GOP Attack on Tim Kaine’s ‘Shortfall’ Falls Short
A conservative group claims former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine “left us with a $4.2 billion shortfall.” Not exactly. The state did face a $4.2 billion gap in the biennial 2010-2012 budget, but Kaine submitted a balanced budget proposal days before leaving office, as required by law.
And the last budget Kaine signed into law ended with a surplus. In fact, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell praised Kaine for making “tough cuts” in state spending and relying on “conservative”
Medicare’s ‘Piggy Bank’
Republicans claim the president’s $716 billion “cuts” to Medicare hurt the program’s finances. But the opposite is true. These cuts in the future growth of spending prolong the life of the Medicare trust fund, stretching the program’s finances out longer than they would last otherwise.
Mitt Romney has claimed that President Barack Obama has “robbed” Medicare. Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said Obama “turned Medicare into a piggy bank to fund Obamacare,” promising to “stop the raid on Medicare.” And the Republican National Committee is promoting on its website a feature it calls “Obama’s Countdown to Medicare’s Bankruptcy,”
Another Abortion Falsehood from Obama’s ‘Truth Team’
The Obama campaign is falsely accusing the Republican Party’s platform of calling for banning abortions even in cases of rape or incest. That’s not true. The 2012 platform is silent on exceptions — leaving that decision up to Congress and the states — just as it was in 2008 and in previous presidential election years.
To make matters worse, the latest falsehood comes from the president’s “Truth Team.” An Aug. 20 posting on the “Truth Team’s”
Cutting Medicare?
The Romney campaign says that President Obama’s health care law has cut $716 billion out of Medicare. But that’s a reduction in the future growth of spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget. And the reduction extends the life of the Medicare trust fund.
Read more about Medicare’s woes and both campaigns’ plans to reduce spending in our Aug. 22 article, “A Campaign Full of Mediscare.”
NRCC Taxes Logic in North Carolina House Race
A Democratic congressman who has reliably supported extending the Bush tax cuts is now being attacked by a GOP TV spot claiming he “voted for higher taxes on Social Security, small businesses, middle-class families, even marriage.” All those claims are false or, in the case of Social Security, misleading.
The target of this deceptive attack from the National Republican Congressional Committee is Rep. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, a conservative “Blue Dog” Democrat who bucked his party by voting for every extension of Bush’s cuts,
A Campaign Full of Mediscare
The presidential campaign is overflowing with claims from both sides designed to scare seniors into thinking Medicare is being gutted or about to end altogether. Lost in the flurry of attack ads and political messaging is a policy debate on how best to reduce the growth of Medicare spending, a common goal of both campaigns. If all voters know …
Aug. 17: Welfare, Medicare, North Dakota Senate Race
Distorting Obama’s Economic Plan, Ryan’s Medicare Plan
Both sides are playing loose with the facts in a couple of new TV ads. As FactCheck.org Deputy Director Eugene Kiely explains on WCBS radio, a pro-Romney super PAC takes President Obama’s comment about his second-term economic plan out of context, and an Obama TV ad provides false information about Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.
Read more about both ads in our Aug. 13 item “Pro-Romney Super PAC Twists Obama’s Words” and our Aug. 14 item,
Ryan’s Medicare Plan
Now that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is Mitt Romney’s running mate, the claims about Ryan’s Medicare plan are flying. We give the details on what the plan will do, and debunk Democratic claims that it would raise seniors’ costs by $6,000. That pertains to an outdated plan.
See “Outdated Attacks on Ryan” (Aug. 14) for more on misleading claims about his past proposals.