N.H. Debate: The Dem’s Turn

From Factcheck.org

When the going gets tough, the tough get misleading.

Summary

During the Democratic portion of the Jan. 5 New Hampshire debate:

• Obama claimed we are “back where we started two years ago” in Iraq. Actually, all indicators of violence show dramatic improvement compared with two years ago.
  

• Clinton repeated a misleading claim that the 2005 energy bill was “larded with all kinds of special interest breaks” for the oil industry. Actually, the bill resulted in a net increase in taxes on the oil industry, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

• Obama stated that U.S. medical care costs “twice as much per capita as any other advanced nation,” which is incorrect. U.S. spending is double the average, but not double that of all others.

• Clinton said there is no reason that U.S. troops should be in Iraq “beyond today,” but she has also conceded that she might keep combat troops fighting there for years.
  

In the analysis section we note further misstatements and twisted facts, and we find that Clinton was close to the mark when she criticized Obama for shifting positions on the USA Patriot Act.

Analysis

The Democratic debate took place on the same stage at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire as the just-completed Republican version and had the same moderators: ABC’s Charles Gibson and WMUR’s Scott Spradling. There were only four participants: Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Improvement in Iraq

Obama vastly understated the improvement in the security situation in Iraq when he said:

Obama: We saw a spike in the violence, the surge reduced that violence, and we now are, two years later, back where we started two years ago. We have gone full circle at enormous cost to the American people.

There was indeed a spike in the violence in Iraq during the last two years that has been receding as of late. Most recently, nearly all statistical indicators show that violence is sharply lower than it was two years ago, according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index.

Clinton’s Oily Charge

Clinton repeated a bit of recycled bunk about tax cuts for the oil industry.

Clinton: You know, the energy bill that passed in 2005 was larded with all kinds of special interest breaks, giveaways to the oil companies. Senator Obama voted for it. I did not because I knew that it was going to be an absolute nightmare. Now we’re all out on the campaign trail talking about taking the tax subsidies away from the oil companies, some of which were in that 2005 energy bill.

We’ve called Clinton on this once before. It’s true that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained $14.3 billion in tax breaks, but most of those breaks were for electric utilities, nuclear power plants, alternative fuels research and subsidies for energy efficient cars and homes. In fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the $2.6 billion in tax breaks for oil companies was offset by $2.9 billion in tax increases. The net was a $300 million tax increase over 11 years.

Double the Health Spending? Not Quite.

Obama repeated an old chestnut about health care costs:

Obama: Our medical care costs twice as much per capita as any other advanced nation.

This is an exaggeration. The United States does spend nearly twice as much on average as most developed nations, but it is inaccurate to say that it spends twice as much as “any other.” In a 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation report comparing the health care spending of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, the United States came in first at $5,711 per capita. But Luxembourg spent $4,611, only $1,100 less per capita than the U.S. The next biggest spender, Switzerland, spent $3,874, also far more than half of U.S. spending. France’s per capita spending was $3,048, still more than half of the costs in this country. KFF noted, however, that the United States’ spending was “over 90% higher than in many other countries that we would consider global competitors.”

Bring the Troops Home. Now. Sort Of.

Clinton said she sees no reason U.S. troops should remain in Iraq “beyond today,” but she also has said U.S. troops could remain in some combat roles in Iraq for several years.

Clinton: So it’s time to bring our troops home and to bring them home as quickly and responsibly as possible and unfortunately, I don’t see any reason why they should remain beyond, you know, today. I think George Bush doesn’t intend to bring them home, but certainly I have said when I’m president I will. Within 60 days, I’ll start that withdrawal.

Clinton manages to say, within just a few sentences, that she’ll start the withdrawal “within 60 days” of becoming president; she doesn’t see why our forces “should remain beyond, you know, today”; and we should “bring them home as quickly and responsibly as possible.” What does all this mean? It’s really hard to say.

We noted in September, after a debate in which the candidates were questioned by NBC’s Tim Russert, that Clinton has put a number of caveats on her goal of having the troops out by the end of her first term. And Michael Dobbs, who writes the Washington Post’s Fact Checker feature, has assembled some of the conditions Clinton has listed that might require a continued troop presence, such as continuing counterterrorism operations, protecting the U.S. embassy, countering Iranian influence, helping the Kurds and training the Iraqis.

We take no position on whether withdrawing the troops immediately, in stages or not at all is the best course. But we do quarrel with simplistic applause lines that mask a much more complicated position, and are thus misleading.

Clinton vs. Obama

Clinton took direct aim at Obama, her chief rival at the moment, by portraying him as a flip-flopper, and she connects fairly solidly:

Clinton: You’ve changed positions within three years on, you know, a range of issues that you put forth when you ran for the Senate and now you have changed. You know, you said you would vote against the Patriot Act; you came to the Senate, you voted for it. You said that you would vote against funding for the Iraq war; you came to the Senate and you voted for $300 billion of it.

Clinton is correct to say that Obama opposed the Patriot Act during his run for the U.S. Senate. She’s relying on a 2003 Illinois National Organization for Women questionnaire in which Obama wrote that he would vote to “repeal the Patriot Act” or replace it with a “new, carefully crafted proposal.” As for whether or not he would have voted against it when it was first proposed in 2001, Obama said in October 2004 that he wasn’t sure:

Obama: I like to think that, had I been in the Senate, I would have cast the second vote against the Patriot Act. … But this is how much I admire Russ Feingold: I can’t guarantee it. I say that I would have voted against the Patriot Act. But I wasn’t there in the pressure of that moment – so shortly after Sept. 11 and with anthrax being mailed into Capitol Hill.

(Feingold’s was the lone Senate vote against the USA Patriot Act in 2001.)

When it came time to reauthorize the law in 2005, though, Obama voted in favor of it. He started out opposing it: In December 2005, then-Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) brought the bill up for a vote, and Obama said on the Senate floor that he would vote against ending debate – a position equivalent to declaring a lack of support for the measure. He followed through and voted against the motion, and the Patriot Act reauthorization bill sat dormant until 2006. Then in February of that year, Obama said on the floor that he would support the Patriot Act’s reauthorization. When Frist brought the bill to the floor again in March 2006, Obama both voted for cloture and for the Patriot Act reauthorization conference report, sending the bill to the president. He also later supported a bill with additional amendments to the Patriot Act, including some civil liberties protections.

Clinton, by the way, followed exactly the same path on the 2005 bill, from speaking in opposition to voting for it.

Clinton vs. Obama, Part II

Update, Jan. 7: We did not include the following section in the story when we posted it last night because we were promised additional information by the Obama campaign. We now have that material and can assess the charge by Clinton.

The second part of Clinton’s quote in the section above, which tars Obama with flip-flopping on the war in Iraq, refers to his position on an $87 billion war funding supplemental bill that came to a vote in 2003. In a speech to the New Trier Democratic Party in Illinois in November of that year, he said he would have voted against it. Specifically, he told the crowd:

Obama: Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars, I said “no.” I said no unequivocally because, at a certain point, we have to say no to George Bush. If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance.

Four years later Obama attempted to add context to his New Trier remarks in this May 2007 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” saying he supported $67 billion of the $87 billion since that money was directed to the troops:

George Stephanopoulos: But back in 2003, you were against supplemental funding for the war. You gave a speech where you said I would vote against the $87 billion.
Obama: That is true. … And the reason was because I was trying to establish a principle at that time and I said this at the time that for us to be giving $20 billion in reconstruction dollars in a no-bid process where money could potentially be wasted was a problem. But what I also said at that time was that the 67 billion that was needed for the troops was something that I would gladly vote for and I’ve been consistent in saying that as much as I think this has been if not the biggest then one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history, I want to make sure that our troops who are on the ground who perform magnificently aren’t caught in the political cross fire in Washington.

It’s true Obama had made the distinction, but we were unable to find any evidence that he made it in his New Trier speech or that it was as detailed as he claims. Neither the Obama campaign nor the New Trier Democrats could provide a transcript. He did make this distinction in an October 2003 NAACP forum, according to this report from The Hyde Park Citizen, a local Illinois paper:

Hyde Park Citizen: Obama said he would put more money toward the troops, but not rebuilding Iraq. “We need to make sure that every dollar that is spent in Iraq is spent at home,” he said. “We could have had our allies paying for [their] building process and contributing to the troops.”

But Obama has since voted in favor of Iraq war funding, as has Clinton, on at least 14 separate occasions. Those bills have included a number of line-items ranging from funding for Iraqi reconstruction – the type of funding Obama said he would vote against – to unrelated activities such as tsunami relief and Hurricane Katrina recovery.

The Obama campaign argues that Obama’s support for war funding has been contingent on the money being attached to a troop withdrawal timetable. This has been true for a majority of his most recent votes in 2007. But his earlier votes, dating back to 2005, came with no such caveat, and we found only one occasion prior to 2007 when Obama voted against a motion to push forward funding for the war. But that vote was immediately followed by one in favor of the underlying bill.

Score this one for Clinton, though it’s not a home run.

A Billion Here, a Billion There…

During the debate, three of the four Democrats gave different totals for the cost of the Iraq war (Clinton did not proffer a number).

Obama: It has cost us upwards of $1 trillion. It may get close to 2 (trillion dollars).
Richardson: … the $570 billion that we’ve spent on this war.
Edwards: $600 billion dollars and counting.

Richardson was closest when he said the U.S had spent $570 billion, but he was still over by, oh, about $120 billion. According to the Congressional Research Service, spending on the Iraq war through FY 2007 was $448.6 billion. Edwards was farther off when he said $600 billion. That figure is closer to the amount spent on all military operations, including Afghanistan ($608.8 billion) Or the amount that has been requested for Iraq through the next year ($606.9 billion.)

Obama doubled the numbers when he said, “It has cost us upwards of $1 trillion. It may get close to 2 (trillion dollars).” He is most likely citing the work of the Democratic majority’s staff on the Joint Economic Committee that attempted to estimate the “total economic cost” by calculating the “shadow cost” of the war, an estimated figure that accounts for the loss of cash flow, interest and available capital to the American taxpayer.

Ode to the Patient’s Bill of Rights

John Edwards claimed to have been one of three authors of the Patient’s Bill of Rights. Clinton pointed out that it never became law. Everyone said that Bush killed it.

Edwards: What we did – and I didn’t do it alone, don’t claim to have done it alone – but I, Senator McCain who was here earlier, Senator Kennedy, the three of us wrote the Patient’s Bill of Rights, the three of us took on the powerful insurance industry and their lobby every single day of the fight for the Patient’s Bill of Rights and we got that bill through the United States Senate and got it passed.

Clinton: You know, Senator Edwards did work and get the Patient’s Bill of Rights through the Senate; it never got through the House. … We don’t have a Patient’s Bill of Rights.

Edwards: Because George Bush – George Bush killed it.

Clinton: Well, that’s right, he killed it.

Edwards is correct that he was a prime mover behind the bill. And Clinton is right in saying it never became law. But Bush wasn’t the only executioner. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate never entered serious negotiations to resolve differences between the Senate’s bill and the much weaker version that passed the House.

Richardson Recycles

Richardson repeated some of his dubious boasts yet again, and he’s waited long enough on one of them that he’s almost right: “I’ve created 80,000 new jobs. … I’ve insured kids under 12 in my state. I’ve improved education.” In fact, New Mexico hasn’t yet seen the 80,000 job gain that Richardson has been boasting of for more than a year, starting at a time when the rise during his term in total nonfarm employment in the state was only 68,100. As we said in August when we first exposed this falsehood, Richardson will eventually be right. But not yet. As of the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released last week, the state had gained only 79,400 jobs since the month before Richardson took office.

And while it’s true that New Mexico teacher salaries have gone up and some test scores have improved a bit, the reading scores for eighth-grade students have actually fallen since Richardson took office. The state remains near the bottom in all student test categories.

Return to Sender

A couple of statements were so wildly off-base that we’re wondering if the candidates simply made verbal typos. Still, we feel obliged to correct the record. One of these flubs was by Edwards, when he said that he “saw a projection just a week or so ago suggesting that America could lose as many as 20 [million] to 30 million more jobs over the next decade.” Maybe he was referring to certain categories of jobs, because the U.S. is expected to have a net gain in jobs overall – almost as many as Edwards says we’ll lose. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employment is expected to increase from 150.6 million in 2006 to 166.2 million in 2016, or about 10 percent. Things are somewhat bleaker in the manufacturing industry, where BLS predicts that 1.5 million jobs will be lost by 2016. While bad, that’s actually not as bad as the 3 million manufacturing jobs that BLS says we’ve lost between 1996 and 2006.

Update, Jan. 7: After this article appeared, the Edwards campaign contacted us to give the source for his statement. The senator was referring to a projection by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal group critical of reduced trade barriers, that between 18 percent and 22 percent of today’s jobs “could potentially be offshored,” meaning sent overseas. The report stressed, however, that of these “potentially” lost jobs only a fraction were likely to be lost, in fact. And the report made no attempt to balance lost jobs against those gained in U.S. industries that export goods or services.

The other statement involved Richardson, who said that “there’s been a proliferation of loose nuclear weapons, mainly in the hands of terrorists, that could cross presumably a border.” But neither the FBI nor the CIA nor the National Threat Initiative has found evidence that terrorists currently have nuclear weapons.

– by Viveca Novak, with Brooks Jackson, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Correction, Jan. 8: In our original article, we incorrectly said that Bill Richardson was mistaken in citing the price of gasoline in New Hampshire. An observant reader alerted us to the fact that Richardson was talking about the price of home heating oil, not gasoline. Richardson was correct to say that home heating oil in the state is at its highest price ever, and in fact costs slightly more than the figure he cited.

 

 

 

 

Sources

Obama at New Trier. 21 Mar. 2007. The Politico (via YouTube). 6 Jan. 2008.

ABC “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Guest: Barack Obama. 13 May 2007. Transcript. Federal News Service.

Sen. Obama Promised to Support Repealing PATRIOT Act, Then Voted to Extend It. 6 Jan. 2008. Hillary Clinton for President. 6 Jan. 2008

Illinois NOW Questionnaire for Senator Barack Obama. 10 Sept. 2003. Illinois National Organization for Women [via ABC News]. 6 Jan. 2008.

Senate Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on the Patriot Act. 15 Dec. 2005. U.S. Senate. 6 Jan. 2008.

Congressional Record pg. S13712

Obama, Barack. Senate Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on S. 2271 – USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization. 16 Feb. 2006. U.S. Senate. 6 Jan. 2008.

Senate Roll Call Vote No. 25

“War at any Price: The total economic costs of the war beyond the Federal Budget,” Joint Economic Committee. Prepared by the majority staff. Nov. 2007.

Amy, Belasco. “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11.” Congressional Research Service. 9 Nov. 2007.

Major Executive Speeches: Global Intiative Nuclear Terrorism Conference. 11 June 2007. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 6 Jan. 2008.

The Worldwide Threat in 2003: Evolving Dangers in a Complex World. 11 Feb. 2003. Central Intelligence Agency. 6 Jan. 2008.

Bunn, Matthew. “Securing the Bomb 2007.” The Nuclear Threat Initiative (2007): 1-188.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Retail Gasoline Prices by Grade by Formulation.” EIA Web site, 6 Jan. 2008.

Oil Price Information Service, New Hampshire average. AAA, 6 Jan. 2008.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Retail Gasoline Historical Prices.” EIA Web site, 6 Jan. 2006.

Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, James Lin, “Quantifying the Threat of Offshoring.” Economic Policy Institute, 14 Nov. 2007.

Chinn, Lesley R. “Eleven Senate Candidates Debate Issues at NAACP.” Hyde Park Citizen. 9 Oct. 2003: 44.

Senate Vote 109, 2005
Senate Vote 117, 2005
Senate Vote 252, 2005
Senate Vote 254, 2005
Senate Vote 326, 2005
Senate Vote 364, 2005
Senate Vote 366, 2005
Senate Vote 112, 2006
Senate Vote 171, 2006
Senate Vote 261, 2006
Senate Vote 117, 2007
Senate Vote 125, 2007
Senate Vote 126, 2007
Senate Vote 147, 2007
Senate Vote 172, 2007
Senate Vote 181, 2007

N.H. Debate: The GOP Field

From Factcheck.org.

Republican candidates swing hard, tally some factual strikeouts

Summary

Republican and Democratic candidates participated in double-header debates in New Hampshire Jan. 5 in advance of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Republicans were up first, and they got a little wild with their swings:

• Romney claimed that the 47 million Americans who lack health care are not covered because they say “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” Experts say that very few who are offered insurance turn it down and that the uninsured get worse care.

• Giuliani falsely blamed President Clinton for cuts in the military that occurred in large part under President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. He said that “the Army had been at 725,000; it’s down to 500,000.” That’s true, but it was down to 572,423 by the time Clinton took office.

• McCain recalled that he “strongly disagreed” with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and had “no confidence” in his Iraq strategy “at the time.” But he didn’t say publicly that he had no confidence in Rumsfeld until December 2004, after Bush was reelected and well after the war began.
  .
• Romney falsely denied that an attack ad called McCain’s immigration bill “amnesty,” though it does. One of his Web ads also attacks McCain for supporting “amnesty.” He conceded during the debate that McCain’s bill “technically” isn’t amnesty.

• Giuliani claimed that “economists” say health insurance rates would fall by up to 50 percent if millions more shopped for policies individually. Once again, his campaign was unable to produce a single economist who supports that figure.

• Romney claimed his Massachusetts state insurance program had reduced the number of uninsured in Massachusetts by 300,000. That’s the number who have gained coverage under the system, but many were covered previously through other means.

There were other false and misleading statements, which we note in the body of this article. We will turn to misstatements by the Democratic candidates in a second article.

Analysis

The (slightly) narrowed Republican field debated at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson took part. Charles Gibson of ABC and Scott Spradling of WMUR-TV moderated.

Romney’s Freeloaders

Romney offered a theory for the number of uninsured that is simply false:

Romney: And the reason health care isn’t working like a market right now is you have 47 million people that are saying, “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” That doesn’t work.

This idea – that most uninsured Americans simply don’t feel like having health insurance – has been heard before from this year’s GOP field. We addressed it here, after Huckabee claimed at a Dec. 10 debate that a third of the uninsured "think they’re healthy and invincible." Experts say this is simply not the case: Most people who are offered insurance do not turn it down, neither because of perceived invincibility nor from an unwillingness to "play" the insurance game.

The National Academies report that "only 4 percent of all workers ages 18 to 44 (roughly 3 million people) are uninsured because they decline available workplace health insurance, and many do so because they cannot afford the cost." A 2007 study published in Health Affairs found that 56 percent of the uninsured were neither eligible for public coverage nor able to afford insurance without assistance.  This study also found that 20 percent of the uninsured could have afforded coverage, but even leaving aside other factors like being turned down for insurance, that’s hardly 47 million people refusing to “play.”

Romney is also misleading when he implies that the uninsured are simply choosing between toeing the line and freeloading as two roughly equal ways of obtaining health care. While uninsured individuals can get a certain amount of free emergency care, it is by no means comparable to the care given to those with insurance. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the uninsured have less access to care, are more likely to be hospitalized, are often financially unable to follow treatment plans, get less preventive care and are in general poorer health than the insured. Poorer health among the uninsured could also affect their ability to purchase private coverage, since insurance companies often reject individuals with preexisting conditions.

Rudy’s Historic Rewrite

Giuliani falsely blamed President Clinton for cuts in the military that happened mostly under a Republican administration:

Giuliani: Bill Clinton cut the military drastically. It’s called the peace dividend, one of those nice-sounding phrases, very devastating. It was a 25, 30 percent cut in the military. President Bush has never made up for that. We – our Army had been at 725,000; it’s down to 500,000.

Actually, most of the cutting to which Giuliani refers occurred during the administration of George H.W. Bush. At the end of fiscal year 1993 (which was Bush’s last one in office), the Army had 572,423 active-duty soldiers – a far cry from 725,000. In fact, to get to that number, one has to go back to 1990, during the first gulf war. Moreover, Clinton’s cuts in the military, while large, were nowhere close to 25 percent to 30 percent. Between 1993 and 2001, the Army went from 572,423 to 480,801, which is a decline of 16 percent. The entire military went from 1,705,103 to 1,385,116, a decrease of 18.8 percent.

Compare that with the far larger cuts made during the first Bush administration: In 1989, the military stood at 2,130,229 and the Army had 769,741 soldiers. By 1993, those numbers had declined by 19.9 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively.

And as we’ve pointed out before, it was the first Bush administration – specifically then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney – that began bragging openly of the peace dividend.

McCain’s Questionable Timeline

In his rush to criticize Donald Rumsfeld’s defense strategy, Sen. John McCain did some rewriting of his personal history:

McCain: Now, I strongly disagree with the strategy employed by Secretary Rumsfeld, and by the way, I’m the only one here that disagreed at the time. And I’m the only one at the time that said we’ve got to employ a new strategy and outlined what it was, which is the Petraeus strategy. And I said at the time I had no confidence in the then-secretary of defense.

It’s true that McCain was an early critic of Rumsfeld’s strategy in Iraq. In a November 2003 interview with PBS’ Jim Lehrer, McCain said:

McCain: I respect the opinions of Secretary Rumsfeld and our military commanders but. … All of the trends are in the wrong direction. … And so in my view we need more special forces, more Marines, more counter intelligence, more MPs, more of the kinds of forces that do counter insurgency work.

And it’s also true that McCain refused to offer Rumsfeld a vote of confidence. When President Bush reappointed Rumsfeld as secretary of defense following his 2004 reelection, McCain responded, “The president of the United States was reelected by a majority of the American people, and I respect his right. And I will work with the president obviously and with the secretary of defense.” But when specifically asked whether his comment was a vote of confidence, McCain replied, “No, it is not.”

But McCain’s expression of no confidence came in December 2004 – well into the Iraq war. Rumsfeld’s decision to invade with a much smaller force than the one suggested by his more traditional generals – the famous “shock and awe” strategy – was implemented in March 2003.

Hollow Denials on “Amnesty”

Romney was wrong when he denied that his attack ads described McCain’s immigration bill as “amnesty” for illegal aliens:

McCain: [T]he fact is it’s it [sic] not amnesty. And for you to describe
it as you do in the attack ads, my friend, you can spend your whole
fortune on these attack ads, but it still won’t be true.

Romney: No, no, no, no. I get a chance to respond to this. I’m
sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I
don’t call it amnesty. What I say is – and you just described what
most people would say is a form of amnesty.

In fact Romney has been running an ad since Dec. 28 that says “McCain pushed to let every illegal immigrant stay here permanently” while Romney “opposes amnesty for illegals,” adding: “Mitt Romney, John McCain, there is a difference.” That’s pretty clearly accusing McCain of supporting “amnesty.” Otherwise there would be no “difference” on that issue. (The ad also falsely accuses McCain of supporting payment of Social Security benefits to illegal aliens. See our Dec. 28 article for more on the ad.)

Romney also released a Web ad called “Twists” on Jan. 4 that says “McCain supported this year’s amnesty bill.” And even as the debate was in progress, the Romney campaign sent out an e-mail saying, “Sen. McCain Still Won’t Admit He Supported Amnesty.”

We give credit to Romney for conceding during the debate that the McCain immigration bill “technically” would not have granted amnesty, which dictionaries define as a pardon. The bill would have required payment of thousands of dollars in fines and fees by any illegal alien applying for legal status. But Romney’s denial that his advertising accuses McCain of supporting “amnesty” rings hollow.

For McCain’s part, he denied ever favoring amnesty.

McCain: Let me just say I’ve never supported amnesty.

McCain is right when he says that his bill required penalties to be paid by illegals trying to adjust their status. But he himself has in the past used the “a” word to describe what he had in mind – for instance, in an interview with the Tucson Citizen on May 29, 2003.

McCain: “Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens.

And going back farther, McCain used the term in a 2000 press release to describe his support for a bill that would allow more Latino immigrants in this country to gain citizenship without having to return to their home countries. The release is still posted on his Web site.

Rudy’s Fluctuating Fantasy Number

Giuliani repeated his unsupported claim that health insurance premiums would fall by 30 percent or more if millions more bought them individually:

Giuliani: Only 17 million Americans right now buy their own health insurance. If 50 million Americans were buying their own health insurance – because it would be just as tax-advantageous to do it that way – and we had a health savings account, people – economists believe there’d be a 30 [percent] to 50 percent
reduction in the cost of health insurance, and quality would come up.

That's a change from last October, when Giuliani claimed that the reduction would be "more than 50 percent." When we challenged the figure then, the campaign could produce no studies or statistics to support the mayor's statement. We concluded that "the only backup we could find is Giuliani’s own faith in the virtue of free markets."

This time Giuliani is saying that unnamed "economists" predict a somewhat smaller reduction of "30 to 50 percent," but once again his campaign cannot back up his claim. When we asked for the name of a single economist who had produced such a figure, in a peer-reviewed journal or elsewhere, it furnished us with a quote from a campaign adviser, Scott W. Atlas, M.D. He is a professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical School, but he is not an economist. And Dr. Atlas did not directly support the claim of a 30 percent to 50 percent reduction, though he did express a belief that insurance rates would fall "drastically":

Atlas: If we greatly expand the number of people who purchase
health insurance in the private market, we will be able to drastically bring down costs. As we expand the private market with value conscious consumers – as Mayor Giuliani wants to do – health care will not be immune to the laws of economics. It is a simple fact that with a more open and robust market with more consumers shopping for insurance they want instead of what government mandates impose upon them, and with more suppliers competing to attract that money, prices will come down, choice of insurance products will increase, and quality will go up.

We have no quarrel with anyone voicing personal faith in free markets. But Giuliani is wrong to say that "economists" have produced a precise estimate of savings. He implies scholarly support that – so far as we can tell and his campaign has been able to show – doesn't exist. 

RomneyCare Rewritten

Romney went a step or two too far in his claims about the Massachusetts health insurance reform he signed into law.

Romney: And since we’ve put our plan in place last April, we’ve now had 300,000 people who were uninsured sign up for this insurance. Private insurance.

We looked into this boast previously, when Romney said the figure was 200,000, and we found that it was not known how many truly had been uninsured versus how many had dropped other policies in favor of the state's offerings. Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Commonwealth Connector, the agency charged with implementing the health plan, told us that "certainly there are people who didn’t have insurance and people who did." 

The Connector's Web site, which does say it expected 300,000-plus to be enrolled by Jan. 1, 2008, estimates that that number includes "over half" of those who didn't have insurance before the state plan was implemented (an estimate that would put the previously uninsured at about 200,000). But we couldn't find a concrete number of how many of the uninsured have gained coverage under the state's health plan. The state agency that annually determines the number without health insurance doesn't have such up-to-date figures. The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance Policy found that 395,000 people in the state didn't have insurance between January and July 2006 (pre-reform), and it credited the state's health care plan for a drop of 40,000 of the uninsured by the same time period in 2007. It's likely that many more have signed up since then, as the deadline for getting insurance under the state mandate was Dec. 31, 2007.

Romney was also incorrect to say all of the 300,000 had signed up for "private insurance." Actually, most of them gained state-subsidized coverage. The Connector reports that "some 100,000 will be added to private commercial insurance and over 200,000 will enroll in subsidized or partially-subsidized state programs," including the state Medicaid and SCHIP programs. 

U.S. “Best” Health Care System?

Giuliani said the U.S. has "the best health care system in the world" because it is private:

Giuliani: The reality is that, with all of its infirmities and difficulties, we have the best health care system in the world. And it may be because we have a system that still is, if not wholly, at least in large part still private.

Fred Thompson and others at the debate agree with the "best health care system" assessment, which is an article of faith for many Americans. We won't quibble about which "system" is best, but we do note that the U.S. decidedly does not have the best health care outcomes.

The U.S. scores poorly on a number of crucial indicators. The World Health Organization ranked it 37th in health care performance in its 2000 World Health Report, just below Costa Rica. The CIA World Factbook rates the U.S. lower than France, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union average, among others, for both life expectancy and infant mortality (note that most of those countries use a form of the GOP-dreaded "socialized medicine.") A 2006 study of infant mortality rates by the charitable group Save the Children found that the U.S. was tied for second-to-last place among industrialized nations.

Warring Words

Former governors Huckabee and Romney sparred over what each of them had said previously about the war in Iraq. Both, as it turns out, denied views that they had, in fact, expressed. Last night, Huckabee said he supported the surge before Romney did:

Huckabee: I supported the president and the war before you did. I supported the surge when you didn’t.

Wrong. Romney first came out in support of a surge on Jan. 10, 2007, just before President Bush spoke to the nation on the topic. Romney said in a statement that "I believe securing Iraqi civilians requires additional troops." 

Huckabee, speaking on MSNBC two weeks later, on Jan. 24, wasn't so enthusiastic:

Huckabee (MSNBC, Jan. 24) : I’m not sure that I support the troop surge, if that surge has to come from our Guard and Reserve troops, which have really been overly stretched.

Huckabee had other opportunities in January 2007 to express an opinion on the surge, but he gave vague answers, often saying that the president was bold to make the decision without expressing his own opinion on the plan. E.J Dionne of The Washington Post called it "loyal distance" in a Jan. 16 column. This stance was illustrated on Fox & Friends on Jan. 11:

Huckabee (Fox & Friends, Jan. 11): Well, it’s a pretty gutsy thing for the president to do, first of all, to say that there have been mistakes. And then to say we’re going to put more troops in – I mean, he’s putting a lot of things on the line.

Later in the exchange, Romney countered Huckabee's charge that he had supported a timed withdrawal:

Romney: I do not – I do not support and have never support a timed withdrawal. So that’s wrong, Governor. You know, it’s – it’s really helpful if you talk about your policies and the things you believe and let me talk about my policies. And my policy is I’ve never talked about a time withdrawal with a date certain for us to leave.

Huckabee wins this one. It's true that Romney has never cited a date certain for pulling out the troops. But he has said that "there's no question" there would have to be a timetable, it would just be kept hush-hush. Here's what he told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an April 2007 interview:

Robin Roberts, ABC News: Do you believe that there should be a, a timetable in withdrawing the troops?

Romney: Well, there’s no question but that the president and Prime Minister al Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re gonna be gone.

Also, in September at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Romney described a three-step plan for withdrawing the troops, saying that U.S. forces could move to a “support role” in 2008 and that ultimately “our troops are out of Iraq and are available if absolutely needed.“

Maybe in the Afterlife

In trying to lecture Ron Paul about the history of Islamic terrorism, Romney gets a demerit for saying:

Romney: I’d read their writings. I’d read what they write to one another, and that’s why when someone like Sayyid Qutb lays out the philosophy of radical jihadism and says we want to kill Anwar Sadat – when there’s the assassination of Anwar Sadat, it has nothing to do with us.

Qutb was a prominent Islamic writer and intellectual whose ideas, including the concept of jihad, are cited as an early influence on modern Islamic extremism. But his main antagonist was the government of Gamal Abdul Nasser, Sadat’s predecessor. Qutb was executed in 1966, four years before Sadat became president and 15 years before his assassination. Huckabee correctly noted this fact later in the exchange.

And That’s Not All…

We have other quibbles, some of them old. For instance, when Giuliani said yet again that New York “was not a sanctuary city” when he was mayor, we reminisced about our article from less than a month ago, in which we said that in a Congressional Research Service report, New York’s policies were found to be similar to those of other sanctuary cities, including those that used that very term.

Finally, we were curious about Romney’s statement that he’d be “honest” with the American people and tell them that “we can’t become energy independent in 10 years.” He’s right, of course. In fact, the Energy Information Administration projects that even in 2030 the net imported share of energy used in the U.S. will be about 29 percent, just 1 percentage point lower than the share in 2006. But we just wonder what’s led Romney down the path of realism here, when just last week he was telling us in an ad that “in the next 10 years, we’ll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last 10 centuries.” Not in the energy area, evidently.

– by Viveca Novak, with Brooks Jackson, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Sources

Massachusetts Commonwealth Connector. “About the Connector: Overview.” www.MAHealthConnector.org, 6 Dec. 2007.

Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. “HCFP Survey Finds 40,000 Decrease in State’s Uninsured.” 27 Aug. 2007

World Health Organization. “World Health Report 2000.” 21 Jun. 2000.

CIA World Factbook. “Rank Order – infant mortality rate.” 13 Dec. 2007.

CIA World Factbook. “Rank Order – life expectancy at birth.” 13 Dec. 2007.

Save the Children. “State of the World’s Mothers 2006.” 9 May 2006.

Kaiser Family Foundation. “The Uninsured: A Primer.”

Snyder, Lynn Page. “The Uninsured: Myths and Realities.” Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2001.

Dubay, Lisa, John Holahan and Allison Cook. “The Uninsured and the
Affordability of Health Insurance Coverage.” Health Affairs. Nov. 2006.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 1989. January 6, 2007.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 1993. January 6, 2007.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 2001. January 6, 2007.

Fred Kaplan, “The Flaw in Shock and Awe,” Slate.com. March 26, 2003.

NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, “Newsmaker: John McCain.” November 6, 2003.

Fox News Sunday, “Transcript, Sen. John McCain on Fox News Sunday,”
December 6, 2004.

Martin, Jonathan. “Romney concedes Iraq ‘a mess,’ describes three-step plan.” Politico.com, 3 Sept. 2007.

“Good Morning America.” ABC News, transcript, 3 Apr. 2007.

Democrats Debate in Iowa

From FactCheck.org:

Richardson stands out for exaggerated and inaccurate claims.

Summary

In the final Democratic debate in Iowa, we found:

• Richardson claimed “enormous progress” in New Mexico education, when in fact the state’s eighth-grade reading scores have slipped and remain among the worst in the U.S.

• Richardson exaggerated the extent to which his state’s teacher salaries increased.

• Richardson said one-third of U.S. health care spending goes to “administration and bureaucracy,” but Medicare officials put the figure at 7.4 percent.

• Dodd criticized “the Chinese government” for slave labor, when in fact it just sentenced a slaver to death.

• Dodd said University of Iowa costs have gone up 141 percent in six or seven years; we find they rose 81 percent.
• Obama claimed Medicare would save “a trillion dollars” if fewer Americans were obese. We find little support for that figure.

 

 

Analysis

This was the final debate among Democratic candidates prior to the Iowa caucuses. It was held Dec. 13, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and televised on national cable networks.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson added to his string of inflated, false or dubious claims.

School Puffery

On education, Richardson once again repeated his unsubstantiated claim that U.S. students rank 29th in the world in math and science, which we first debunked in September. And he made these inflated claims about his own record on education:

Richardson: Well, we’ve made enormous progress in my state. We were 49th in the world in – in the country in teacher salaries. We’re 28th today. Educational achievement has increased.

The salary claim is not true, according to the National Education Association’s Rankings & Estimates report. Pay has improved, but not that much. New Mexico’s teacher pay ranking was 44th the year before he took office and now is 36th, according to the most recent report.

It’s true that educational achievement has increased since Richardson took office in 2003, but not by much. And in the case of reading scores for eighth-graders, the state has actually lost ground. In 2002, for example, 36 percent of New Mexico eighth-graders scored below basic levels in reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This year it was even worse; 38 percent failed to achieve basic reading competency. That’s hardly “enormous progress,” and New Mexico remains in the national test-score basement.

The state’s eighth-graders were in a statistical tie with five other states for next to last among the 52 states and jurisdictions covered. Their reading scores weren’t statistically different from those of Mississippi or Alabama. Only the District of Columbia scored significantly worse.

A Shaky Claim on Health Spending

Richardson used a questionable figure on health care costs, saying that “one-third” of the $2.2 trillion spent on health care “goes to administration and bureaucracy.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does project that health care spending in the U.S. will be more than $2.2 trillion in 2007. But the figure for administrative spending given by CMS’ National Health Expenditure Data tables is far lower than one-third. The data show 7.4 percent of all national health expenditures in 2007 will go to “program administration and net cost of private health insurance.” (Net cost is the difference between benefits and premiums.)

Richardson’s statistic does have some support, however. A survey conducted by PNC Financial Services Group, which says it’s “a leading provider of electronic financial services to the health care industry,” said that nearly a third of expenditures went to administration. But that finding, released this year, was merely the opinion of the 200 hospital and insurance company executives queried. “There was no hardcore data or a number that they have,” confirmed PNC spokeswoman Amy Vargo.

Also, a 2003 article in the New England Journal of Medicine said that in 1999, 31 percent of health care expenditures went to administration. The authors included indirect costs, such as an estimate for the time physicians spend on administrative work.

Greenhouse Gasbag

Richardson blithely claimed he would slash greenhouse gases:

Richardson: Also, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and I would do so by 90 percent with a cap-and-trade program.

What Richardson didn’t say is that he isn’t promising to achieve that 90 percent reduction until 2050, a detail we found on his Web site. Richardson didn’t specify what his plan would do to the prices of electricity, manufactured goods and so on, saying only that he would be “asking the American people to sacrifice a little bit.” But according to one recent estimate, a less ambitious plan now pending in the Senate could cost the average household the equivalent of $800 to $1,300 a year in today’s dollars by 2015. That’s just one guess, of course. But there’s little doubt it would require more than “a little bit” of sacrifice to accomplish a 90 percent cut.

Dodd on Chinese Slaves

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd unfairly accused the “Chinese government” of using slave labor.

Dodd: When you have the Chinese government, as they just did, even make it more difficult for us to access even entertainment, not to mention, of course, the intellectual property theft that goes on on a daily basis; here you’re still using slave labor; you know, you manipulate your currency to give you a 40 percent advantage over our manufacturers and our people working in this country here, that’s no longer just a competitor. That’s a very different relationship.

Dodd is right that slave labor exists in China. In June 2007, a group of parents in Shanxi Province discovered that owners of many of the region’s brick kilns were kidnapping and enslaving children, forcing them to work up to 18 hours per day. But Dodd is wrong to suggest that the Chinese government is sanctioning slavery. Nearly 35,000 police officers descended on Shanxi province, raiding more than 7,500 work places. And less than a month after the story garnered international headlines, Chinese courts had sentenced 28 overseers at the kiln to prison and ordered another executed.

We agree that enslaving children is reprehensible, but Dodd was wrong to suggest that the Chinese government condones the practice.

Dodd Fails Math

Dodd also miscalculated when he said, “the cost right here at the University of Iowa has gone up 141 percent the last six or seven years.” The costs went up, but not nearly by that much.

In 2000, an in-state student could expect to pay $7,503 a year for tuition, room and board, and the school lists the current figure at $13,543. That’s an increase of 81 percent. For out-of-state students the cost of tuition, room and board has gone from $15,265 to $26,715, an increase of 75 percent.

Big Fat Trillion

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois used an estimate of uncertain provenance when discussing Medicare savings:

Obama: If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars.

Obama got this claim from a “candidate briefing book” put out by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. CAP cites the CDC and the Commonwealth Fund as sources for the estimate, but representatives from both organizations told us that the claim was unfamiliar to them.

We worked up our own back-of-the-envelope estimate, using official figures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially estimates that obesity cost $75 billion in 2003. The CDC also says that “approximately half” of the cost burden for both overweight and obese people is borne by Medicaid and Medicare. Obesity rates doubled between 1980 and 2000, also according to the CDC. So if obesity rates returned to “rates that existed in 1980″ they would be cut in half, and that in turn would imply that Medicare and Medicaid together (not just Medicare alone) would save about a quarter of $75 billion, or roughly $18.75 billion per year.

– by Brooks Jackson, with Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Correction, Dec. 14: In our original article, we said that a New England Journal of Medicine piece was published in 1999. The article was about 1999 data, but it was published in 2003. We also mistakenly referred to Bill Richardson as the former governor of New Mexico.

 

 

Sources

Reading 2007 State Snapshot Report, National Assessment of Educational Progress

National Education Association, Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007. Washington: GPO, 2007.

National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2005 and Estimates of School Statistics 2006. Washington: GPO, 2006.

National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2004 and Estimates of School Statistics 2005. Washington: GPO, 2006.

National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2003 and Estimates of School Statistics 2004. Washington: GPO, 2006.

National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2002 and Estimates of School Statistics 2003. Washington: GPO, 2006.

Tuition Rates Schedule 2000, University of Iowa Archives.

Estimated Costs, 2007-08, University of Iowa Website.

Prepared Statement of Anne E. Smith, Ph.D. at the Legislative Hearing on America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, S.2191 of the Committee on Environment and Public Works United States Senate 8 Nov 2007

“Text of statement release by VNS after decision not to release exit poll results.” The Associated Press. 5 Nov. 2002.

Delaware Senate Exit Poll Results. 6 Nov. 1996. CNN. 13 Dec. 2007.

Exit Polls. 6 Nov. 1996. CNN. 13 Dec. 2007.

Elegant, Simon. “Slave Labor in China Sparks Outrage.” Time 20 June 2007.

French, Howard W. “Child slave labor revelations sweeping China.” International Herald Tribune 15 June 2007.

Schearf, Daniel. “China Kiln Worker Sentenced to Death in Slave Labor Case.” Voice of America 17 July 2007.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “NHE Projections 2006-2016, Forecast summary and selected tables,” updated 21 Feb. 2007.

PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. “PNC Health Care Industry Study: Reducing U.S. Health Care Costs Through Electronic Claims and Payment Processing, 2007 Study Highlights,” 2007.

Woolhandler, Steffie, et. al. “Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada.” The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 349: 768-775, 21 Aug. 2003.

Republican Debate

From FactCheck.org

More exaggerations and misstatements in the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses.

Summary

In the Dec. 12 Republican presidential debate in Des Moines:

• Arizona Sen. John McCain promised to make the U.S. “oil independent” within five years, a goal experts say can’t be achieved.

• Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney claimed American students score in the bottom quarter among industrial nations, but they score about average in the most recent tests.

• Romney also claimed that federal programs to prevent teen pregnancy are “obviously not working,” while in fact births are dramatically below what they were in 1991 despite a relatively small increase last year.

• Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said a big federal tax cut would produce “a major boost in revenues for the government,” a notion that nearly all economists say is a fantasy.

• Former Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed he had the most impressive record on education of any GOP candidate, even though Arkansas children scored below the national average while those in Romney’s Massachusetts were No. 1.

• Rep. Duncan Hunter claimed the cost of administering and complying with the federal income tax is $250 billion a year, far higher than the figure given by a recent presidential advisory commission.

YouTube Debate

This report, along with other unbiased election analysis, is available at FactCheck.org.

GOP YouTube Debate Flubs

November 29, 2007

Updated: November 30, 2007

Falsehoods, exaggerations and stumbles

Summary

The CNN/YouTube debate among Republicans lacked any talking snowmen, but we did note a few false and misleading statements by the candidates.

• Romney claimed New York called itself a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens. It didn’t.
• Giuliani denied New York actually was a “sanctuary city.” But the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has classified it as such, based on immigrant-friendly policies Giuliani still defends.
• Huckabee claimed he would “abolish the IRS.” He failed to mention that he’d replace it with another big tax bureaucracy.
• Huckabee said he had proposed to make children of illegal aliens eligible for Arkansas scholarships if they “had been in our schools their entire school life.” Actually, the proposal required only three years in Arkansas schools.
• Giuliani was correct on two points: While he was mayor, New York snowfall went down and the Yankees won four World Series titles. He was joking, but his gag should remind citizens that it’s a mistake in logic to give mayors, or governors or presidents, all credit or blame for what happens just because they’re in office at the time.
• Romney, claiming to be a “true suffering” fan of the Red Sox, said the team waited 87 years to win a World Series. They actually waited 86.
  

 

 

 

 

 

Analysis

The Nov. 28 debate, which took place in St. Petersburg, Florida, was hosted by CNN and YouTube.com and moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The candidates participating were former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Sen. John McCain of Arizona; and Reps. Duncan Hunter of California, Ron Paul of Texas and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

“Sanctuary” Semantics

Romney and Giuliani accused each other of willfully providing “sanctuary” to immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Both men exaggerated, though we find their denials are more strained than their accusations.

Cooper: Governor Romney, was New York a sanctuary city?
Romney: Absolutely. Called itself a sanctuary city, and as a matter of fact, when the Welfare Reform Act that President Clinton brought forward said that they were going to end the sanctuary policy of New York City, the mayor brought a suit to maintain its sanctuary city status.

Romney is simply wrong on one point: New York never called itself a “sanctuary city.” We find no instance where it did, and the Romney campaign has been unable to provide one.

However, a 2005 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (updated in 2006) lists NYC under the general heading of “Sanctuary States and Cities” and says it is among those that follow “sanctuary policies.” It lists the city among 32 that “utilized various mechanisms to ensure that unauthorized aliens who may be present in their jurisdiction illegally are not turned in to federal authorities.” But unlike some other cities on the CRS list, New York has never “called itself a sanctuary city,” and Romney was wrong to say that it did.

Giuliani also strained the facts when he flatly stated during the debate that New York “was not a sanctuary city.” Obviously, the CRS disagrees. New York indeed had a policy, which Giuliani defended during the debate, that forbade city employees from giving federal immigration officials the names of illegal aliens unless the immigrant was suspected of other criminal activity or turning the person over was required by law. That protection was granted by a previous mayor through executive order 124 in 1989 and renewed by Giuliani. However the city chooses to characterize its policies, they fit the description of “sanctuary” applied by neutral experts.

Giuliani stretched the facts when he accused Romney of employing illegal aliens at his home, which the mayor called “a sanctuary mansion.” And so did Romney when he said “I did not” have illegals working at his home.

Giuliani: At his own home illegal immigrants were being employed – (laughter, cheers, applause) – not – not – not being turned in to anybody or by anyone. … So I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city. …

Romney: Mayor, you know better than that. …

Giuliani: You did – you did – you did have illegal immigrants working at your mansion, didn’t you?

Romney: No, I did not.

The fact is, as reported by the Boston Globe in 2006, several illegals worked at Romney’s home in Belmont, Mass., off and on over a period of eight years, sometimes working 11-hour days. They were, however, employed by a contractor, Community Lawn Service with a Heart, and not directly by Romney.

So, Giuliani was technically correct to say that “illegal immigrants were being employed,” since he used the passive voice and didn’t specify who did the employing. Romney could also argue that he was technically correct to say “I did not” have illegals working, since he didn’t employ them directly. The Globe, however, quoted a Guatemalan man as saying that during the years he worked at Romney’s home he occasionally got a “buenos días” from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.

Overall, the record reflects that both Romney and Giuliani have been more tolerant of illegal immigrants in the past than they now profess to be.

Huckabee’s IRS Sleight-of-Hand

Huckabee again claimed he would get rid of the IRS, a disappearing act that isn’t so easy as he makes it sound.

Huckabee: Anderson, the first thing that I would get rid of would be the Internal Revenue Service. We’d have a complete getting rid of a $10-billion-a-year industry. I’m not being facetious. If we enacted the Fair Tax, one of the most researched ways to revive our economic future. We will get rid of the IRS.

It is true that the Fair Tax would get rid of the agency that we now call the IRS. But, according to the bill Huckabee supports: “There shall be in the Department of the Treasury a Sales Tax Bureau to administer the national sales tax in those States where it is required.” So, Huckabee would “eliminate” the IRS by replacing it with a Sales Tax Bureau.

Furthermore, the new Sales Tax Bureau wouldn’t necessarily be much smaller than the existing IRS. According to the bipartisan Advisory Panel on Tax Reform, which studied the Fair Tax proposal extensively and rejected it: “The federal administrative burden for a retail sales tax may be similar to the burden under the current system” in order to ensure that the various states collected the tax in a systematic way. The panel went on to point out that the Fair Tax, which includes a cash grant to each taxpayer to compensate for its regressive nature, would also  require an entirely new type of bureaucracy to “keep track of the personal information that would be necessary to determine the size of the taxpayer’s cash grant.”

It’s true that the Fair Tax has been heavily researched, as Huckabee said. But most of the research that supports it was paid for by Americans for Fair Taxation – a group that advocates the idea.

Huckabee Scholars

Huckabee ran afoul of the facts when defending his failed proposal to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for state college scholarships:

Huckabee: I supported a bill that would have allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms. They couldn’t just move in in their senior year and go to college. … [It] said that if you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re 5 or 6 years old and you had become an A-plus student, you completed the core curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and alcohol free, and the other provision, you had to be applying for citizenship.

Actually, the bill Huckabee pushed for in his 2005 State of the Union address did not apply only to “those children who had been in our schools their entire school life.” It required only three years in an Arkansas high school to be eligible. And students did not have to be “applying for citizenship,” but rather they had to sign an affidavit stating their intent to do so in the future. All students who apply for state scholarships must “certify that they are drug-free” and “pledge to refrain from alcohol” if they are under 21, just as Huckabee said. But they certainly don’t have to be “an A-plus student.” The state requires a solid “B” average (a 3.0 average on a 4.0 scale). And the state may reduce that to a 2.5 average if sticking with the higher requirement “would unduly reduce the number of low-income or disadvantaged students who would otherwise be eligible for the program.” That’s a C-plus average.

The bill passed the Arkansas House but failed in the Senate. Later, a pared down version that would grant illegals in-state tuition breaks, but not scholarship rights, failed two votes short of passage.

Post Hoc Hooey

The debate included a couple of lighter moments, when Giuliani jokingly claimed credit for reducing annual snowfall “dramatically” and for four World Series victories by the Yankees during his term as mayor of New York.

In a gag video, his campaign joked that King Kong roamed city streets before Giuliani became mayor, adding:

Giuliani Video: Rudy prevailed: crime down by half, taxes cut and annual snowfall dramatically reduced.

Later, Giuliani said:

Giuliani: [When] I was mayor of New York City, the Yankees won four world championships. … I wanted to put this in our reel, but they cut it out, so I’m going to get it in – and since I’ve left being mayor of New York City, the Yankees have won none.

It’s true that snowfall was less than average under Giuliani, though it’s a matter of opinion whether the difference is a dramatic one or not. According to the National Weather Service, between 1869 and 1993, the average snowfall in New York City’s Central Park was 28.2 inches per year. During Giuliani’s term (from January 1994 through December 2001), average snowfall was just 26.7 inches.

And the Yankees did indeed win the World Series in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 – but have failed to do so since.

Giuliani is clearly joking here, but he illustrates a serious point that we think voters should keep in mind: Politicians don’t automatically deserve credit or blame for what happens while they are in office. Sometimes it’s just luck. It’s a logical fallacy to conclude a leader’s actions are the cause of what happens afterward. Logicians have named this the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy (literally, “after the fact, therefore because of the fact.”)

The fallacy is easy enough to see when Giuliani takes credit for a reduction in snowfall during his term. It’s more subtle when he takes credit for halving crime during his term – especially when he fails to mention that crime rates were already falling before he took office and that they dropped nationally as well. And we could say the same thing about, for example, attributing the longest economic boom in U.S. history to the fact that Bill Clinton was in office during most of it.

Curse of the Bambino Prolonged

 

Romney claimed to be a “true suffering Red Sox” fan but got a basic fan statistic wrong:

Romney: Eighty-seven – 87 long years – we waited 87 long years. And true suffering Red Sox fans that my family and I are, we could not have been more happy than to see the Red Sox win the World Series.

Actually, the team won the World Series in 1918, and not again until 2004. That’s 86 years, not 87. Romney has lived much of his adult life in Massachusetts but was born in Michigan and graduated from college in Utah.

– by Brooks Jackson, with Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Clarification, Nov. 30: Our original story may have left some with the impression that New York, and other jurisdictions, prohibited police from turning over the names of illegal immigrants to federal authorities under any circumstances. Rather, New York’s policy prohibited “a city officer or employee” from sharing such information unless disclosure was required by law or the immigrant was suspected of criminal activity, including trying to get public assistance with fraudulent documents. The executive order instructed law enforcement officers to “continue to cooperate with federal authorities in investigating and apprehending aliens suspected of criminal activity. However, such agencies shall not transmit to federal authorities information respecting any alien who is the victim of a crime.”

 

 

 

 

Sources

Congressional Research Service. “Enforcing Immigration Law: The Role of State and Local Law Enforcement.” Updated 14 Aug. 2006.

Saltzman, Jonathan. “Illegal immigrants toiled for governor.” Boston Globe. 1 Dec. 2006.

Linder, John. “H.R. 25 [109th]: Fair Tax Act of 2005.” GovTrack.us. 29 Nov. 2007.

National Weather Service. Monthly & Seasonal Snowfall at Central Park. 1 Nov. 2007. 29 Nov. 2007.

President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. “Final Report Chapter 9: National Retail Sales Tax.” 1 Nov. 2005. TaxReformPanel.gov.

Huckabee, Mike, “State of the State of Arkansas Address, 2005.” 11 Jan. 2005.

Arkansas 85th General Assembly, Session 1. “HB1525: Access to PostSecondary Education Act of 2005.“

Red Sox, Boston. “Postseason Results.”

 

 

 

 

 

Related Articles

The Not-Quite Truth About NYC

Giuliani twists facts about crime and liberalism in the Big Apple.

Huckabee’s Fiscal Record

Under fire from conservatives, the former Arkansas governor misrepresents his tax hikes, and cuts.

Clinton vs. Obama

Who’s right on health care, Social Security?

Tough Guy on Immigration?

Romney puffs up his record.

The Immigration Showdown

Romney’s and Giuliani’s chest-thumping on immigration leaves behind context and, in some cases, the facts.

Hillary’s High-Stepping

Another great report from Factcheck.org

The Democratic front-runner bobs and weaves at a candidate debate in Philadelphia.

Summary

At a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Hillary Clinton ducked some questions and gave misleading answers to others.

• She falsely implied that the reason White House documents about her communications with her husband haven’t been released is due to bureaucratic delays, and she avoided saying whether she would ask Bill Clinton to clear their release from the National Archives.
• She avoided a yes-or-no answer to whether she supports giving New York driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and at one point denied saying the idea made sense, when in fact she said less than two weeks earlier that it “makes a lot of sense.”
  
• She avoided saying what, if anything, she would do about Social Security taxes or benefits, saying a commission should study the system “if” it has problems, and saying that acting as though the troubled system is in “crisis” is “a Republican trap.”

 

Analysis

 

 

The most recent debate among Democratic candidates took place Oct. 30 at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Absent this time was former Sen. Mike Gravel, who was too low in opinion polls and had raised too little money to be invited by  MSNBC. The front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, faced tough questioning from moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams of NBC News, and from rival candidates. Her responses were often uninformative and sometimes misleading.

Release of White House Documents

Clinton avoided saying whether she’d urge her husband to tell the National Archives to release documents related to her communications with him while he was president.

Clinton: Well, actually, Tim, the Archives is moving as rapidly as the Archives moves. There’s about 20 million pieces of paper there and they are moving, and they are releasing as they do their process. And I am fully in favor of that.

Russert pressed:

Russert: But there was a letter written by President Clinton specifically asking that any communication between you and the president not be made available to the public until 2012. Would you lift that ban?

Clinton: Well, that’s not my decision to make. And I don’t believe that any president or first lady has. But certainly we’ll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits.

We find her response doubly misleading.

First, the primary reason that no documents related to correspondence between the two of them have been made public is, just as Russert said, that Bill Clinton asked the Archives not to release them until 2012. The Presidential Records Act allows a president, while still in office, to bar disclosure of six categories of documents for 12 years following the end of his or her tenure. One of those categories is “confidential communications requesting or submitting advice, between the President and his advisers.” Communications between a president and his wife are considered to fall in that category. He claimed the exemptions broadly (without mentioning Hillary) in 1994. In 2002, he amended his claims to loosen the restrictions – but specifically identified communications between himself and the First Lady (among others) as items that should remain sealed until 2012.

Secondly, while Hillary is correct in a legal sense when she says it is “not my decision to make,” we have little doubt that her husband would do as she asked should she want the documents made public.

Sen. Clinton is correct on one front: Things are moving slowly at the Clinton Library. According to a declaration filed by the Clinton Presidential Library’s then-acting director, Emily Robison, in August 2007, there are just six archivists to sort through what the library’s Web site says are 76.8 million pages and 1.85 million photos. Even if she wanted her correspondence with Bill Clinton released, it’s not clear that the documents would be processed before the election.

But while she may also be correct that other presidents haven’t allowed access to communications between themselves and their wives before the 12 years were up, none of those wives were running for president themselves – and holding out their experience in the White House as a qualification for election.

Driver’s Licenses for Illegal Immigrants

Clinton bobbed and weaved on whether illegal immigrants should be granted driver’s licenses, avoiding a yes-or-no answer but denying her own words in the process.

Russert asked her about an interview she had given to an editorial board in Nashua, New Hampshire, in which she was asked about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to grant state driver’s licenses to immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal permission.

Clinton: I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it. And we have failed –

Sen. Chris Dodd: Wait a minute. No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it.

Clinton: No, I didn’t, Chris. But the point is, what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants who are (driving ?) – (inaudible)?

Actually, we checked the video, and Clinton did tell the Nashua Telegraph interviewers on Oct. 17 that Spitzer’s plan “makes a lot of sense,” despite her denial to Dodd.

Clinton (Nashua, N.H.): I know exactly what Governor Spitzer’s trying to do and it makes a lot of sense. He’s trying to get people out of the shadows.

During the debate, Clinton repeatedly said immigration should be dealt with nationally, not on a state-by-state basis. But after a long exchange she still hadn’t answered the question to Russert’s satisfaction:

Russert: Do you support [Spitzer's] plan?

Clinton: You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha. It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. … Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? Remember, in New York we want to know who’s in New York. We want people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do it. We should have passed immigration reform.

We don’t agree that asking a candidate for a specific stand on an issue is a “gotcha” question. In any event, Clinton avoided a direct answer.

Social Security

Throughout the debate Clinton resolutely avoided saying specifically what, if anything, she would do to shore up the finances of the Social Security system. She repeatedly called for “fiscal responsibility” and said she would appoint a bipartisan commission to study the system. And she made clear she was in no hurry to act:

Clinton: I think for us to act like Social Security is in crisis is a Republican trap.

In fact, the system is headed for nearly certain collapse unless some action is taken to increase taxes or at least slow down the projected rise of future benefits. And delay will only make the eventual corrections more painful, experts say.

The system’s trustees state that the program is financially adequate for the short term, but fails the test of financial adequacy by a “wide margin” in the long term. Within 10 years, under the most likely projection, payroll taxes will no longer be adequate to pay for current benefits and the system will begin cashing in the IOUs that make up its trust fund. That means it will be paying for a portion of benefits out of other federal taxes, and that portion will increase year to year. At that rate the trust fund will be exhausted in 2041, at which point the payroll tax could finance only 75 percent of promised benefits, and less in each succeeding year. At that point benefits would necessarily be cut 25 percent, or taxes would be increased.

To bring the system into balance for the next 75 years would require “an immediate increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent or some combination of the two,” the trustees stated. That’s  assuming the action is “immediate.” Delaying action beyond this year will only make the needed changes more painful for future generations. The trustees said:

Social Security and Medicare Trustees (April 2007): To the extent that changes are delayed or phased in gradually, larger adjustments in scheduled benefits and revenues would be required that would be spread over fewer generations.

Nevertheless, at one point during the debate, Sen. Clinton seemed to imply that it was possible no action was needed at all, saying that “if” there are problems a commission should address them.

Clinton: If there are some of the long-term challenges that we need to address, let’s do it in the context of having fiscal responsibility, and then let’s put together a bipartisan commission and look at how we’re going to deal with these long-term challenges.

Clinton Flip-Flops?

Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards accused Clinton of multiple flip-flops on trade, torture and Social Security:

Obama: And Senator Clinton in her campaign, I think, has been for NAFTA previously, now she’s against it. She has taken one position on torture several months ago and then most recently has taken a different position.

Edwards: And then finally she said in our last debate that she was against any changes on Social Security – benefits, retirement age or raising the cap on the Social Security tax.

• NAFTA: Obama is partly right concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton’s views on NAFTA have shifted, but they shifted prior to her official run for the White House. Back in 1998, in a keynote speech given at the Davos Economic Summit, Clinton praised business leaders for mounting “a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA,” adding later that “it is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun.” But by 2005 she was expressing reservations about free trade agreements, voting that year against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). And she told Bloomberg News in March 2007 that, while she still believes in free trade, she supports a freeze on new trade agreements – something she calls “a little time-out.”

• Torture: Obama is right. In an interview with the New York Daily News in October 2006, Clinton condoned torture in what she called “improbable” ticking time bomb scenarios:
  

Clinton: In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable. That very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances is better than blasting a big hole in our entire law.

But in a debate in New Hampshire last month, Sen. Clinton shifted her position when moderator Tim Russert offered her just such a ticking time bomb case:

Russert: Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in al Qaeda. We know there’s a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?

Clinton: As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period.

To our ears, that sounds like a reversal.

• Social Security: But in accusing Clinton of reversing course, Edwards mischaracterizes what she actually said during the September 26 debate at Dartmouth College. Moderator Tim Russert pressed Sen. Clinton on what, specifically, she was willing to “put on the table” to ensure the solvency of Social Security. Her reply:
  

Clinton: I’m not putting anything on the proverbial table until we move toward fiscal responsibility. I think it’s a mistake to do that.

That’s not being “against any changes on Social Security” as Edwards claimed. Rather, Clinton simply refused to specify what changes she might be willing to accept.

Obama’s Revised Remarks

Obama attempted to soften a previous accusation that Clinton was being less than truthful about a variety of issues.

Russert: But when asked by The New York Times whether Senator Clinton has been truthful, you said no.

Obama: What I said is that she has not been truthful and clear about this point that I just made [about Social Security], which is, we can talk about fiscal responsibility, and all of us agree with it. All of us oppose privatization. But even after we deal with those issues, we are still going to have an actuarial gap that has to be dealt with. It is not going to vanish.

Actually, the Times paraphrased Obama on October 28 as saying Clinton was being somewhat untruthful about “what she would do as president” generally, not just on Social Security:

New York Times: Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, “No.”

“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama added, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been entirely forthcoming. “Now it’s been very deft politically,” he said. “But one of the things that I firmly believe is that we’ve got to be clear with the
American people right now about the important choices that we’re going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election.”

Russert’s characterization of Obama’s quote, as featured in the Times, was accurate. Obama, however, attempts to narrow the claim down to her position on Social Security when he really referred to her statements overall regarding what she would do as president.

Presidential Qualifications

Finally, we wondered about the accuracy of this statement from Sen. Joe Biden:

Biden: Rudy Giuliani [is] probably the most underqualified man since George
Bush to seek the presidency.

Biden is certainly entitled to state his opinion, and his line did get a lot of laughs and some applause. But a twice-elected former mayor of New York City is hardly without executive qualification. And does Biden really think Giuliani is less qualified than, say, cable TV comic Stephen Colbert, who is seeking signatures to qualify for the ballot in South Carolina?

Just asking.

– by Brooks Jackson, with Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

 

Sources

Office of William Jefferson Clinton. Letter to the National Archives. Presidential Libraries. 6 Nov. 2002.

Landrigan, Kevin. Clinton says gender has been advantage. Video. 17 Oct. 2007. NHPrimary.com. 31 Oct. 2007.

Jensen, Kristin and Mark Drajem. “Clinton Breaks With Husband’s Legacy on Nafta Pact, China Trade.” Bloomberg News. 30 Mar. 2007. 31 Oct. 2007.

Smith, Ben. “McCain Team Mocks Hil Torture Loophole.” New York Daily News. 16 Oct. 2006.

Nagourney, Adam and Jeff Zeleny. “Obama Promises a forceful stand against Clinton.” The New York Times. 28 Oct. 2007: A1.

“Status of the Social Security and Medicare Program, A summary of the 2007 Annual Reports.” Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees 23 Apr. 2007.

Florida Fandango: October 22, 2007

To see this and other unbiased campaign reports, go to Factcheck.org.

Republicans tangle with each other and the facts on torts, taxes and health care, and refuse to shed some old myths.

Summary

Tongues were sharpened before Sunday night’s GOP presidential debate in Orlando, with the candidates drawing blood right out of the gate. We found them factually challenged in several areas:

• Giuliani stretched till he broke, in calling Thompson “the single biggest obstacle to tort reform” in the Senate.
• Romney boasted of his Massachusetts health care plan and criticized Hillary Clinton’s, although her plan is strikingly similar to Romney’s Massachusetts program. He also falsely accused her of favoring “all-government insurance.”
• Giuliani claimed the price of health insurance would drop more than 50 percent if millions more people purchased it directly, a statement unsupported by any evidence he’s offered so far.
• Thompson said the most affluent 40 percent of Americans pay “about 99 percent of the taxes.” Actually, they pay less than 85 percent, and also have nearly 74 percent of all the income.
  
• Giuliani made an inflated boast about bringing down crime in New York “more than anyone in this country – maybe in the history of this country.” But the decline started before he took office, continued after he left, and even the FBI itself warns against attributing crime statistics to any specific cause.

 

 

 

Analysis

With Sen. Sam Brownback out of the race, the number of contestants on the stage Sunday night was down to eight: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Reps. Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter. The debate, sponsored by the Florida Republican Party, was televised on Fox News Channel, with Fox anchor Brit Hume as moderator.

Thompson and Torts

Giuliani and Thompson seemed to contradict each other about a pet Republican cause, changes to the civil legal system. Giuliani accused Thompson of being “the single biggest obstacle to tort reform” in the Senate, while Thompson said, “I supported tort reform” as it applied to securities and product liability lawsuits.

Giuliani: I mean, Fred was the single biggest obstacle to tort reform in the United States Senate. He stood with Democrats over and over again. He voted against $250,000 caps on damages, which they have in Texas. He voted against almost anything that would make our legal system fairer: loser pays rules, things that would prevent lawsuits like that $54 million lawsuit by that guy who lost his pants – you know? That cost that family $100,000 in legal fees. I think the man should have to pay the family for the $100,000 that he took from them in the abusive lawsuit….

Thompson: As far as tort reform is concerned, I supported tort reform with regard to securities legislation. I supported tort reform with regard to product liability legislation, things that have to do with interstate commerce. I think it appropriately passed. I supported and worked for those things. Local issues belong at the state level. Most states have passed tort reform.

When Republicans use the term tort reform, they’re generally talking about making it more difficult for individuals to file lawsuits against, say, doctors, toy manufacturers or dry cleaners for alleged wrongs, or in some cases capping the monetary damages that plaintiffs are awarded. We’ll leave aside for now our objection to the use of the word “reform” in situations like this; according to Webster’s, to “reform” means to “improve,” and the merits of the tort proposals are hotly debated.

First, it’s hard to see how anyone could think that Thompson was the “single biggest obstacle” to these changes in the legal system when he was in the Senate. Thompson voted with a majority of his fellow Republicans on some measures, with a large bloc of Democrats on others, but he was no crusader, nor did his vote ever prove decisive (none of the votes were that close).

More substantively, the innocent bystander should be excused for thinking that Giuliani and Thompson couldn’t both be right about the latter’s position on various tort measures. Actually, though, they mostly can. In 1995, Thompson voted against an amendment to a medical malpractice bill that would have capped punitive damages at $250,000 (Giuliani should have used the word “punitive”; those awards are distinct from the economic damages that compensate victims for their actual losses).

But Thompson is dead on, as well. He supported the Common Sense Product Liability Legal Reform Act of 1996 as well as the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which were designed to curb certain kinds of lawsuits against securities firms and manufacturers.

He also voted, in 1995, to make punishment more severe for lawyers who filed “frivolous” lawsuits. But Thompson opposed an amendment that same year to raise the standard of proof for plaintiffs to be awarded punitive damages in lawsuits involving interstate commerce.

Thompson is also correct that “most states” have passed some measures of the broad array that advocates refer to as “tort reform.”

It’s not clear whether “loser pays rules” would stop lawsuits like the recent infamous case in Washington, D.C., where a man sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a lost pair of pants. There already are rules in local jurisdictions that allow defendants who win their cases to petition the court for reimbursement of their legal expenses, as the dry cleaner did in the case above. (The dry cleaner withdrew the claim, however, having raised more than enough funds to cover the $83,000 – not $100,000 – in legal bills; the case is on appeal.) The claims are decided on a case-by-case basis.

RomneyCare vs. HillaryCare

Romney attacked Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal while boasting of health care success in Massachusetts. But the plan he enacted in his state is quite similar to Clinton’s.

Romney: But Hillary says the federal government’s going to tell you what kind of insurance, and it’s all government insurance. And I say no, let the states create their own plans, and instead of government insurance, private, market-based insurance.…

The price of the premium for an individual, 42 years old, in Boston, used to $350 a month. Now, it’s $180. We basically cut it in half by deregulating…. This is the first state in America that is on track to have everybody insured. Half of my uninsured are now insured, and I am proud of what we’ve done.

Actually, the plan Romney brags about in Massachusetts shares a number of key characteristics with Clinton’s:

• They both require that individuals obtain insurance and also require employers provide it.
  
• They both provide government subsidies for those with low incomes.
  
• Both expand the number of people covered under Medicaid.
  

However, Romney now says he wouldn’t propose a Massachusetts-style plan for the nation, so the track record of the Massachusetts plan is a poor indicator of what Romney’s current proposals might accomplish nationally. And while his claim that his state plan lowered premiums is correct according to the Commonwealth Connector, a state agency created to implement the plan, the group says that resulted from a legally required merging of small group and non-group markets, which is something states would be allowed to do – but not required – under Romney’s current proposal.

It’s also unclear how many of the previously uninsured have gained coverage under the Massachusetts plan. While the program has successfully enrolled 200,000 people (and the Connector calls those “newly insured individuals” on its Web site), some of those may have switched from less desirable policies. “Certainly there are people who didn’t have insurance and people who did,” says Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Connector. A more apples-to-apples measure comes from an annual survey of the uninsured taken by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance Policy, which found that 395,000 people didn’t have insurance in the state in 2006. The survey shows only a 10 percent decrease in the uninsured between January through July 2006 and the same time period in 2007. That agency does not have more up-to-date numbers.

Furthermore, Romney’s claim that Clinton espouses “all government insurance” is false. Under her proposals, people could keep their current insurance and employer-offered health insurance could continue as it does now. It is true that Clinton’s plan would require much more government involvement than Romney’s nationwide proposal, which doesn’t call for any mandates and relies on tax incentives, such as allowing individuals to deduct insurance and medical expenses from their taxes.

Fred’s Tax Flub

Thompson exaggerated when he claimed the most affluent bear almost the entire federal tax burden.

Thompson: Hillary basically says that, you know, 40 percent of the people pay about 99 percent of the taxes. Why not 30 percent of the people? Why not 20 percent of the people?

We’ve never heard Sen. Clinton say any such thing, and it would be false if she did. It’s true that the U.S. taxes the affluent more than those who earn little, and also true that Sen. Clinton and other Democrats propose to ask upper-income earners to pay a somewhat greater share. However, Thompson’s “about 99 percent” figure would get him an “F” in 6th grade math. The actual figure is considerably lower. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the share of all federal taxes (including federal income taxes, excise taxes and payroll taxes) borne by the most affluent 40 percent of Americans in 2004 was actually 84.7 percent. (These affluent earners also had close to 73.9 percent of all pre-tax income, something Thompson neglected to mention.)

Thompson was probably referring only to the federal individual income tax, and omitting payroll taxes, which fall more heavily on lower-income workers, as well as excise taxes and corporate income taxes. CBO figures show 99.1 percent of the federal individual income tax was paid by the most affluent 40 percent in 2004.

Welcome, Aliens

Giuliani glossed over his own record in denying that he made New York a “sanctuary” for illegal aliens.

Giuliani: Oh, the simple fact is that New York City had a policy of allowing people who are illegal immigrants to report crime and to put their children in school. Otherwise, we reported every single illegal immigrant that committed a crime.

In fact, Giuliani’s policy as mayor was not so simple as he now claims. As we’ve noted before, New York didn’t describe itself as a “sanctuary city” for aliens. However, Giuliani told the New York Times early in his first term that a hard-working but undocumented alien is “somebody that we want in this city.”

Giuliani, 1994: Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens…. If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city. You’re somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair.

The Times said back then that the mayor was “virtually urging [illegal immigrants] to settle in New York City.”

Anti-Crime Capital
Giuliani made a grandiose boast that he “brought down crime more than anyone in this country – maybe in the history of this country – while I was mayor of New York City.” Crime certainly dropped dramatically during Giuliani’s tenure from 1993 to 2002. In fact, the city is still in the midst of a record-setting trend for consecutive years of declining violent crimes. However, it is a trend that actually started under Giuliani’s predecessor, David Dinkins, in 1990, when a high of 174,542 violent crimes were reported, according to the FBI, and has continued under his successor, Michael Bloomberg. In 2006, a new low of 52,086 such crimes were reported.

Plus, the FBI itself warns against drawing broad conclusions (one might even say claiming undue credit) based on these statistics. Click on its most recent Uniform Crime Report and you’ll see a pop-up window that advises:

FBI: Some entities use reported figures to compile rankings … these rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state or region. Consequently they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Health Insurance Fire Sale

Giuliani made a claim, unsupported by any evidence we can find, that health insurance rates would drop by half if more citizens bought their own health insurance.

Giuliani: We only have 17 million people in America who buy their own health insurance. If we have 50 million or 60 million people who bought their own health insurance, the price of health insurance would be cut in more than half.

We asked the campaign if there was any research supporting that statement, and they had no comment. The only backup we could find is Giuliani’s own faith in the virtue of free markets. He told The New York Times and other news organizations that as people buy private health insurance instead of getting it from their employers, the competition for customers would cause companies to lower their prices. In a town hall meeting in Concord, New Hampshire, in July, he equated the change in the price tag on plasma TVs to what could happen to health insurance. Televisions became cheaper, he said, “because there are lots of empowered consumers and the more you reduce the price the owners and operators realize the more consumers you get.” In health care, “[m]ost people are covered by their — by the government, Medicare and Medicaid, or by their employer,” Giuliani continued. “What we need is individual consumers in health care.”

We ran that logic by Kenneth Thorpe, professor of health policy at Emory University, who once worked in the Clinton administration and who has evaluated a number of presidential candidates’ health plans. Thorpe says he’s not exactly sure what Giuliani means, but he questions how such a price drop could happen. Administrative costs, he says, would not be lower if more people bought health insurance. “The only possible way it would reduce premiums is if the underlying claims expenses … were a third to a half lower.”

War over Peace

Romney falsely blamed Bill Clinton for the entire post-Cold War reduction in U.S. military forces.

Romney: During the Clinton years, the president said we’re going to take a peace dividend. We got the dividend. We didn’t get the peace. He reduced the scale of our military dramatically, took 500,000 troops out, cut back our Navy by 80 ships, knocked our Air Force down 25 percent. Our aircraft fleet today are 28 years old.

Romney has tried this bit before. In fact, we’ve called him on it once already. We pointed out in that earlier article that in inflation-adjusted dollars, defense spending dropped nearly 15 percent between Reagan’s last budget and the final budget of George H.W. Bush four years later – compared with just under 13 percent between Bush’s last budget and Clinton’s, a span of eight years. Bush’s defense secretary, a guy named Dick Cheney, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1992 that “overall, since I’ve been secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That’s the peace dividend.… And now we’re adding to that another $50 billion.”

Alien Benefits

Tancredo dusted off an old piece of misinformation from the 2006 campaign trail when he said there “is a plan to give Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who have worked in this country. That is ridiculous.” What’s more ridiculous is that this outdated scare tactic is still being used. There is no such plan. Rather, current law says that a formerly illegal alien who eventually becomes a legal citizen can get credit for any payments he or she made into the Social Security system while illegal. A Republican amendment to end the practice was defeated as part of an immigration bill that the Senate passed in May 2006 (which subsequently stalled). You can read more about the wrangling over this measure in our original report.

Not Again!

Romney, yet again, claimed to have closed a “$3 billion budget gap,” saying, “We solved it without raising taxes, without adding debt.” This is the fourth time we’ve pointed out that the actual budget gap was closer to $1.2 billion. And while he didn’t raise anything he called a “tax,” Romney increased fees and closed corporate tax “loopholes” to the tune of about $500 million during his four years as governor.

Giuliani, meanwhile, continued to claim credit for bringing about 23 tax cuts in New York City during his eight years as mayor. As we and others have pointed out repeatedly, a more accurate number would be 14. He also claimed to have “balanced the budget” and replaced deficits with surpluses, which was true for a time. But as we’ve pointed out before, he left his successor with a projected deficit of nearly $2.8 billion, even before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, worsened the city’s financial picture.

– by Viveca Novak, with Brooks Jackson, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

 

 

 

Sources

Massachusetts Commonwealth Connector. “About the Connector: Overview.” www.MAHealthConnector.org Oct. 2007. 22 Oct. 2007.

Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. “HCFP Survey Finds 40,000 Decrease in State’s Uninsured.” 27 Aug. 2007

Romney, Mitt. “The Romney Vision for Health Care Reform. “ www.mittromney.com 24 Aug. 2007. 22 Oct. 2007.

Clinton, Hillary. “American Health Choices Plan.” www.hillaryclinton.com 2007. 22 Oct. 2007.

Santora, Marc. “Giuliani Seeks to Transform U.S. Health Care Coverage.” The New York Times 1 Aug. 2007.

Romney, Mitt. “Expanding Access to Affordable Health Care.” Press release 24 Aug. 2007.

Langan, Patrick A. and Durose, Matthew R., “The Remarkable Drop in Crime in New York City.” Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice 21 Oct. 2004

Congressional Budget Office. “Historic Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2004.” December 2006.

Sontag, Deborah “New York Officials Welcome Immigrants, Legal Or Illegal,” New York Times 10 June 1994: A1