/whatever Medicare; neither side has much of a leg to stand on.
Someone must be falling for this stuff, however, or else it would not keep getting repeated.
The Facts
The current Medicare system, in place since the mid-1960s, is essentially a government-run health care program, with hospital and doctors’ fees paid by the government, though beneficiaries also pay premiums for some services as well as deductibles and coinsurance.
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.
Mitt Romney and the individual mandate: A highly misleading DNC ad
“Mitt Romney — against individual mandates except when he’s for them.”
— New DNC Web ad attacking Romney
Many Democratic attacks on Mitt Romney suggest that he is a politician without conviction, and someone who will “say anything” to get elected. A new Democratic National Committee Web ad follows that pattern, highlighting a series of TV clips that aim at a perceived vulnerability of the former Massachusetts governor: his successful effort to create universal health care in his state.
President Obama’s health-care law was largely built around the concept of an individual mandate, as was Romney’s law. Romney, however, has insisted that he never intended to take the concept nationwide, but that each state could decide for itself how best to promote universal coverage.
This ad uses the clips — some of which we had not seen before — to suggest that Romney actually did support a national mandate, even when he now says he is against it. But how accurate is this claim?
The Facts
Readers should be wary of campaign ads that show many little clips, because a line or two can be taken out of context. One of the first things we do when fact-checking an ad like this is to look at the entire TV interview or debate segment, to understand why the comment in question was made.
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.
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.
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.
Mitch Daniels’s unfounded claim: President Obama wanted higher gas prices
Republicans lately have ramped up their rhetoric on gasoline prices, focusing on an issue that resonates with struggling Americans despite slowly but steadily improving jobs numbers that have taken some steam out of their economic arguments. We showed in previous columns this week that the price increase is not as bad as some make it out to be, and that the unusually low cost of gasoline when President Obama took office — during a severe economic downturn — explains how they jumped at such a high rate.
Still, Republicans know that pain at the pump can affect the president’s reelection chances, and they’re fanning the flames of discontent.
We took a look at Obama’s energy policies and searched for proof that he or Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that cost hikes “would be great.” We also looked at Secretary Ken Salazar’s stance on drilling to find out whether the Interior Department director really said he wouldn’t budge on drilling in the face of $10-per-gallon gas.
The Facts
We can’t be sure why Daniels thinks the Obama administration had a “conscious policy” of driving up gasoline prices. His office did not respond to questions about the matter.
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.
The claim that 98 percent of Catholic women use contraception: a media foul
“98 percent of Catholic women, I am told by all of you, use birth control to determine the size and timing of their families.”
--House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Feb. 16, 2012
Ever since the battle erupted between Catholic bishops and the Obama administration over providing free contraception coverage as part of health plans for workers, a striking figure has appeared in the news — that 98 percent of Catholic women have used contraceptives.
“Birth-control is widely used even by Catholics: 98 percent of American Catholic women have used contraception in their lifetimes.”
— The Washington Post, Feb. 12
“In fact, 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lifetimes.”
— National Public Radio, Feb. 10
“Studies have shown that 98 percent of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time in their lives.”
—The New York Times, Feb. 10
Small wonder that Pelosi cited the media — “I am told by all of you” — when she made her comment on Thursday. But what does this figure really mean and where does it come from?
The Facts
The 98-percent figure first appeared in an April 2011 study written by Rachel K. Jones and Joerg Dreweke of the Guttmacher Institute, which is a non-profit organization that promotes reproductive health and had started as an arm of Planned Parenthood. The study is titled “Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use.”
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.
Jack Lew’s misleading claim about the Senate’s failure to pass a budget resolution
(JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS)
“But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed. And I think he was reflecting the reality of that that could be a challenge.”
--White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Feb. 12. 2012
Newly-named White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew was not only recently budget director for President Obama; he was also the budget director for former President Bill Clinton. So when he speaks about the budget process, you would think he speaks with authority.
That’s why his comment on CNN jumped out at us. He also said something similar on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked about the number of days since Senate Democrats passed a budget plan (1,019). Lew’s response: “One of the things about the United States Senate that I think the American people have realized is that it takes 60, not 50, votes to pass something.”
Given that President Obama unveils his budget on Monday—and the congressional budget process is so complex—it seems like it is time for a refresher course. Let’s examine if Lew is being misleading here.
The Facts
The term “budget” is used rather loosely in Washington. The White House every year proposes a budget, but that document is at best a political statement and wish list, since none of those proposals will take effect unless Congress enacts them into law. The House and Senate every spring are supposed to pass a budget resolution, which also does not have the force of law but guides the amount of money available to the Appropriations Committees, in addition to setting parameters for tax and entitlement legislation.
A fishy statistic in the GOP State of the Union response
“One in five men of prime working age and nearly half of all persons under 30 did not go to work today.”
— Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Jan. 24, 2012
A loyal reader wrote us about this line in Daniels’ speech after the State of the Union speech given by President Obama, expressing surprise that half of the under-30 population did not go to work. (She assumed he must even be counting babies.) It took us a while to track down the facts in this case, but it turns out to be an interesting tale of a statistic that, in the end, does not really say much.
The Facts
Something seemed fishy because the first part of Daniel’s quote refers to 20 percent of “men in prime working age” not going to work, while adding that a much higher number — nearly 50 percent — of those under 30 not having jobs. That’s a rather large gap that should immediately raise flags.
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.
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.
Will the United States really spend $700 billion in the next decade on nuclear weapons programs?
“Some in Washington still want to spend $700 billion on old outdated Cold War Programs”
--Advertisement from the American Security Project which aired during the GOP Debate on Nov. 22, 2011
“The United States is projected to spend an estimated $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs during the next ten years.”
--Ploughshares Fund Working Paper, Version 2, Sept. 27, 2011
In these grim economic times, the cost of maintaining and upgrading the United States’ aging nuclear arsenal of 5,000 warheads is certainly a ripe topic for discussion. The U.S. government has never officially disclosed the exact cost, and whether one should include environmental clean-up costs, missile defense and other programs related to nuclear weapons is a legitimate topic of debate.
In recent weeks, a fierce fight has broken out in the nuclear world over an estimate issued by Ploughshares Fund—a foundation focused on nuclear policy—that the United States will spend $700 billion over the next ten years on “nuclear weapons and related programs.” That estimate has stuck and become part of the public discourse, appearing in the recent advertisement and a letter by Rep. Edward Markey(D-Mass.), often without the caveat of “related programs.”
But the administration of President Obama—who won a Nobel Peace Prize in part for calling for a world without nuclear weapons—has flatly rejected the $700 billion figure. James Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense, told Congress on Nov. 2 that the figure was close to $214 billion over ten years, with $88 billion being spent at the Energy Department, which maintains nuclear weapons, and more than $125 billion spent on delivery systems at the Defense Department.
“I've had an opportunity to look at some of the materials that were referenced in the cost estimates just before coming over here and I—without giving this more time than it deserves—suffice it to say there was double counting and some rather curious arithmetic involved,” Miller said.
There is such a large gap between $700 billion and $200 billion that some readers asked us to look into the matter. To put it in perspective, the gap between these two estimates would fund the State Department and all foreign aid for the next decade. Hang on, there are lots of numbers, but it is an important issue.
The Facts
First of all, Ploughshares is counting a lot of things that the administration is not including in its estimate. As the spreadsheet below shows, the group included such things as the costs of missile defense (on the theory that it exists only to protect America against nuclear weapons) and environmental clean-up. As we said, there is a legitimate debate about whether or not to include such items—is missile defense needed even if the U.S. gives up all of its nukes?--but those items account for nearly $270 billion of the Ploughshares figure.
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.
Did Texas improve air quality, lower emissions as much as Rick Perry claims? (Fact Checker biography)
Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during a stop in Jackson, Miss. Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011.
(Greg Campbell - AP)
“We cleaned up our air in Texas more than any other state during the decade of the 2000s. And no it wasn’t the EPA’s regulations. As a matter of fact, they tried to come into Texas after we cleaned up our air and take it over, and what they’ll do is just kill a bunch of jobs and won’t clean up the air at all. We lowered our ozone levels by 27 percent during the decade of the 2000s and we lowered our nitrogen oxide levels by 58 percent.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, during a town hall speech in Derry, N. H., Sept. 30, 2011
Perry claims Texas topped the charts in terms of air-quality improvements, and his remarks suggest that the state knows how to clean up just fine without oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency, thank you very much.
We wondered where Perry found his data and how bad Texas was doing before he took office. We also wondered whether federal regulations really kill jobs — a subject the Post already covered this week.
The Facts
Perry cited data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The state agency calculates its ozone numbers based on a three-year average of the monitors that showed the fourth-highest eight-hour emissions concentration for each of the three years.
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