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.
Revisiting whether Obama quoted Romney out of context
(Mandel Ngan — AFP/Getty Images)
Last week, we explored whether President Obama, in his campaign stump speech, has taken a quote by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney out of context. The only record we could find of Romney’s remarks was from an Associated Press article last December, and we could not find a full transcript. We awarded the president Two Pinocchios but said we would revisit the issue if we could obtain a transcript.
We now have one, and it sheds some more light on the discussion that late December day in Iowa. So, now let’s look at what the president said, what the AP reported and then what was actually said.
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.
Mitt Romney’s claim that 100,000 auto jobs have been lost under Obama
(Mary Altaffer/AP)
“We were able to help create over 100,000 jobs. On the president’s watch, about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers, so he’s hardly one to point a finger.”
— Mitt Romney, interview on Hot Air, May 16, 2011
The 100,000 jobs is back! The presumptive GOP nominee all but stopped mentioning he created 100,000 in the private sector after we declared in January that claim was untenable and unproven. The biggest problem is that Romney is counting all the jobs added by companies long after he had left the leadership of Bain Capital — and even after Bain’s investment in the companies had ended.
In the Hot Air interview, Romney even made this claim while at the same time arguing that a recent Obama campaign commercial slamming the job losses at a particular Bain investment was unfair because “the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital. I was no longer there, so that’s hardly something which is on my watch.” (Technically, Romney had not completely extricated himself from Bain but that’s another story.)
The logic there escapes us. Romney appears to be saying it is okay to count jobs created after he left Bain, but it’s not okay to count jobs lost after he left Bain.
As we have said, Romney “certainly has a good story to tell about knowing how to manage a business, spotting opportunities and understanding high finance.” But if he wants to wall off companies that failed after he stopped managing Bain, he also has to stop counting jobs created after he left Bain.
So Romney gets a “repeat offender” award — our crack graphics staff is still developing the icon — for once again saying he created 100,000 jobs. But let’s also look at his claim that 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry “on the president’s watch.” That’s a new one.
The Facts
The Romney campaign often cites Bureau of Labor Statistics to make its case that the number of overall jobs has declined in Obama’s presidency, so that’s the first place we looked.
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
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