On "FOX News Sunday" on March 1, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona castigated Obama’s budget for expanding the country’s public debt. Obama’s budget certainly projects rapid growth in red ink. But Kyl’s attacks could use some context and correction.
Kyl: This budget adds more debt to our country’s future than all of the debt from 1789 when George Washington was president right up through Franklin Roosevelt and – and Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.
Half of the Wealthy Own Small Businesses?
President Obama’s proposed budget calls for rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000 (and individuals earning more than $200k). The increase would take effect in 2011. And, not so surprisingly, it has some Republicans up in arms. One of their main beefs: The move would hurt small businesses.
On "FOX News Sunday" on March 1, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told host Chris Wallace that "more than half of the people who pay these higher taxes are the small businesses of America."
Bad Bankruptcy Stat, Repeated
Last week on our main site, we pointed out that President Obama used an incorrect statistic on bankruptcies caused by medical expenses in his address to Congress. And yesterday, he repeated it,
as Jake Tapper at ABC News noted
:
Tapper: "The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds," President Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform just now.
As we said then (and Tapper kindly links to us in his report): Last year,
Liberal Groups Criticize GOP Over Stimulus, Redux
The liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change (along with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees labor union) released a new ad attacking Republicans for not supporting President Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Here is our review of an earlier ad from Americans United for Change. Here is the new one:
The main message of the ad is that Republicans said "no" to Obama’s plan, and, therefore, said "no" to "3.5 million jobs" and "no"
More Citizenship Quibbles
Since our article about Barack Obama’s birth certificate came out in August, we’ve heard many frivolous claims, nutty theories and made-up facts advanced by a small clique of Obama deniers. It seems that every time a rumor is debunked, a new one crops up to take its place. Sometimes contradictory rumors even circulate simultaneously.
The most recent claim is that Obama’s short-form birth certificate is legitimate, but that it was made up after his birth in Kenya,
Free Money!!
The ads are popping up everywhere. We’ve seen them on the sidebar at Facebook and on the front page of The New York Times‘ online edition.
The ads are enticing, promising to tell you how you can get your hands on a share of free government money. The pitch is a scam, promising free information for a small "shipping and handling" fee. What the ads aren’t telling you (at least not outside the fine print) is that unless you are careful,
Tiny Iran
Feb. 26 marked the beginning of the Conservative Political Action Committee (or CPAC) annual convention. Conference speakers include leading figures from the Republican Party as well as conservative columnists, pundits and activists. Among yesterday’s speakers was John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush and now a senior fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. During his speech, Bolton repeated a bit of old bunk from the 2008 campaign, falsely claiming that Obama called Iran “a tiny threat.”
Money on the Table
Before he gave the Republican rebuttal to Tuesday night’s presidential address, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was making headlines by saying he would leave some of President Obama’s stimulus funds on the table. Other southern GOP governors, such as Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, said they may follow his lead.
Jindal announced last week, and reiterated Feb. 22 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that he would not be applying for some unemployment insurance funding available to his state through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
Ride into the Danger Zone
The Air Force’s much-criticized F-22 has been a favorite subject of much of the blogosphere, particularly since Mark Bowden’s feature article praising the fighter appeared in the March issue of The Atlantic . Tuesday night the discussion went mainstream, with Obama’s oblique reference to “Cold War weapons we don’t use.” As we said in our article over on the main site, Obama is right to describe the F-22 this way. Development on the fighter began in 1981,
ARRA Under Attack, Again
The belated attacks on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 keep on coming. For the second time in less than a week, the American Issues Project has released a television ad criticizing the stimulus legislation recently signed by President Obama. In our article "GOP Stimulus Myths," we discussed the group’s first anti-stimulus ad that contained misleading claims about "pork and pet projects" in the legislation, as well as a one-sided characterization of a Congressional Budget Office analysis.