Stories by Eugene Kiely
Director, FactCheck.org
Gutting Welfare-to-Work?
The Romney campaign says the Obama administration has adopted “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” But FactCheck.org Deputy Director Eugene Kiely tells WCBS radio that the administration’s plan does no such thing.
Read more about the president’s welfare changes in our Aug. 9 article, “Does Obama’s Plan ‘Gut Welfare Reform?‘”
Does Obama’s Plan ‘Gut Welfare Reform’?
A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The plan does neither of those things.
Work requirements are not simply being “dropped.” States may now change the requirements — revising, adding or eliminating them — as part of a federally approved state-specific plan to increase job placement.
And it won’t “gut” the 1996 law to ease the requirement. Benefits still won’t be paid beyond an allotted time,
Romney’s Impossible Tax Promise
Tax experts — including one who supports Romney’s plan — say the Republican presidential candidate’s promise to cut individual income tax rates without either favoring the wealthy or losing revenue isn’t mathematically possible. That’s the conclusion of the Tax Policy Center in a report the Romney campaign attacked …
Romney’s Position on Abortion
On WCBS radio, FactCheck.org Deputy Managing Editor Robert Farley talks about an Obama campaign ad that falsely claims Mitt Romney “backed a bill that outlaws all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.”
See “Falsifying Romney’s Abortion Stance, Again” for more information about this TV ad.
Romney’s ‘Racist’ Reference to Palestinian Culture
Mitt Romney says he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture” at a fundraiser in Israel, where his remarks were denounced by a Palestinian leader as “racist.” It’s true that Romney didn’t directly disparage the Palestinian culture, but he did say “culture makes all the difference” when explaining why Israel’s per-capita gross domestic product is more than double that of neighboring areas managed by the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians say that ignores the effect of Israel’s economic sanctions.
Texas-Size Mudballs in GOP Senate Runoff
A bitter GOP primary contest in Texas for a U.S. Senate seat has come to this: an ad featuring a grieving mother who links one of the candidates to her son’s suicide.
A Texas super PAC is airing a TV ad that features a distraught mother who says Ted Cruz, a lawyer, “should be absolutely ashamed of himself” for representing a key figure in Pennsylvania’s infamous “kids for cash” scandal. In that case, two judges were convicted of taking $2.1 million from Cruz’s client in exchange for sending kids to private juvenile detention centers —
July 27: Insurance Mandate, Stimulus, ‘War on Women’
‘You Didn’t Build That,’ Uncut and Unedited
Mitt Romney and his allies have attacked President Barack Obama — often out of context — for saying, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
American Crossroads posted a 60-second Web video called “Build” that shows small-business owners reacting to Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment.
The Romney campaign replays Obama saying “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that” five times in a 15-second video as part of a “petition”
Sununu’s Out-of-this-World Outsourcing Claim
John Sununu claimed President Obama “outsourced a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians.” But it was President Bush who set NASA on a path eight years ago to retire the Space Shuttle and rely on the Russians for space travel.
“[Bush] Administration policy is to retire the shuttle in 2010 and purchase crew transport from Russia,” as then-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin once explained.
To be sure, Obama ended the Space Shuttle program,