Viewers were relatively safe from false or misleading tripe on the Sunday morning talk shows yesterday.
But we can’t let a couple of statements go unmentioned, one from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and a couple from Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota; both officials are Republicans.
Barbour, speaking on CNN’s "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley, said:
Barbour, April 11: I mean, [Obama] has proposed a $3.8 trillion budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit. The whole budget in 1997 —
Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, at a nationally televised meeting of House Republicans in Baltimore, accused President Obama to his face of running up deficits a dozen times greater than the GOP’s. The president said, "That’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true," and he invited "any independent fact-checker out there" to assess which man got the facts right.
OK, we will.
We have to score this one for Obama. Hensarling told a Texas-size whopper —
President Obama peppered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation with facts, which were mostly right but sometimes cherry-picked, strained or otherwise misleading. He said “there are about 2 million Americans working right now” because of last year’s stimulus bill. But his own economic advisers say …
Q: What’s a good source for the U.S.A.’s long-term debt, annual revenues and expeditures, and long-term deficit forecasts?
A: The Congressional Budget Office publishes data on the federal government’s budget – that’s revenues and expenditures, deficits and debt. The Treasury Dept. is the best source for daily debt figures.
Q: During the Clinton administration was the federal budget balanced? Was the federal deficit erased?
A: Yes to both questions, whether you count Social Security or not.
We found some puffery in President Bush’s State of the Union address.
The President burnishes the State of the Union through selective facts and strategic omissions.
A DNC TV ad accuses Bush of breaking his word, but it strains some facts in the process.
Bush claims most of his tax cuts went to low- and middle-income persons. Kerry says Pell Grants were cut. Don’t believe either.
Animated cartoon claims Bush cuts education funding, but it’s really up 58%.