President Obama’s paradoxical presentation on the ‘fiscal cliff’ deal
“We stopped that middle class tax hike. But we didn’t stop there. …Last year we started reducing the deficit through $1 trillion in spending cuts. And the agreement we reached this week will reduce the deficit even more by asking the wealthiest two percent of Americans to pay higher taxes for the first time in two decades.”
— President Obama, Jan. 2, 2013, in a video for supporters
“American Taxpayer Relief Act Reduces Deficits by $737 Billion”
— headline on a White House blog post
We’re back from vacation and, like many Americans, have been trying to figure out the details of the “fiscal-cliff” deal — one of those classic middle-of-the-night congressional compromises that please virtually no one.
The White House, by its own accounting, ended up with $737 billion in deficit reduction, a far cry from the $2 trillion or so that it originally sought. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from touting the deal as a victory in a campaign-style video for supporters.
But a politician who highlights good news often leaves out the bad news. Let’s see what’s missing from Obama’s presentation.
The Facts
As we have noted before, The Fact Checker covered the passage of the Bush tax cuts in 2001, which were originally promoted as a way to deal with the looming problem of having too little national debt. (Oops.) The most striking thing is that the deal permanently locks in place virtually all of those tax cuts — something that Democratic leaders had once said would be an economic travesty.
The Fact Checker is away
The Fact Checker is hoping to take some time off, “fiscal cliff” notwithstanding. The column will return on Jan. 3.
Happy holidays to all!
The biggest Pinocchios of 2012
Virtually all of this year’s fact checking was focused on the presidential election. So, in selecting our biggest Pinocchios of the year, we spent days going though old columns and reliving an election that seems rather distant now.
In many ways, it was depressing reading. So much of the campaign was fought over trivial or inconsequential issues. For instance, we wrote nearly 20 columns dissecting every possible claim about Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital, which came under attack both from his Republican rivals and the Obama campaign.
Romney left himself open to scrutiny because he incorrectly claimed that he helped create more than 100,000 jobs at Bain — he mainly created wealth for his investors — but the attacks often were equally false. A candidate’s experience and background is certainly worthy of debate, but all too often in 2012 it just turned into a game of political gotcha.
In this election, fact checking certainly became part of the conversation, with many additional news organizations joining FactCheck.Org, PolitiFact and The Washington Post in scrutinizing politician’s statements, especially during the debates. Since fact checking is a relatively new genre of journalism, however, it is frequently misunderstood.
Did Michigan lawmakers ram through ‘right to work’ laws?
(James Fassinger/Reuters)
“The people of Michigan do not want this law, and Gov. [Rick] Snyder and the lawmakers who are trying to enact this anti-worker bill before their terms expire at the end of the year know full well that what they are doing is immoral and unjust. They are not carrying out the will of the people; they are punishing the people who voted to replace them in the new year.”
— American Federation of Government Employees president J. David Cox, Sr. in a news release, Dec. 11, 2012
(This post has been updated to reflect a change in the Pinocchio rating.)
Michigan last week enacted a pair of so-called right-to-work laws that allow employees to opt out of paying union dues when they work for union shops, dealing a blow to organized labor in a state that was once at the heart of that movement and which still claims the fifth-highest unionization rate in the nation.
J. David Cox, Sr., head of the American Federation of Government Employees union, released a statement the next day condemning the measures. He described their passage as an effort by GOP lawmakers to strike a blow to labor before leaving the GOP-controlled legislature.
“Today’s maneuver by Michigan Republicans to ram through a ‘right to work for less’ bill in the lame-duck session of the Michigan Legislature is a vile example of political revenge,” Cox said.
Let’s take a closer look at the Wolverine State’s 2012 election results to determine whether Republicans would have the numbers to pass the same legislation in 2013.
The Facts
Republicans controlled both chambers of the Michigan legislature and the governor’s office in 2012. That won’t change next year.
History lesson: Why the Bush tax cuts were enacted
(Chip Somodevilla — Getty Images)
We’ve noted this history before, but many people have forgotten it. Given that the dispute over whether to extend all of the Bush tax cuts has now led the nation to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” let’s take a trip back in time to recall why the Bush tax cuts were enacted in the first place. (The Fact Checker covered passage of the Bush tax cuts as an economic policy reporter for The Washington Post.)
Oddly, a key reason the tax cut became reality was because of a fear the United States soon would have zero debt.
***
With federal revenue soaring in 2000, generating budget surpluses, there was pent-up desire for a tax cut, especially among Republicans.
The ‘fiscal cliff’ offers: dueling White House and GOP perspectives
Speaker of the House John Boehner
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
“The President has put a balanced, reasonable proposal on the table that achieves significant deficit reduction and reflects real compromise by meeting the Republicans halfway on revenue and more than halfway on spending from where each side started.”
— White House Press secretary Jay Carney, statement, Dec. 18, 2012
There are some tentative signs that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner might reach a deal that would blunt the impact of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” But, as always in these Washington negotiations, a lot depends on whether the two sides actually agree on the bottom-line numbers.
Thus we were struck by White House spokesman Jay Carney’s assertion that President Obama had met the GOP “halfway” on revenue and “more than halfway on spending.” How does the White House figure that — and does the GOP agree? Here’s what the two sides say, based on interviews with officials in both camps.
The Facts
We are going to get into a numerator-denominator problem fairly quickly because the two sides simply don’t start from the same place. And these are just the numbers — there may be real policy differences behind these figures.
The more things change...
(Brendan Hoffman — Getty Images)
We’ve been covering presidential transitions for so long that even news reports written 20 years apart start to read the same. Consider these two items in The New York Times about possible Cabinet selections — in 1992 and 2012.
“Concerned that his first Cabinet appointments might signal the wrong intentions for his Administration, President-elect Bill Clinton plans to expand this week’s announcements to include posts that would be filled by female and minority appointees….
“Mr. Clinton said repeatedly during the campaign that his closest circle of advisers would ‘look like America,’ his way of promising a Cabinet that would include men, women and members of minorities.
“But some of his advisers have worried that as he grew closer to making his first public announcements — probably on Thursday — this promise would conflict with his desire to fill economic posts first.
“His leading choices for the financial jobs, including Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for Secretary of the Treasury, Roger C. Altman as Mr. Bentsen’s deputy, and Robert E. Rubin or Robert B. Reich as Economic Security Adviser, are all white men.”
— The New York Times, Dec. 7, 1992
“The announcement [of Sen. John F. Kerry as Secretary of State] will be delayed, at least until later this week and maybe beyond, because of the Connecticut school shooting and what one official called “some discomfort” with the idea of Mr. Obama’s announcing a national security team in which the top posts are almost exclusively held by white men.
“The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, who is black and was considered Mr. Obama’s leading candidate for the job, withdrew her name from consideration last week after opposition to her nomination grew in the Senate….
“With Ms. Rice out of the running, Mr. Kerry’s appointment ‘is the working presumption,’ said a senior State Department official who has been preparing for the transition to a new secretary. But White House officials said the deal was not entirely done, because the lineup currently envisioned — with former Senator Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department and the acting C.I.A. director, Michael J. Morell, likely to be named to the post permanently — looks a bit too much like national security teams of a previous era.”
— The New York Times, Dec. 17, 2012
Do concealed-weapon laws result in less crime?
A collection of classroom-safe training pistols from a concealed-weapons permit class in Florida.
(BRIAN BLANCO/REUTERS)
“The facts are every time guns have been allowed, concealed-carry has been allowed, the crime rate has gone down.”
--Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), on “Fox News Sunday,” Dec. 16, 2012
In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a number of lawmakers have pushed for new gun-control legislation. But some gun-control foes, such as Rep. Louie Gohmert, have argued that instead more guns, not more controls, are needed.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Gohmert said of slain principal Dawn Hochsprung: “I wish to God she had had an M-4 [assault rifle] in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”
Laying aside the question of armed teachers in schools, we were interested in Gohmert’s sweeping statement that laws that have allowed concealed weapons have always resulted in a decline in crime rates. Can such a cause-and-effect link be established?
The Facts
The National Rifle Association says that, by its definition, there are now 41 states that have “right-to-carry” laws. “Since 1991, when violent crime peaked in the U.S., 24 states have adopted ‘shall issue’ laws, replacing laws that prohibited carrying or that issued carry permits on a very restrictive basis; many other federal, state, and local gun control laws have been eliminated or made less restrictive; and the number of privately-owned guns has risen by about 100 million,” the organization says on its Web site.
The historical myth that Reagan raised $1 in taxes for every $3 in spending cuts
(Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library, Michael Evans)
“In 1982, Ronald Reagan sat down with the Democrats and they had a deal — a $3 cut in spending for every dollar they raised in taxes. Guess what? They raised the taxes, and they never cut the spending.”
— oft-repeated story told in Washington during “fiscal cliff” negotiations
It had become an article of faith by conservatives that President Reagan reluctantly agreed to raise taxes in his first term in office — and that Congress then failed to follow though on promised spending cuts. The frequent recitation of this story during the current fiscal debate made us wonder: What actually happened three decades ago?
It’s not hard to find the source of this story — Reagan’s own memoir, “An American Life.” Here’s what he wrote: “I made a deal with the congressional Democrats in 1982, agreeing to support a limited loophole-closing tax increase to raise more than $98.3 billion over three years in return for their agreement to cut spending by $280 billion during the same period; later the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.”
When Reagan made a nationally-televised speech in support of the tax hike — trying to refute charges that it was the biggest tax increase in U.S. history — he also cited a 3-to-1 agreement:
“Revenues would increase over a three-year period by about $99 billion, and outlays in that same period would be reduced by $280 billion. Now, as you can see, that figures out to about a 3-to-1 ratio — $3 less in spending outlays for each $1 of increased revenue. This compromise adds up to a total over three years of a $380 billion reduction in the budget deficits.”
The Washington Post did not have a Fact Checker column back then, and this speech certainly would have been ripe for fact checking. (We would have been suspicious of his use of the word “outlays.”) Let’s go back in time to show what really happened, using documents, news reports and memoirs of the period.
The Facts
Despite Reagan’s claim that he made a deal with the Democrats, the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas — then chairman of the Finance Committee and later the majority leader and Republican nominee for president — was a driving force behind a big tax increase because he was concerned about soaring deficits after Reagan had boosted defense spending and slashed taxes.
Did Karl Rove earn any money from American Crossroads?
Chris Matthews: “Who got all this money? Nobody got it — not even him {Karl Rove]. It was just wasted.”
Rick Tyler: “So he said. Do you really believe Karl Rove got no money?”
Matthews: “Well, he said he volunteered.”
Tyler: “Well, fine. Show us your K-1s and your tax returns and we’ll see if you got any money. I don’t believe it.”
— exchange on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Nov. 30, 2012
It is an axiom of Washington that when politicians spend money, lots of people are getting a piece of the action. So when the Super PAC American Crossroads spent some $300 million in 2012 on behalf of Republican candidates, with rather mixed results, some speculated that nevertheless Republican strategist Karl Rove, who co-founded the group, certainly earned a pretty penny.
Rove has denied he earned anything from his work with Crossroads, saying he was simply a volunteer. But that has not stopped the chatter.
After the election, US News ran an article titled “Why We May Never Know How Much Money Karl Rove Made Running Crossroads.” (The magazine later issued a long mea culpa, acknowledging “there is no credible basis to believe that Karl Rove earned any compensation, either directly or indirectly, from these outside groups.”)
Rick Tyler, a GOP consultant who is close to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also publicly expressed his deep skepticism on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” Tyler has also been a senior adviser to failed Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri, and during the campaign he publicly scolded Crossroads for not backing his candidate. “They would rather win television commissions than win the Senate,” he claimed.
But others have also assumed Rove ended up with a chunk of the millions of dollars raised by Crossroads. Bill Moyers in July said protesters “marched at the DC offices of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which is the right wing money mills run by the mastermind of much of this massive fundraising, Karl Rove. He’s making a bundle himself, buying and selling free speech.”
Meanwhile, New York magazine columnist Frank Rich, on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, declared this week: “I'm sure he [Rove] gets a lovely salary from American Crossroads, too.”
In an exchange of e-mails, Tyler initially defended his comments, noting he was responding to Rove’s assertion of being merely a volunteer.
“I've not made a claim. He has. I simply don't believe his claim,” Tyler wrote. “I have no way of knowing if his assertion is true. Only Rove knows and given the responsibility he had with resources under his stewardship and that he was presented as an honest broker both on Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, he should provide some assurances that his assertion is true. We know that media buying precipitates commissions (kickbacks). Who got that money or where was it spent and why was it not disclosed?”
Rove is certainly a controversial figure, but we’re interested in the facts. Let’s look deeper at what the records show.
The Facts
American Crossroads was created after the 2008 elections, in an effort to create a conservative counterpoint to the alliance of labor and liberal interest groups that work on behalf of Democrats. As a tax-exempt organization subject to Section 527 of the tax code, the Super PAC is required to disclose its funding and its salaries, but a spin-off 501 (c)(4) nonprofit group known as Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) does not have to disclose donor information.
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