Republican strategist Karl Rove and NBC’s "Meet the Press" guest host Tom Brokaw got into a tussle on that program Sunday over whether the Bush administration had planned to use oil money to partly fund the Iraq war. Rove also overstated opposition to Democratic health care legislation. We’ll start with the health care claim. Rove, a former top adviser to President George W. Bush, said: Rove, March 14: If you step back for a minute, it’s a pretty remarkable year that... Click to Read the Full Post
Yesterday we filed our lengthy report on the Blair House health care summit. But there were a few claims we didn’t have a chance to investigate, such as this exchange on medical malpractice. A key Republican proposal for any health care overhaul effort is so- called "tort reform" that would limit the potential liability awards in medical malpractice cases. We found at least a dozen references to it throughout the transcript of yesterday’s session. Republican House Minority Leader... Click to Read the Full Post
Summary So, what about those Republican health care plans? Contrary to claims made by some Democratic detractors, detailed GOP proposals, and a bipartisan bill with several GOP cosponsors, do exist. And they’re scheduled to get attention at a half-day, televised "summit" meeting at Blair House on Feb. 25, with President Obama presiding and lawmakers from both parties attending. Republican sponsors make fine-sounding claims for their legislation. In an e-mail to supporters, House... Click to Read the Full Post
The claim that the House bill would amount to "government-run health care" suffered a blow last week, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the so-called "public plan" in the revised bill wouldn’t offer much in the way of competition to private insurers. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from repeating the claim. For several months, we’ve been debunking assertions that Democratic health care bills call for a Canadian or British-type system in... Click to Read the Full Post
On Sept. 20 on NBC’s "Meet the Press," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio claimed that according to the Department of Treasury, the Democrats’ proposed cap-and-trade system would be costly for American families: Boehner, Sept. 20: It’s a cap-and-trade system, this big giant tax on the American people that this week, we just find out, the Treasury Department said will cost the average family $1,700 per year. That’s not true. That estimate came from CBS News... Click to Read the Full Post
Q: Does the House energy bill subject owners of existing homes to an energy efficiency audit before they can sell? A: Rep. Boehner and Rush Limbaugh got this wrong. The Realtors and home builders associations say there’s no such requirement in the bill, as do we. Click to Read the Full Post Read More →
House Minority Leader John Boehner has again attacked the way his home state is spending its stimulus funds. And again, he’s wrong. At his weekly news conference, Boehner criticized the Ohio Department of Transportation for using millions of dollars in American Recovery and Reconstruction Act money for a project study, rather than for construction: Boehner, July 9: As a matter of fact, [ODOT] took $20 million of stimulus funds to — to do a study of a proposed project in southwest... Click to Read the Full Post
John Boehner, phone home. Or at least check the Ohio Department of Transportation’s highly informative Web site before talking about state road projects on TV. Last week, Rep. Boehner, the House Republican leader who hails from the Buckeye State, released a video featuring a bloodhound purporting to sniff out jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus package that took effect in February – and finding none. Boehner followed that up with a July 5 interview on “Fox News Sunday,”... Click to Read the Full Post
Q: Does the stimulus bill include a $5.2 billion payoff for ACORN? A: The bill does include funds for which ACORN would be eligible to compete - against hundreds of other groups. But most is for a housing rehabilitation program ACORN says it never applied for in the past and won’t in the future. Click to Read the Full Post Read More →
