Q: Did the CBO say Obamacare will cost $50,000 for every person who is insured?
A: No. A newspaper calculated the cost at $50,000 per newly insured person. But that’s over 10 years and covers more than just the previously uninsured.
In a speech to House Democrats, President Barack Obama stretched the facts to underscore political points about national security and the improving economy.
In his State of the State address, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie exaggerated some figures and boasted about progress that doesn’t look so impressive when compared with national trends.
A new ad from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu takes liberties with the facts to make the claim that her opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, “voted to cut $86 million from Louisiana schools.”
This is another in our series of regular quarterly updates of key statistical indicators of the Obama presidency. Our intent is to provide accurate measures of what’s changed — for better or worse — since Obama first took office in January 2009.
Both parties are putting political spin on the deficit reduction contained in President Obama’s $3.78 trillion budget plan.
In Sen. Ted Cruz’s twisted vision of economic history, Ronald Reagan cured double-digit unemployment by cutting spending and reducing the federal debt, and Jimmy Carter was guilty of “out-of-control regulation.”
In the real world:
Total federal spending soared during Reagan’s deficit-plagued first term, and the national debt nearly doubled. His budget director later resigned and wrote a book criticizing Reagan’s failure to cut spending.
And Carter signed landmark bills freeing airline, railroad and trucking rates from federal regulation,
At the Conservative Political Action Conference, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said that the Senate was “in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of our U.S. Constitution” by failing to “pass a budget.” She’s referring to a budget resolution. But that constitutional clause doesn’t mention a budget or a budget resolution, which was not required of the Senate until the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. The responses to Palin’s interpretation from constitutional scholars ranged from “completely invalid” to “kind of a stretch.”
Rep. Paul Ryan exaggerates future growth of the federal debt in a chart contained in his newly released budget plan.
The chart relies on Congressional Budget Office projections from last year that do not account for actions taken since then to reduce federal deficits by nearly $2 trillion over 10 years. The chart also projects debt levels out to 2060, although CBO warns that such long-term projections are “highly uncertain.”
Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee,
Sen. Harry Reid was doubly wrong when he claimed that Congress already has cut $2.6 trillion from projected future deficits by reducing “non-defense programs” alone.
In fact, legislation he refers to applied to both security and non-security spending. Furthermore, a good chunk of the deficit reduction came from tax increases, not spending cuts.
Reid made the claim — twice — on ABC’s “This Week” on Feb. 3, in support of his argument that further deficit reduction should include more tax increases and cuts in military spending.