Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly conducted a sit-down interview with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama that is airing in four installments. (Parts three and four of the interview will air tonight and tomorrow night.)
The first segment was broadcast Thursday, and we noticed an accounting error on Obama’s part. When speaking about how much the U.S. is spending in Iraq, Obama added, “They’ve got $79 billion,” alluding to Iraq’s financial deposits and budget surplus. But that’s false.
Issues: economy
Distorting McCain’s Remarks
Summary
Obama’s campaign is running a TV ad in Indiana that asks the question: "How can John McCain fix the economy, when he doesn’t think it’s broken?" But the ad uses quotes from McCain that are old and taken out of context:
The ad shows McCain saying, "I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession." But McCain said that in January, and he also acknowledged at the time that the American economy was in "a rough patch."
Pork-barrel Spending
Q: What percentage of the national spending is pork?
A: About 1 percent.
Clinton and Economic Growth in the ’90s
Q: Were Clinton’s policies responsible for the 1990s’ economic growth?
A: He deserves part of the credit, but many factors were at work.
The Whoppers of 2004
Bush and Kerry repeat discredited claims in their final flurry of ads. Here’s our pre-election summary of the misinformation we found during the Bush-Kerry presidential campaign.
Pro-Bush Puffery on Economy, Medicare
New ad claims Bush inherited an economy “already in recession” and that 41 million seniors “now have access to lower cost prescriptions.” Wrong on both counts.
Update on Kerry’s “Shrinking Middle Class” — Still Shrinking in 2003
In an earlier article, we said Kerry based his claim that “our great middle class is shrinking” on some pretty stale numbers. Now fresh numbers are available — and Kerry’s statement is looking a lot better.
DNC Ad Says Bush Lost Manufacturing Jobs
The Democratic National Committee released an ad Aug. 6 saying 2.7 million manufacturing jobs had been lost under Bush. That’s true, but ignores the fact that manufacturing jobs started their decline three years before Bush took office.
Kerry’s Dubious Economics
He says new jobs are paying $9,000 less than the old ones. That’s not a fact.
Kerry Really Could Produce 10 Million New Jobs. (So Could Bush.)
John Kerry has promised that, if elected, his economic policies will produce 10 million new jobs. Some FactCheck.org subscribers have asked us why we haven’t debunked that claim, given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted only 8.4 million who were unemployed as of March.