Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
It's good to know that The Arizona Republic(an) editors do not care about the temperament, character and judgment of the candidates they endorse. How else could they endorse the shameless shapeshifter and pathological liar, Willard "Mittens" Romney? And what does that say about the character and judgment of the editors?
The Washington Post's fact checker Glenn Kessler takes a look at the new Romney ad "The Obama Plan" and captions his fact check A ‘greatest hits’ of misleading Romney claims:
As we enter into the final weeks of this bruising presidential
campaign, we expect to hear all sorts of poll-tested,
factually-challenged messages again and again — simply because the
campaigns have data that shows these claims resonate with votes.
In
that vein, a new ad released by the Romney campaign is almost a
“greatest hits” version of claims that have been thoroughly debunked by
fact checkers, including this column. Let’s spin the record once again!
The Facts
“The debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars”
Here, the Romney campaign is using “gross debt,” which
includes U.S. Treasury bonds held by Social Security and Medicare.
Generally, what matters for the federal budget is the publicly held debt, particularly the percentage of debt compared to the overall economy (gross domestic product.) The House GOP budget plan authored by Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, for instance focuses on its impact on publicly-held debt, no gross debt.
Even taking the Ryan budget plan at face value, it would do little better
than the Obama plan over four years — gross debt would rise to $19
trillion in four years. Moreover, as we have often noted, a good chunk of the increase in the deficit under Obama was due to the Great Recession.
“Twenty million Americans could lose their employer-based health care.”
This is the worst case scenario in a recent Congressional Budget Office report, and thus using this “20 million” figure is fairly misleading.
The most positive scenario in the CBO analysis has 3 million people being added
to employer coverage. “On balance, the number of people obtaining
coverage through their employer would be about 3 million lower in 2019
under the legislation than under prior law,” the CBO concludes.
It’s
worth noting that the baseline scenario — 3 million fewer people —
represents just 2 percent of the people who now get insurance through
their employers.
The CBO cautions that there is a “tremendous
amount of uncertainty” about how employers and employees will respond to
the legislation. “One piece of evidence that may be relevant is the
experience in Massachusetts, where employment-based health insurance
coverage appeared to increase after that state’s reforms,” the CBO
noted.
Of course, Mitt Romney, as governor, ushered in health-care legislation that served as a model for Obama’s health plan.
“Taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000.”
The first time the Romney campaign made this claim, it earned three Pinocchios. But it just gets worse each time this bogus claim gets reasserted.
Obama
has no plan to raise taxes on the middle class (just as Romney has no
such plan, though the Obama campaign has asserted that is the logical
consequence of trying to make his tax cut revenue neutral by eliminating
popular tax deductions.)
Instead, this claim is drawn from a dry report
from the American Enterprise Institute, titled “A Simple Measure of the
Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation.” The study tries to
calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income
groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies
and Obama’s budget.
(Current law refers to policies that are
supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects
the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts
expire.)
Among the three scenarios, there’s actually not much
difference, and the Obama administration’s budget falls right in the
middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if
the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as
the ad suggests, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.
Presumably,
a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided
enough detail on his budget so the AEI analysts said they could not
evaluate it.
“Energy prices will continue to go up”
What’s the source on this? The Romney campaign based
this claim about “energy” on just one fact: Gasoline prices have more
than doubled from $1.85 per gallon to $3.82 per gallon during Obama’s
presidency.
But this is a misleading comparison because cost of
gas had plunged to an artificially low level at the start of Obama’s
presidency because of the Great Recession.
What was the price of
gas the week of Sept. 15, 2008, before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
triggered the economic crisis? It was $3.84 — virtually the same price
as today, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Three months later, the price of gasoline had plunged to half that level.
“$716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors”
We’re getting tried of writing about this claim, which
stems from efforts to restrain Medicare spending in the Obama health
care law.
The $716 billion figure comes from the difference over
10 years (2013-2022) between anticipated Medicare spending (what is
known as “the baseline”) and the changes that the law makes to reduce
spending. Year over year spending on Medicare would continue to go up.
The
savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare
beneficiaries — who, as a result of the health-care law, ended up with
new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs.
Still, some argue that those provider cuts will eventually result in poorer patient care. Medicare actuary Richard S. Foster has cast doubt
on whether these reductions can be sustained because, by his estimate,
about 15 percent of hospitals “could find it difficult to remain
profitable, and, absent legislative intervention, might end their
participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing care for
beneficiaries).”
Incidentally, the House Republican budget plan
crafted by Ryan retains virtually all of the Medicare “cuts” contained
in the health-care law. Romney has pledged to reverse these cuts even
while saying he will look for ways to trim the cost of Medicare.
The Pinocchio Test
Four Pinocchios
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