REWRITING PRESIDENT OBAMA'S POSITIONS
Mr. Romney and his advisors have shown a disturbing pattern
throughout this election. President
Obama positions have been distorted and misquoted indiscriminately. Here are 20 examples from Romney speeches...
References: to learn more go to:
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Mr. Romney has said:
1. "Regulations
have quadrupled. The rate of regulations quadrupled under this president."
The actual data on regulations show
Obama's rate of regulations is no different from the past 18 years.
Mr. Romney has said:
2. "In one year,
(President Obama) provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world …
into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1."
The money wasn’t provided in one year,
wasn’t distributed primarily via tax breaks, wasn’t primarily provided directly
to
companies, wasn’t primarily spent on solar
and wind, and wasn’t spent at all on Fisker or Tesla. If fact more than 60 percent
of the allocated money was directed to state and local governments and utility
companies for energy efficiency, transportation and electrical infrastructure.
Mr. Romney has said:
3. "President
Obama has "doubled" the deficit."
President Obama and the Congress have
actually decreased the deficit slightly.
Mr. Romney has said:
4. "Right now,
the (Congressional Budget Office) says up to 20 million people will lose their
insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year."
There is a great deal of insurance change
by choice each year. Many of those 20
million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options.
Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today
"lose" coverage than even the highest CBO estimate.
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"The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life,
and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far
place my touch will be felt.” Fredrick Buchner
|
Mr. Romney has said:
5. "The 48, 49
percent that supports President Barack Obama are "people who pay no
income tax."
Not supported by the polls and income tax
data. Obama gets substantial support
from people earning more than $50,000 -- and 90 percent of them, or more, do
pay taxes. And Romney gets lots of support from seniors, many of whom have no
income tax liability.
Mr. Romney has said:
6. "President Obama’s
lawsuit claims it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women
extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period."
Obama’s lawsuit clearly states that it
seeks to permit all Ohioans to vote during the three days before the election,
as was the case in 2008. The suit in no way suggests restricting early voting
by members of the military.
It is simply dishonest for Romney and his backers
to claim that Obama’s effort to extend early voting privileges to everyone in
Ohio constitutes an attack on military voters’ ability to cast ballots on the
weekend before elections.
Mr. Romney has said:
7. "President Obama was saying success 'is
the result of government,' not 'hard-working people,' when he
said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made
that happen."
The Romney campaign has repeatedly
distorted Obama's words. By plucking two sentences out of context, Romney
twists the president's remarks and ignores their real meaning.
The preceding
sentences make clear that Obama was talking about the importance of
government-provided infrastructure and education to the success of private
businesses.
Romney also conveniently ignores Obama's clear summary of his
message, that "the point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because
of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
By
leaving out the "individual initiative" reference, Romney and his
supporters have misled viewers and given a false impression.
Mr. Romney has said:
8. Stimulus
money went to buy electric cars from Finland as a payback to Obama supporters.
There is nothing accurate in this claim.
The federal loan guarantees the company received were not part of the stimulus,
and there is no evidence that any government dollars paid for work done by
Finnish workers.
Ornisher, the company spokesman, told us the contract to
produce the cars in Finland had been signed before the federal loan was
approved. Also, measures were put in place to ensure that taxpayer dollars only
went for work done in America.
The ad’s suggestion that the Fisker loan was
a reward to a political supporter also falls flat. The program was approved
initially by the Bush administration.
Mr. Romney has said:
9. " ‘Obamacare’
puts the federal government between you and your doctor."
The law does aim to improve the quality
and efficiency of care. At some level, that would change what doctors do. But
we found no hard evidence to support the claim that doctors would be forced to
make bad decisions. In contrast, we found many provisions that support an open
process geared toward providing better care.
Primary care doctors seem most
inclined to support the law, as do a large number of physician professional
associations.
But that doesn’t mean the government is placing itself between
doctors and patients.
Mr. Romney has said:
10. "Dow Chemical
decided to build a plant in Saudi Arabia rather than Oklahoma due to the impact
of environmental regulations on the supply of natural gas."
No record of it appears to exist, Romney's
campaign didn't offer any evidence to back it up and neither did Dow.
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| "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at this woman" John 8:7 |
Mr. Romney has said:
11., "Obamacare … means that for up to 20 million
Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that
they like and they want to keep."
Romney is wrong to describe it as only including people
who "like" their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be
leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores
that under the status quo, many more people today "lose" coverage
than even the highest CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.
Mr. Romney has said:
12. "Obamacare
adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt."
There is no factual basis for Romney’s
claim that the law "adds trillions to our deficits and to our national
debt."
Mr. Romney has said:
13. (When Mitt Romney
was governor of Massachusetts), "we didn’t just slow the rate of growth of
our government, we actually cut it."
When Romney was governor spending rose by
an average of about 5 percent per year during Romney’s term.
Many of Romney’s efforts to shape the budget
were rejected by the Democratic legislature, so claiming full credit for any
budgetary trends on his watch is a stretch.
Mr. Romney has said:
14, "Barack Obama is the only president to ever
cut $500 billion from Medicare."
Mr. Romney has said:
15. "The
president gave the (auto) companies to the UAW."
The reality is Obama was in charge of a
bailout deal that resulted in the union’s health care trust owning stock in
Chrysler and GM. But the trust was owed money to pay for health care under the
terms of labor contracts the car companies signed. And the union
"gave" plenty too -- in the form of wages, vacation and job security.
In that light, the arrangement was a tradeoff, not a giveaway.
What tips
Romney’s claim even further from reality is the fact that the union itself does
not own any GM or Chrysler stock. It is not a majority shareholder in either
company, nor does it have a vote on the board.
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| Comparison of sentences for AIG executive (stole $500 Million) and Homeless man (Stole $100) |
Mr. Romney has said:
16. "This
president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building
settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on
Israel from the Gaza Strip."
Doesn’t match Obama’s speeches. In his
2009 speech to the U.N., Obama said that America does not accept "the
legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." Though he did not
specifically mention Hamas, he did mention Israeli’s fear of rockets. And in
later speeches to the U.N., Obama was blunt in his criticism of violent attacks
against Israelis, once saying "the slaughter of innocent Israelis is not
resistance -- it's injustice."
Our examination of three of Obama’s
speeches to the U.N. showed that Obama is fairly even-handed as he has laid out
goals for both sides -- while he spoke against the Israeli settlements, he also
bluntly opposed violent attacks on Israelis.
Mr. Romney has said:
17. "President Barack Obama has opened up no new trade relationships with other
nations.
It did take the better part of three years
for Obama and the Republican dominated Senate to enact the languishing South
Korea, Colombia and Panama trade agreements. But ultimately he did reach an
accord with lawmakers that enabled the agreements’ relatively easy passage in
both the House and the Senate, including strong support from Republicans as
well as the votes of several dozen Democratic lawmakers.
Mr. Romney has said:
18. "Eliminating 'Obamacare' ... "saves $95 billion a year."
Romney said repealing the health care law
would save $95 billion a year. But that only accounts for outlays in one year,
2016. Because of the revenue sources that the law established, repealing it
actually adds significantly to the deficit over the long haul, according to the
CBO.
Mr. Romney has said:
19. "The National
Labor Relations Board told Boeing that it couldn’t build a factory in South
Carolina because South Carolina is a right-to-work state."
The NLRB’s complaint started a legal
process that could ultimately have resulted in a factory closure, but the NLRB
as a whole didn’t tell Boeing anything. What’s more, the legal basis for the
action centered on whether Boeing was punishing the union for staging strikes,
not that Boeing had opened a factory in a right-to-work state.
Mr. Romney has said:
20. "Only one
president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in this country . . . Barack
Obama."
The statement gets it wrong on every
front. The Medicare belt was tightened in 1981 and 1982 under Reagan, in 1989
under the first President Bush and again in 1997 under Clinton. So Obama is in
no way the only president to cut the program.
Further, by specifying that
Obama cut Medicare "for seniors," Romney seems to mean that the
president slashed benefits, not just the program’s spending. That’s even more
egregious. Other presidents have made changes to Medicare that reduced benefits
for seniors, while the health care law Obama signed actually increases them.
That’s a lot of inaccuracy in a single sentence.
The frightening thing is ... how many people accept the lies - even when presented with the actual evidence...
