Stories by Eugene Kiely
Director, FactCheck.org
Aug. 5: Unemployment, Jobs, White House Salaries
Top 20 White House Raises
Q: Is a chart claiming to show the “top 20 raises” to White House staffers accurate?
A: It’s misleading. The salary increases for 19 of the 21 employees listed resulted from promotions. Average pay for White House staff actually declined.
July 29: Federal Spending, Revenues, Debt
FactChecking Dueling Debt Speeches
The president and House speaker restated familiar positions in their dueling debt ceiling speeches, but they took their points too far at times or made them without enough context. …
July 22: Health Care, DREAM Act, Bailouts
Did Obama ‘Enact’ DREAM Act?
Q: Did President Obama “enact” the DREAM Act by executive order to give “amnesty” to 20 million illegal immigrants?
A: No. But the administration in 2011 adopted a policy of giving “particular care” before deporting students, military veterans and others deemed to be low risk. In 2011, it issued a new policy to allow certain illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to apply for two-year work permits.
Did Lugar ‘Bail Out’ NYC?
Club for Growth exaggerates when it claims Sen. Richard Lugar voted to bail out New York City "back in the 1970s" at a cost of $9.4 billion. Lugar was mayor of Indianapolis when Congress passed the famous 1975 New York City bailout. He did vote for a 1978 bill that provided the city with $1.65 billion in federal loan guarantees — but it cost federal taxpayers $0.
The main point of the ad is also exaggerated.
July 15: MN Cigarette Tax, Debt Ceiling, Medicare
Ron Paul Ad Invokes Reagan, Imprecisely
Ron Paul wrongly suggests Ronald Reagan reluctantly agreed to a "debt ceiling compromise" in 1987. There was no disagreement over raising the debt ceiling. In fact, Reagan said he had "no objection whatsoever" to raising the debt ceiling. Reagan opposed the main provision of the legislation that threatened to impose deep spending cuts, including to the military, if the president and Congress did not reduce the deficit by a certain amount.
Paul, the populist Texas congressman who is running for the Republican presidential nomination,