FactCheck.org: Whoppers of the 2012 Election, Final Edition

Summary; The biggest falsehoods from the presidential campaign.

With only days to go until Election Day 2012, we look here at the most egregiously false and misleading claims from the entire presidential campaign. Some examples:

President Barack Obama claimed Mitt Romney is planning to raise taxes by $2,000 on middle-income taxpayers and/or cut taxes by $5 trillion. Neither is true.
Romney claimed Obama plans to raise taxes by $4,000 on middle-income taxpayers. That’s not true, either.
It’s also not true that Obama plans “to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements,” as Romney claimed.
Equally untrue is the Obama campaign’s repeated claim that Romney backed a law that would outlaw “all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.”

So many false and twisted claims were made in the early months that we issued an “early edition” of our annual wrap-up of political whoppers in July. We noted then that the campaign had been nasty, brutish and long.

And it’s only gotten longer, not more truthful.

For example, Romney just claimed that the bailed-out Chrysler Corp. is thinking of moving all Jeep production to China. Chrysler quickly denounced that as a falsehood. Romney’s latest whopper is perhaps his payback for Obama’s earlier accusation that Romney personally “shipped jobs to China” at a time when, in reality, Romney was running the 2002 Winter Olympics, not Bain Capital. Thus one whopper begets another.

It’s been that sort of campaign, filled from beginning to end with deceptive attacks and counterattacks, and dubious claims. For a generous sampling of the worst of a bad lot, please read on to our Analysis section.

Analysis

When we issued our “early edition” of this annual wrap-up, we complained that “neither candidate speaks candidly of what he would actually do if elected.” We also expressed a hope that “the candidates will become less personal, more substantive, and more forthcoming about their plans.” But instead of a candid discussion of how to address pressing issues, including trillion-dollar annual deficits, rising health care costs and the needs of an aging population, we’ve seen even more exaggerations, distortions and falsehoods, on both sides.

We offer them here in no particular order, and with no attempt to judge which candidate strays furthest — or most often — from the facts. Readers may judge that for themselves. And we make no claim that this list is comprehensive. Rather, it represents a summary and sampling of our findings issued over the course of a long and not very illuminating campaign.

Obama: Romney Raises/Cuts Taxes

Obama has claimed at various times that Romney has proposed “a $5 trillion tax cut,” or that he wants to raise taxes by $2,000 on the middle class. Neither claim is accurate.

Obama, Oct 3: Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut — on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Obama, Sept. 17: I am not going to ask middle-class families with kids to pay over $2,000 more so that millionaires and billionaires get to pay less.

Romney’s plan is not a $5 trillion tax cut. He has always said he’d offset his rate cuts by eliminating deductions and taxing a wider base of income, producing no net loss of revenue.

Romney proposed cutting income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminating the estate tax, and eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends for those earning under $200,000 a year. That would indeed cost about $480 billion in 2015, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, or roughly $5 trillion if projected over a full decade.

But that’s not all Romney’s plan entailed. He has always said he’d pay for his tax cuts by reducing tax deductions and preferences — taxing more income — so no revenue is lost. If he delivers on that promise — a big “if” to be sure — it would be a $0 tax cut.

Romney’s plan doesn’t call for raising taxes by $2,000 on middle-income taxpayers, either. He has been most emphatic about that in recent debates. In the second debate at Hofstra University on Oct. 16, he said: “Middle-income people are going to get a tax break.”

The president bases his claim on a twisted reading of the Tax Policy Center’s study, which found that it was mathematically impossible for Romney to cut rates and hold revenue constant without also shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of families, with children, making under $200,000 a year. TPC’s director, Donald Marron, disputed Obama’s interpretation of the study, saying, “I view it as showing that [Romney's] plan can’t accomplish all his stated objectives.”

Dubious Denver Debate Declarations, Oct. 4

Obama’s Stump Speech, Sept. 19

FactChecking Obama and Biden, Sept. 7

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

News and Issues, Issues, Politics, Government, Senior Women Web, Sightings