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Subscribe to RSSThe Washington Post’s fact checker gives Obama four Pinocchios for saying on 60 Minutes, “Over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
“We are not trying to make excuses for the fiscal excesses of the Bush administration — and Congress — in the last decade,” the Post writes. “But at some point, a president has to take ownership of his own actions. Obama certainly inherited an economic mess, and that accounts for a large part of the deficit. But Obama pushed for spending increases and tax cuts that also have contributed in important ways to the nation’s fiscal deterioration. He certainly could argue that these were necessary and important steps to take, but he can’t blithely suggest that 90 percent of the current deficit “is as a consequence” of his predecessor’s policies — and not his own.”
Here’s Obama’s second ad hitting Romney for his 47% comments. It notes that people pay other taxes than just income taxes.
This past weekend, per NBC’s Kirstin Garriss, First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, urging delegates to vote this November while using the history of the organization to remind members of the importance of their vote on Saturday night. “And make no mistake about it: This is the march of our time -- marching door to door, registering people to vote. Marching everyone you know to the polls every single election,” she said. “See, this is the sit-in of our day. Sitting in a phone bank, sitting in your living room, calling everyone you know.”
Also during her speech, Garriss adds, Mrs. Obama reflected on civil rights events such as the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington as examples of regular people working together to get the right to vote. She called on the African Americans in the audience to take their right to vote seriously. “So when it comes to casting our ballots, it cannot just be ‘we the people’ who had time to spare on Election Day. Can't just be ‘we the people’ who really care about politics, or ‘we the people’ who happened to drive by a polling place on the way home from work. It must be all of us,” she said.
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LOL....this cat is such a putz!
But seriously, what did the liberal voters expect?!? The biggest thing he ran was his campaign! Remember??
But seriously Michael, he ran his first campaign perfectly, and it certainly looks like he's doing a pretty damned good job with this one.
Now, why don't you clear us up about what earned those four Pinocchio's. Remember, you guys aren't so very hot with numbers. Don't embarrass yourself.
David Walker
I would rather him run a so-so campaign in exchange for him doing the right things for this country!
Turning the United States into Greece 2.0 does not make Americans proud.....unless you're one of the 47 million getting free stuff at the expense of you hard-working neighbors! What would they care?
What liberals expect is a bunch of so called republicans frolicking along like the lap dogs they are waiting for each little gotcha moments they can savor . These little moments of which the so called republicans rant and rave about are Pyrrhic victories .
90% of $1.1 trillion is $990 billion. Add up the unfunded prescription drug plan $400 billion per year, the Wars $100 billion per year, and you get $500 billion per year.
The increased costs of the unemployed (unemployment compensation) add $100 billion per year and the increased costs associated with our Food Stamp program add $40 billion more to our deficit. This added to the $500 billion from above gives you $640 billion per year in increased costs as cited by Obama.
If you take the revenue effects of the Great Recession of 2008-2009 into account, we had $2.5 trillion in revenue in 2008 and only $2.16 trillion in revenue in 2010. This difference in revenue amounts to $340 billion per year.
So, we lost $340 billion in revenue and had $640 in increased costs due to wars, prescription drug program, and recession/recovery costs. This adds up to an increased budget deficit of $980 billion per year.
So, $10 billion per year (less than 1% of budget deficit) earns four Pinnochios. My figures aren't current to 2012 budget, but do reflect 2010 budget.
It seems to me that any sound analysis of a budget deficit must take into account both increased costs and revenue declines.
My conclusion is that the Washington Post should get a F in arithmetic.
In addition, another $60 billion a year in lost revenue per year from unfunded Bush tax cuts changes my previous figure of $10 billion unaccounted for, to $50 billion more than $990 billion in Obama's 90% figure. This allows plenty of room for current figures to be different than 2010 figures.
Washington Post obviously did not account for lost revenues from recession in its flawed analysis.
Shame on you, Washington Post.
Gee Michael1969:
Pretty poor deflection. All I asked was that you come up with some specifics and you ran away.
Now, for real information you might look at the posts of shaak322. The Washington Post staffers who came up with this are - speaking in arithmetic terms - zeroes.
Am I on the wrong site or something, a story negative about Obama?
Editor must be on vacation....
Michael, as soon as you invoke Greece you disqualify yourself from serious consideration. The situations of Greece and the US aren't remotely comparable. We have an industrial economy. Greece's is based on tourism. We have sovereign control over our currency. Greece is part of the EU. Etc.
Shut up now, before you continue embarrassing yourself.
Heres a little somthing from FOXNEWS . COM
Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words By Sally Kohn Published August 30, 2012 FoxNews.com
1. Dazzling At least a quarter of Americans still don’t know who Paul Ryan is, and only about half who know and have an opinion of him view him favorably. So, Ryan’s primary job tonight was to introduce himself and make himself seem likeable, and he did that well. The personal parts of the speech were very personally delivered, especially the touching parts where Ryan talked about his father and mother and their roles in his life. And at the end of the speech, when Ryan cheered the crowd to its feet, he showed an energy and enthusiasm that’s what voters want in leaders and what Republicans have been desperately lacking in this campaign. To anyone watching Ryan’s speech who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality. On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.
2. Deceiving On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold. The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated. Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling. Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing. Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period. Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan. Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.
3. Distracting And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about. Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters. Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street. Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president. Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit. These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance. At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution." Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate. Sally Kohn is a Fox News contributor and writer. You can find her online at foxnews.com
Four pinnochios? The fact-checker needs to check his facts rather than engaging in sematically meaningless blathering. President Obama gave a % number. That number can be checked. How much is revenue down because of the recession and the prior tax cuts? How much is revenue down because of Obama tax cuts? How much of increased spending is attributable to the two wars, Bush programs, and the recession? How much of increased spending is due to new programs under Obama? Add the numbers together and see what % is attributable to Bush and which % is attributable to Obama.
doing that would require, work...
The comment doesn't pass the smell test, but without crunching the numbers you can't rate it true or false...
Most of the studies that I have seen put the percentage as of FY 2010 at around 80%. The question would be how to characterize the extension of the Bush tax cuts in 2010 (do you continue to treat the lost revenue for the next two fiscal years as attributable to Bush or are they now Obama's responsibility).
Tmess - at that point, it is hard to tell. Republicans wouldnt' let them expire, but Obama didn't push for them to be ended due to the recession. Obama certainly isn't the cause of that lost revenue, but he didn't follow the campaign promise to end those tax cuts either, so i'd be content to say he's responsible for half of the lost revenue after 2010 (if i'm trying to be fair... were i vindictive i'd go 100% one way or the other depending on mood and who i'm more angry at).
we can affirm that 90% would be a stretch given that 80% is the 2010 estimate, and everything after that would have less blame on Bush and more responsibility on the President's plate (should be congress, but that is a different topic hehe). 4 noses is a bit much compared with the whoppers that R/R are constantly putting out though...
Romney/Ryan 2012!
for dogcatchers? I don't think they have a chance.
Obama/Biden 2012
I don't think Pres Obama would have to spend as much if it wasn't for what he
mentioned - wars not paid for, prescription drug plan also not paid for and the
economic crisis. All things considered, if he hadn’t taken the actions he took,
we don't have to imagine what would be our situation now: we just have to see
what is happening in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries where austerity measures have been applied.
Why did the Republican congress vote to dishonestly wage war off budget in 2003? To then turn around and criticize the next administration for honestly adding the wars to the budget, thus adding to the debt doubles that dishonesty.
How about Obama math! 365 thousand Americans lost jobs in September, 114 thousand jobs were created in September. That is a net decline of 251thousand jobs! And the unemployment rate went down 3 tenths of a point!
Hence Obama math. 12.1 million Americans are unemployed! Less Americans are working today, then when Obama took office!
The only time Obama isn't lying is when his lips aren't moving!!
My fellow Americans, especially the founders-loving right: According to The Constitution of the United States of America: ARTICLE I Section 7. "All Bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives;" Last time I checked, the House was still controlled by the GOP. Yeah, the President can sign it or not, and the Senate can concur or not, but Presidents don't really have that much control over the economy. All this nonsense is just the usual distract-and-deceive attack to divert attention from the real culprits: the self-serving twits in Congress, who reflect the whims (if not long-term best interests) of their innumerate and ill-informed constituents.