
Via @ Msmaggiern
Greg Sargent wrote a lengthy post that included some of the most persistent lies about President Obama that Mitt Romney has told over the course of his campaign. We’ve addressed these before, but since the election is finally upon us, it never hurts to review them and refer you to the some of the official debunkitude. Especially since Romney’s entire campaign is based on nothing but lies and evasion.
1. Romney: President Obama promised that the stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent.
Reality:
Far from being anything that Obama said, the Romney campaign acknowledges that this 8 percent figure comes from a staff-written projection issued Jan. 9, 2009 — before Obama had taken the oath of office. Of course, the campaign still spins it as a negative.
Here’s what happened. Two Obama aides, Christina Romer, the nominee to head the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, an incoming economic adviser to Vice President-elect Biden, wrote a 14-page report that attempted to assess the impact of a possible $775 billion stimulus package and how much of a difference it would make compared to doing nothing.
Thus, it was not an official government assessment or even an analysis of an actual plan that had passed Congress.
2. Romney: President Obama went on around the world on an “apology tour.”
Reality:
In a lengthy article on the Fact Checker blog, we tracked down every statement Obama uttered that partisans claim was an apology, and concluded that each one had been misquoted or taken out of context. [...]
Take it from us: The apology tour never happened.
3. Romney: President Obama added “nearly as much debt as all the previous presidents combined.”
Reality:
[T]he numbers don’t work. The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.
4. Romney: President Obama “is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare.”
Reality:
Columbia Journalism Review, May 21, 2012: The facts were and still are these: The health reform law, aka the Affordable Care Act, does call for cutting $500 billion from Medicare to help finance subsidies for the uninsured. The administration portrayed these as “savings”—in other words, money not spent for Medicare that could be used for another purpose. But the important take-away is this: the law does not cut a dime from the basic Medicare benefits seniors receive. All seniors will still get hospital benefits, coverage for physician services, lab tests, hospital outpatient care, prescription drugs, and so on, and will continue to receive them unless pols on both sides of the aisle succeed in changing the fundamental structure of Medicare.
For the record.