Q: Is the Obama administration attempting to eliminate private 401(k)s and IRAs and create a “national retirement system”?
A: No. Obama endorses a proposal that would require businesses without retirement plans to establish private IRAs for their employees and deposit a percentage of wages into the accounts. Employees could opt out.
A fog of misinformation has settled on the fiscal cliff, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have traded conflicting, misleading and false statements in recent days on the president’s deficit-reduction plan:
Geithner falsely claimed on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s proposals to slow Medicare growth are “not shifting costs to seniors.” There are four proposals that would increase costs to some seniors by $32.9 billion over 10 years, beginning in 2017,
This week, readers sent us comments about the “cost” of cutting taxes and the difference between the largest entitlement programs.
In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the email we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
The U.S. faces the possibility of another recession — the third in 11 years — if President Obama and Congress cannot find a way to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. The one-two combination of massive tax increases and spending cuts …
Q: Did the Department of Homeland Security create a “standing army of government youth” known as FEMA Corps.
A: No. FEMA Corps is a civilian operation within AmeriCorps, a federal community service program. FEMA Corps prepares and responds to disasters. Its members, ages 18 to 24, carry no weapons.
Sen. Richard Durbin says that “Social Security does not add one penny to our debt.” That’s false. It was wrong 21 months ago, when Durbin said it once before, and it’s even more off the mark now.
The federal government for the first time in its history had to borrow money in 2010 to cover Social Security benefits to retired and disabled workers — a trend that worsened in 2011 and will not change at any point in the future unless changes are made.
A conservative group misleads taxpayers on the Affordable Care Act and the Internal Revenue Service’s future role in enforcing it. Americans for Tax Reform posted a “projected” IRS tax form on its website that claims to “help families and tax specialists prepare” for new tax provisions under the health care law. But ATR makes several false claims:
The group claims taxpayers will have to disclose “personal identifying health information” to the IRS to prove they have insurance.