FACT CHECK: It's a perfect storm of Frankenfacts

EDITOR’S NOTE _ An occa­sional look at polit­i­cal claims that take short­cuts with the facts or don’t tell the full story

WASHINGTON (AP) — And now, to con­clude, a few part­ing misstatements.

Come Wednes­day, or some­time later if the elec­tion result is still in the bal­ance, only one man will be left stand­ing and the loser’s inven­tory of mis­lead­ing claims, out-of-context asser­tions and warped-reality adver­tis­ing will fade into some inglo­ri­ous cor­ner of his­tory. But we’re not quite done with them yet.

In cam­paign speeches that serve as clos­ing argu­ments, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney are still at it. Rom­ney is still mis­rep­re­sent­ing the impact of Obama’s health care law on your wal­let. Obama is still mask­ing the sticker shock of his plan to tax the rich.

Call it a per­fect storm of Franken­facts. Here’s a sam­pling of the claims com­ing from the stump and the air­waves in the campaign’s 11th-hour tempest:

OBAMA in Green Bay, Wis., on Thurs­day: “It’s time to use the sav­ings from end­ing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to start pay­ing down our debts here and rebuild­ing Amer­ica. Right now, we can put peo­ple back to work fix­ing up roads and bridges. Right now, we can expand broad­band into rural neigh­bor­hoods and make sure our schools are state of the art.

THE FACTS: If say­ing things over and over could make them true, this would be true.

But it’s not. This claim is the kudzu of the Obama cam­paign, the weed that regrows no mat­ter how many times it’s whacked.

The wars were financed mostly with bor­row­ing, so end­ing them does not free a pile of cash for any­thing else. “Rebuild­ing Amer­ica” with war sav­ings merely means con­tin­u­ing to bor­row and pile up debt, but for pur­poses other than war.

___

ROMNEY cam­paign ad: “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bank­ruptcy and sold Chrysler to Ital­ians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Rom­ney will fight for every Amer­i­can job.”

THE FACTS: You wouldn’t know from this auda­cious account of the auto-industry cri­sis that:

—It’s over.

—Rom­ney also coun­seled bank­ruptcy for the automak­ers, but with­out the gov­ern­ment bailout that rep­re­sented its only real­is­tic chance of succeeding.

—Chrysler says the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing some of its Jeeps in China does not threaten Jeep pro­duc­tion in the U.S.

—Rom­ney wrongly pre­dicted dur­ing the cri­sis that if the com­pa­nies got a gov­ern­ment bailout, “You can kiss the Amer­i­can auto­mo­tive indus­try good­bye.” Both com­pa­nies have returned to profitability.

___

OBAMA in Green Bay: “If we’re seri­ous about the deficit, we’ve also got to ask the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans to go back to the tax rates that they paid when Bill Clin­ton was in office.”

THE FACTS: His tax plan is not just a return to the good old days. Yes, he wants to return to Clinton-era tax rates for cou­ples mak­ing over $250,000 and indi­vid­u­als mak­ing over $200,000. That means a top rate of 39.6 per­cent, up from 35 per­cent. But there’s more. His admin­is­tra­tion has already enacted new taxes on the wealthy, through the health care law, impos­ing a 0.9 per­cent Medicare sur­charge on richer house­holds and a 3.8 per­cent tax on invest­ment income for high earners.

Apart from the health care law, the pres­i­dent is also propos­ing a rule to ensure that house­holds earn­ing over $1 mil­lion pay a 30 per­cent min­i­mum tax rate. And he sup­ports rais­ing Medicare pre­mi­ums for well-to-do retirees.

___

ROMNEY in Roanoke, Va., on Thursday:

—“And that health insur­ance cost? They’ve gone up $2,500 a family.”

—“We’re gonna restore that fund­ing to Medicare, and also we’re gonna repeal and replace Oba­macare so your pre­mi­ums don’t go up by $2,500 a year.”

THE FACTS: First, Romney’s sug­ges­tion that pre­mi­ums have gone up $2,500 a year bears no sem­blance to real­ity. They haven’t gone up by quite that much over four years, either.

The total con­tri­bu­tion of work­ers and their employ­ers to a fam­ily health care plan has risen $2,370 on aver­age since 2009, Obama’s first year in office, accord­ing to annual sur­veys of work­place health insur­ance by the Kaiser Fam­ily Foun­da­tion, an author­ity cited by both polit­i­cal par­ties. That’s an aver­age increase of less than $600 a year.

Sec­ond, pre­mi­ums paid by work­ers have gone up much less than that. Employ­ers pay the largest share of health insur­ance and have absorbed most of the increases.

Health insur­ance pre­mi­ums paid by work­ers have risen $801 for a fam­ily plan over four years, or $172 for an indi­vid­ual plan.

More­over, Obama’s health care law came into effect in 2010. Over the period since then, the total cost of a fam­ily plan is $1,975 higher on aver­age, and the share paid by work­ers is up $319 in that time — alto­gether a far cry from the notion that Oba­macare is already cost­ing fam­i­lies thou­sands of dol­lars a year. Indeed, Kaiser’s experts, along with non­par­ti­san ana­lysts in the gov­ern­ment, say Obama’s law thus far has played only a mar­ginal role in ris­ing costs. Its main effects don’t start until 2014, when cov­er­age expan­sion kicks off. Obama has clearly over­sold the abil­ity of his law to bring costs down, but Romney’s asser­tion that it already is break­ing the bank is fanciful.

___

OBAMA in Green Bay: :

—“Another $5 tril­lion tax cut that favors the wealthy isn’t change.”

—“But if the price of peace in Wash­ing­ton is cut­ting deals that will kick stu­dents off of finan­cial aid, or get rid of fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood, or elim­i­nate health care for mil­lions on Med­ic­aid who are poor or elderly or dis­abled, just to give a mil­lion­aire a tax cut, I’m not hav­ing it.”

THE FACTS: This super­charged cri­tique of Romney’s agenda assigns a mis­lead­ing price tag to the Republican’s tax plan, which calls for tax cuts for all income groups, not just mil­lion­aires. Rom­ney is not propos­ing to “elim­i­nate health care” for Med­ic­aid recip­i­ents or to throw stu­dents to the wolves, although it’s within the bounds of polit­i­cal debate to assume the worst of your rival’s pol­icy ideas.

Obama gets the $5 tril­lion fig­ure from a fore­cast by the Tax Pol­icy Cen­ter that Romney’s tax cuts would reduce fed­eral rev­enue by $465 bil­lion in 2015 — in the ball­park of $5 tril­lion if spread over 10 years. But Obama is ignor­ing a cru­cial fea­ture of the plan: that Rom­ney says he would greatly lower its cost by reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing some tax cred­its, deduc­tions and exemp­tions, espe­cially for wealth­ier tax­pay­ers. Rom­ney won’t be spe­cific, but it’s clear $5 tril­lion is just one side of the equation.

___

ROMNEY in Roanoke: “We’re gonna cre­ate 12 mil­lion new jobs and more take-home pay.”

THE FACTS: Rom­ney never gets to the nitty-gritty of how these jobs would be cre­ated. He merely sketches a gen­eral five-point plan call­ing for lower taxes, more trade, bet­ter worker train­ing, deficit cuts and accel­er­ated energy production.

Still, he could well suc­ceed in this goal, because it is not par­tic­u­larly ambitious.

Most econ­o­mists think that about that many jobs will return over the next four years no mat­ter who wins, absent another big eco­nomic set­back. It doesn’t take boom times to cre­ate jobs at a rate of 3 mil­lion a year.

To reach Romney’s job pledge, the work­force would have to grow at an aver­age of 250,000 a month. While that’s above recently depressed aver­ages, it’s not abnor­mally high for non-recessionary times when the econ­omy is grow­ing at close to 3 per­cent or higher. Since July, the econ­omy has cre­ated an aver­age of 173,000 jobs a month.

In essence, then, Rom­ney with this claim is promis­ing a return to mod­est eco­nomic growth. Say­ing 12 mil­lion jobs sounds better.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.