Tag Archives: Fact Check.org

I guess we can’t handle it

I don't have the print edition of the New York Times, so I 'm not sure where this article is placed on the page.  It purports to cover last night's Presidential debate.  But I don't know how you can cover a debate about facts and counter facts by mentioning the word "truth" only once ("fact" and "false" don't even appear):

Mr. Obama’s campaign released a video called “Mostly Fiction,” in which it accuses Mr. Romney of playing “fast and loose” with the truth during the debate.

So they said, did they.  I find this omission somewhat odd, because the NYT had a huge fact-check section.

In a related matter, here is fact-check.org on Romney's Tax Cut:

To be clear, Romney has proposed cutting personal federal income tax rates across the board by 20 percent, in addition to extending the tax cuts enacted early in the Bush administration. He also proposes to eliminate the estate tax permanently, repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, and eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends for taxpayers making under $200,000 a year in adjusted gross income.

By themselves, those cuts would, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, lower federal tax liability by “about $480 billion in calendar year 2015” compared with current tax policy, with Bush cuts left in place. The Obama campaign has extrapolated that figure out over 10 years, coming up with a $5 trillion figure over a decade.

However, Romney always has said he planned to offset that massive cut with equally massive reductions in tax preferences to broaden the tax base, thus losing no revenue and not increasing the deficit. So to that extent, the president is incorrect: Romney is not proposing a $5 trillion reduction in taxes.

Read that carefully.  Romney says that he will offset his tax cuts with unnamed reductions in deductions.  They're not part of his plan.  So Obama therefore is lying about his plan.