Obama: Broken promises on taxes and health care?
“If you are a family making less than $250,000 a year, your taxes will not go up.” (quote from President Obama, 2008)
“Promise broken: Obamacare raises 18 different taxes.”
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” (quote from Obama, 2009)
“Promise broken: Millions could lose their health care coverage and be forced into a government pool”
--Assertions in a new Crossroads GPS ad, released Wednesday
The Republican-aligned Crossroads GPS has scheduled a massive $25 million ad buy, starting with this hard-hitting ad that purports to list a bunch of “broken promises” by President Obama.
We are not going to quibble with some of these claims. The president, for instance, certainly has not met his pledge to cut the budget deficit in half. But we were interested in exploring more craefully the two health care-related items listed above.
The Facts
Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 was one of his signature pledges of the 2008 campaign. It would exempt about 98 percent of Americans.
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.)
Is Obama responsible for a $5 trillion increase in the debt?
(Charlie Neibergall/AP)
“When you add up his policies, this president has increased the national debt by five trillion dollars.”
— Mitt Romney, in Des Moines, May 15, 2012
Who’s to blame for the national debt? In a speech in Iowa, the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday pointed the finger at President Obama’s policies, naming in particular the 2009 stimulus (worth about $800 billion) and the health-care law, which has mostly not yet kicked in (and according to the Congressional Budget Office will not add to the deficit in its first 10 years).
The national debt is simply a matter of numbers, but the blame game is much more complicated. Let’s take a look.
The Facts
The Treasury Department’s “Debt to the Penny” Web site makes it easy to track the growth of the national debt during Obama’s presidency. There are two key figures — for publicly held debt and for gross debt, which includes bonds that the government owes to itself (such as Social Security trust fund bonds.)
Obama ad attacking Mitt Romney mimics Ted Kennedy ads
The production values are better, but not the message.
The Obama campaign’s new ad attacking Mitt Romney and his tenure at Bain Capital is a near carbon copy of a successful series of ads that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) used to fend off a strong challenge from Romney in 1994. Politico collected the old Kennedy ads last year.
Take a look and compare.
Obama ad (2012)
“If he going to run the country the way he ran our business, I wouldn’t want him there. He would be so out of touch with the average person in this country.”
--worker at company acquired by Bain Capital
“It was like a vampire. He came in and sucked the life out of us.”
--another worker
“Bain Capital sought elimination of the pension plan and termination of employee and retiree life insurance and health insurance.”
--union representative
Ted Kennedy ads (1994)
(go to 1:00 mark)“I would like to say to Mitt Romney, if you think you’d make such a good senator, come out here to Marion, Indiana and see what your company has done to these people.”
--worker at a company acquired by Bain Capital
“They cut the wages...we no longer had insurance... basically cut our throats.”
--more quotes from workers
Romney and Bain Capital: the Obama campaign’s newest ad
“It makes me angry. Those guys were all rich. They all had more money than they would ever spend, yet they did not have money to take care of the very people who made the money for them.”
— Former steel worker Joe Soptic, in a new Obama campaign ad on Mitt Romney’s business record
It’s no surprise that the Obama campaign chose the story of GS Industries for its first television ad attacking Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital.
Unlike some of the tales of job-killing and factory-closings that were thrown at Romney during the GOP primaries, this is a relatively straightforward story: The initial investment in the steel company was made in 1993 by Bain under Romney’s leadership, and the company took on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while paying Bain investors millions of dollars in dividends.
Romney was no longer actively managing Bain when the steel company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and closed its Kansas City plant, causing more than 700 workers to lose their jobs and health insurance, as well as part of their pensions. (More on that below.)
Using just the voices of angry former workers at the company, the ad is less about Romney’s business record and more about his values.
Romney is described by the workers as “a vampire” who destroyed people’s lives while seeking to make as much money as possible. “If he going to run the country the way he ran our business, I wouldn’t want him there,” one worker says. “He would be so out of touch with the average person in this country.” Ouch.
GS Industries has also been a tempting target for Romney’s GOP rivals. In January, Texas Gov. Rick Perry mentioned it as an example of Romney being a “vulture” capitalist. The opposition research done by Sen. John McCain’s campaign in 2008 also highlighted GSI.
As usual in campaign ads, some important context is missing. Let’s fill in some of the blanks. There is also a longer, six-minute version for a Web site called romneyeconomics.com, but we will focus on the two-minute version airing in battleground states.
The Facts
First of all, the investment was one of many done by Bain under Romney’s leadership, which the Wall Street Journal documented was a record mainly of success, not failure. The Romney campaign immediately countered the Obama ad with a Web ad focused on Bain’s successful investment in Steel Dynamics, featuring interviews with happy steel workers.
The RNC and Obama, taking quotes out of context
“President Obama might forget the recession but America hasn’t.”
--text from a new RNC web video, May 11, 2012
“When a woman in Iowa shared the story of her financial struggles, he gave an answer right out of an economics textbook. He said, ‘Our productivity equals our income,’ as if the only reason people can’t pay their bills is because they’re not productive enough. Well, that’s not what’s going on. Most of us who have spent some time talking to people understand that the problem isn’t that the American people aren’t working hard enough, aren’t productive enough -– you’ve been working harder than ever. The challenge we face right now -– the challenge we’ve faced for over a decade -– is that harder work isn’t leading to higher incomes. Bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs”
--President Obama, Remarks in Seattle, May 10, 2012
When a political campaign quotes an opponent, watch out. Some important context may be missing.
The Republican National Committee, in a new web video, blasts President Obama for forgetting about the recession, based on remarks that Obama made in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Obama, in that same Seattle speech, quotes presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney as some sort of unfeeling business executive, based on remarks Romney made last year while campaigning in Iowa.
Let’s look at what Obama and Romney really said.
The Facts
The RNC video actually runs a relatively long snippet from Obama’s speech, which to our mind undercuts the idea that Obama says he forgot about the recession. Here’s the full quote, with the part the RNC used in bold:
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?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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.
Koch versus Obama
“I wanted to arm you with the facts about the latest attack from Big Oil.”
— Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, in a video release
“Koch takes exception to the President engaging in inappropriate personal attacks on private citizens.”
— Koch response video
It’s war!
Two dueling videos, one by the Obama campaign and one by Koch Industries, illustrates how bitter the fight has become between the White House and the billionaire brothers who have bankrolled many conservative causes, often rallying opposition to the president’s policies.
The recent tit-for-tat started with the latest ad by Americans for Prosperity, an organization which the New Yorker magazine, in a lengthy article, said “was micromanaged by the Kochs” and “has been instrumental in disrupting the Obama Presidency.” (Koch issued a long rebuttal to the article but did not dispute this point.)
The AFP ad, indeed, was riddled with falsehoods and misstatements. We gave it Four Pinocchios, PolitiFact labeled its assertions “mostly false,” “false,” and “pants on fire,” and FactCheck.org was also highly critical.
For the Obama campaign, the Koch brothers are a convenient foil, though as we have written before, the campaign goes too far to label them “Big Oil” because their privately held empire is comprised of many businesses, some not related to petroleum. (We also gave Two Pinocchios to Obama’s response ad to AFP, which was mostly aimed at Mitt Romney.)
Still, given how ludicrously wrong much of the AFP ad was, all Stephanie Cutter, the Obama deputy campaign manager, had to do in the campaign’s video was to highlight some of the errors that fact-checking organizations had already pointed out. (She made other assertions that we will examine below.) We will leave it to readers to decide if she went too far in labeling the political activities of the Koch brothers as “BS.”
Now Koch — pronounced “Coke,” not like the name of the former New York mayor — has responded in kind. Let’s take a deeper look at their video.
The Facts
The ad begins with a reference to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article criticizing the Obama campaign for highlighting the backgrounds of some of Mitt Romney’s political supporters, suggesting it was some sort of enemies list. The ad then quotes former solicitor general Ted Olsen — identified in the article as an attorney for Koch — as criticizing the practice as “abhorrent.”
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