The Fact-Checker, by Michael Dobbs

Candidate Record

Farewell Edition

The Fact Checker is shutting up shop on Nov. 4. Over the last 15 months, I have checked some 200 claims and statements relating to the presidential campaign, and received 18,000 comments, many of them vehemently disputing my verdicts. Pinocchios have entered the campaign lexicon, and are sometimes used as a verb, e.g. "You were Pinocchio'ed for that statement." I will leave it up to readers to decide whether the whole experiment has been worthwhile. For this farewell edition, here are a few of my personal favorites from the long, winding campaign trail.

Barack the Recidivist

""We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America." --Barack Obama, July 12, 2007

Obama repeated this hoary old chestnut several times, mainly in front of African American audiences. It's untrue. Four Pinocchios.

Rudy's Prostate

"I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chances of surviving prostate cancer and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine." --Rudy Giuliani, October 29, 2007

Flat out wrong, according to leading cancer experts, but Rudy kept repeating it. Four Pinocchios.

The NAFTA superhighway

"They don't talk about it [the NAFTA superhighway], and they might not admit it, but there's been money spent on it. " --Ron Paul, November 28, 2007

Three presidential candidates--Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo--professed belief in the non-existant "NAFTA superhighway." Tell that one to the Martian landing in your backyard. Four Pinocchios.

Marching with MLK

"I saw my father march with Martin Luther King." --Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007

Sorry, Mitt, your Dad certainly supported the civil rights movement, but he never marched with MLK. Four Pinocchios.

Danger: Sniper Fire

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." --Hillary Clinton, March 17, 2008

Remember how she stopped to greet that cute little girl at Tuzla airport. You read it here first. Four Pinocchios.

John the Tax-Cutter

"I can eliminate $100 billion of wasteful and earmark spending immediately--35 billion in big spending bills in the last two years, and another 65 billion that has already been made a permanent part of the budget." --John McCain, April 23, 2008

Your figures don't add up, my friend. And I have a "bridge to nowhere" I want to sell you. Four Pinocchios.

Highway Robbery

John McCain and Sarah Palin "are proposing the largest increase on middle class taxpayers in American history....It will cost the middle class over one trillion dollars in additional taxes. It is almost unbelievable." --Joe Biden, September 25, 2008.

It is not "almost unbelievable." It is "unbelievable." Uncle Joe left out the part about the offsetting tax credit. Four Pinocchios.

Troopergate

"I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there." --Sarah Palin, October 11, 2008

Except that the independent report found that you breached the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Four Pinocchios.

Posted at 9:55 AM ET on Nov 3, 2008 | Permalink | Post a Comment
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Barack Obama

Obama's Spending Cuts

Obama Infomercial.

"For my energy plan, my economic plan, and the other proposals you'll hear tonight, I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost."
--Barack Obama infomercial, October 29, 2008

Barack Obama has outlined a series of new spending initiatives ranging from health care to education to the war in Afghanistan that could end up costing $1 trillion over his first term, according to independent experts. In his half-hour infomercial on Wednesday evening, the senator from Illinois repeated earlier assurances that he had "offered spending cuts" to pay for every cent of the post-election bonanza that he plans to shower on his fellow Americans.

Do Obama's figures add up?

The Facts

Obama's claim is artfully worded. Note that, in contrast to his Republican rival, he does not claim that he will balance the federal budget after four years. That seems a virtually impossible task -- given the fact that he wants to extend most of the Bush tax cuts (for everybody making less than $250,000 a year) beyond their expiration date of 2010. The independent Tax Policy Center projects a budget deficit under Obama of $520 billion in 2013, compared to a presently projected deficit of $147 billion.

What Obama does say is that he will pay for his new spending plans with even bigger spending cuts.

Whether you believe that he will deliver on this pledge depends on how much weight you give to politicians' promises that are not supported by detailed explanations of how exactly they will be put into effect. On paper, the Land-of-Lincolner might be correct, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which has analyzed the two candidates' spending plans. By her calculations, Obama has promised $990 billion in new spending over his first four-year term -- to be offset by $989 billion in spending cuts.

The problem, however, says MacGuineas, is that Obama "is very specific on his spending proposals, but much less specific on his savings proposals." Furthermore, the Illinois senator has not made his new spending proposals contingent on securing the corresponding spending cuts.

Put another way, Obama's new spending plans are very concrete: a new College tax credit ($134 billion in 2013), expanded health care coverage ($115 billion), a refundable tax credit for workers ($72 billion). Many of his proposed spending cuts belong to the pie-in-the-sky category.

Take the proposal to cut health care costs by $2,500 per family per year through the adoption of new technologies, improved management techniques, and so on. "That's a real stretch," said John Sheils, senior vice president for the Lewin Group, a consultancy company that has studied the health care plans of the two candidates. By the Lewin Group's calculations, the savings are more likely to be in the region of $700 per family, based on the plans outlined by the Obama campaign.

"If you are going to be definitive about the savings, you have to be equally definitive about how you are going to achieve them," said Sheils. He said that Obama had "some interesting ideas" for health care savings, but had failed to outline enforcement mechanisms for patients and medical staff that fail to follow his guidelines.

Similar caveats apply to Obama's other savings promises, including reforming government spending ($17 billion in 2013), elimination of waste and obsolete programs ($50 billion) and a phased withdrawal from Iraq ($156 billion). Some of these cuts will depend on events at least partially outside Obama's control (like the war in Iraq), while others (such as the slashing of earmarks) will require concessions from Congress that no previous president has been able to achieve.

"Every president has a list of programs they would like to eliminate, but every one of those programs has a massive lobbying system in place to preserve it," said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group. "Members of Congress will readily create new programs, but they are very reluctant to cut old ones."

Schatz cites the example of Economic Development Administration, which Obama has talked about eliminating. The agency, which has the mission of generating jobs, has been slated for the chopping block for years. When it last came up for re-authorization, in 2004, the House voted 388-31 to keep it. Only one Democrat voted against.

The Pinocchio Test

Promises to cut government spending are pretty much worthless unless accompanied by convincing explanations of how precisely they will be implemented. Obama has failed this basic test. Vague targets are insufficient, particularly when there is no real link between the promised spending cuts and the new spending programs.

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Posted at 7:39 PM ET on Oct 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (25)
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Candidate Watch

John McCain's 'Trick or Treat'?

Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.

"I don't care much about an old, washed-up unrepentant terrorist, and his wife who was on an FBI top 10 wanted list. But we should know about their relationship, including apparently information that is held by the Los Angeles Times concerning an event that [William] Ayers attended with a PLO spokesman."
--John McCain, Interview with Radio Mambi, October 29, 2008

On the eve of Halloween, the McCain campaign has come up with a new villain to scare away votes from Barack Obama. He is Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and an Obama associate from his days at the University of Chicago. Regarded as a mainstream scholar by many American Middle East experts, Khalidi has been denounced as an "extremist" by some Jewish groups because of his pro-Palestinian views and sharp criticism of Israel. The Republican candidate is now tying to tie Khalidi to former Weather Underground leader William Ayers -- and suggesting for good measure that the mainstream media (in the form of the Los Angeles Times) is trying to suppress the connection.

Let's try to sort it all out.

The Facts

The author of several books on the Middle East, Rashid Khalidi has long been a target of self-appointed "campus watchdog" groups who have dubbed him the "professor of hate" because he has spoken sympathetically about resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. For their part, Khalidi and other academics have complained about a McCarthyist "witch hunt" aimed at stifling free debate on campuses. For more background on this controversy, see an article I wrote for The Washington Post four years ago, including interviews with Khalidi and his critics.

The McCain campaign has depicted Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Questioned about this claim, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers referred me to an April 10, 2008 story from the Los Angeles Times that reported that Khalidi "often spoke to reporters" on behalf of the PLO in the early 1970s while teaching at a university in Beirut. Khalidi has denied ever being a spokesman for the PLO, but this may be a question of semantics, revolving around whether he was a formal or informal spokesman.

The same Los Angeles Times story described a farewell party for Khalidi in Chicago in 2003 prior to his departure for New York that was attended by Obama. As described by the Times, the event included the recitation of a poem by a young Palestinian American accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians. Obama himself adopted a different tone in his comments, calling for Israelis and Palestinians to find common ground.

McCain has accused the Times of suppressing a videotape of the event that it obtained from a confidential source. The Times says that it is keeping a promise to the source not to air the videotape.

In two radio interviews on Wednesday, McCain claimed that the videotape would show that William Ayers also attended the party for Khalidi. According to the McCain campaign, he based this claim on a February 4, 2005 article in The New York Sun written by Sol Stern, a long-time Khalidi critic. But the Stern article does not say that Ayers was present at the party. Instead, it reports that Ayers contributed to a testimonial book that was presented to Khalidi at his farewell dinner. Obama and Chicago mayor Richard Daley also contributed testimonials for Khalidi.

"I never tried to say that Ayers was there," said Stern. "I didn't think it was a big deal at the time."

Stern told me that he was sent photocopies of a few pages from the testimonial book at the time that he was writing opinion pieces criticizing Columbia University for hiring Khalidi. He said he no longer has the photocopies.

The L.A. Times is being coy about what the tape actually shows, apparently out of deference to promises made to its original source. "We reported in April on everything that we saw on the tape that we considered newsworthy," the paper's Washington bureau chief, Doyle McManus, told me. "Our April story did not report that Ayers was at the event."

It turns out that McCain is treading on tricky ground when he cites the Khalidi case as an example of Obama consorting with terrorist sympathizers. The Obama campaign was quick to point out that an organization co-founded by Khalidi has received large sums of grant money from the International Republican Institute, chaired by McCain since 1993. One such grant was for $448,873 in 1998 to assist the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in its work in the West Bank.

The Pinocchio Test

This is a case of guilt by association gone haywire. Both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have had extensive dealings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is much more closely identified with the PLO than Rashidi ever was. Verdict: the McCain camp has wildly exaggerated the significance of the Obama-Ayers-Khalidi triangle.

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Posted at 6:13 PM ET on Oct 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (120)
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Candidate Watch

Palin and the Maybe Pipeline

Palin in Ohio, October 29, 2008.

"We're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline -- which is North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever -- to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets."
--Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential Debate, October 2, 2008

"That pipeline will be a lifeline -- freeing us from debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart."
--Sarah Palin, Toledo, Ohio, October 29, 2008

In a major speech Wednesday on how to achieve energy independence, Sarah Palin drew attention once again to a huge natural gas pipeline project that will connect Alaska with the Lower 48. The pipeline has been under discussion for more than three decades -- but work has not yet begun and there is still no guarantee that it will ever be built. So what exactly has been accomplished during the two years Palin has served as governor of Alaska?

The Facts

Palin persuaded the Alaska legislature to authorize a Canadian company to secure the necessary financing and permits for a 1,715 mile pipeline from the North Slope gas fields to the Canadian pipeline network. Under the deal, which received final approval in August, the state will provide up to $500 million to Calgary-based TransCanada Corp to coordinate the securing of permits, customers, and financing for the pipeline. TransCanada would like to complete construction on a pipeline by 2018.

By granting the license to a Canadian company, Palin was attempting to perform an end-run around the companies that actually control the 35 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves on the North Slope: BP, Conoco and Exxon Mobil. She complained that the big oil companies were demanding too high a price for their participation in the pipeline project, and that her plan will expose them to "free-market competition."

The problem with this narrative, says University of Alaska Economics professor Douglas Reynolds, is that the pipeline cannot be built without the cooperation of the companies who control the North Slope oil. These companies can refuse to sign off on the pipeline construction project coordinated by TransCanada and remain free to organize their own alternative project. Financing for either project will almost certainly depend on some kind of barter agreement between Alaska and the big oil producers.

Contrary to claims by Palin and her supporters, the latest developments do not guarantee that the pipeline will actually be built. The Anchorage Daily News called those claims "incorrect" in its coverage of the
August 2 Senate vote approving the granting of the license to TransCanada.

It is therefore inaccurate for John McCain to claim, as he has done at various times on the campaign trail, that his running mate "negotiated a $40 billion natural gas pipeline that will bring clean energy to the Lower 48." Both the financing and the actual construction terms for the project remain to be negotiated.

"Of course Palin's inflating what she actually achieved here," said Reynolds. "You betcha."

Even if the pipeline is actually built, and the natural gas comes on stream, it will only make a modest dent in U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources. If all goes according to plan, the pipeline could deliver around 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day -- a relatively small portion of the 60 billion cubic feet of natural gas presently consumed in the United States.

The Pinocchio Test

Both Palin and McCain have exaggerated the Alaska governor's accomplishment in launching a multibillion dollar pipeline project that will reduce America's dependence on foreign energy sources. They talk about the project as if it is already underway, when it has yet to be negotiated and nobody knows how much it will actually cost.

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Posted at 6:31 PM ET on Oct 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (21)
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Candidate Watch

John McCain and the Middle Class

Campaigning in the rain.

"And when it comes to the issue of taxes, saying that John McCain is running for a third Bush term isn't being fair to George W. Bush... Not even George Bush proposed a plan that would leave out 100 million middle class families."
--Barack Obama, Chester, Pa., October 28, 2008

It has reached the stage of the "closing arguments." As he tries to clinch his case for a vote against John McCain on Nov. 4, Barack Obama repeats the claim that his rival's tax plan provides no benefit for "100 million middle class families." But where does the Land-of-Lincolner get his figures?

The Facts

The principal McCain tax cut for middle-income Americans is a doubling of the dependent exemption, from $3,500 to $7,000, to be phased in over the next decade. In other words, if you are a married couple with two children, you will eventually be able to subtract $14,000 from your income for tax purposes. Clearly, the doubling of the dependent exemption does not benefit taxpayers without children who they can claim on their tax forms. Nor does it benefit low-income families with zero tax liability.

According to the Tax Foundation, the doubling of the dependent exemption would have resulted in lower taxes on 26 million returns filed in 2004 -- out of a total of 132 million returns. Nearly 96 million tax filers would have seen no benefit, either because they had no dependents or because they had no tax liability. Projected forward to 2009, it is reasonable to claim that 100 million tax filers would see no benefit from McCain's promised dependent exemption.

Tax returns are not the same as "middle class families," however, whatever the Obama camp may claim. The 100 million tax filers includes single people, married couples without children, and married couples with children. In speeches around the country, Obama has used the terms "100 million Americans" and "100 million middle-class families" virtually interchangeably. It is misleading to suggest that the McCain plan will leave out "100 million families," unless you consider one person to be a family.

The Obama critique also skips over another important McCain tax proposal that does include "middle class Americans." The Arizona senator is proposing a $2,500 refundable health care tax credit for individuals ($5,000 for families) in return for abolishing the tax exclusion for employer-provided health benefits. According to the
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, this will result in a net gain of $1,559 to middle income tax filers in 2009, declining to $830 by 2018.

Obama aides argue that McCain's refundable health care tax credit does not represent real income for Americans because -- in the case of people who get their own coverage -- it is paid directly to the insurance companies. But this is beside the point. Whether paid in cash or in kind, it still represents a net benefit for millions of "middle class Americans," according to independent studies.

The Pinocchio Test

When Obama says that "100 million American families" will fail to benefit from the McCain tax plan, he is conveniently overlooking his rival's refundable health care tax credit and focusing exclusively on the increase in the dependent exemption. He is also blurring the distinction between "families" and "tax payer units." Definitions are vital in discussing the tax plans of the two candidates.

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Posted at 7:09 PM ET on Oct 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (48)
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Candidate Watch

Obama's Redistribution 'Bombshell'

Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

"In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn't been more 'radical' and described as a 'tragedy' the Court's refusal to take up 'the issues of redistribution of wealth.' No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench."
--McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin

With just over a week to go until the election, the McCain campaign is stepping up its efforts to portray Barack Obama as a closet "socialist" bent on implementing a major redistribution of wealth in American society. The Illinois Democrat's remarks to "Joe the Plumber" on "spreading the wealth around" are Exhibit A in the Son of Karl Marx argument. Exhibit B is a newly-discovered interview that Obama gave to a Chicago public radio station back in 2001 in which he mentioned the R-word several times in a generally positive context.

Did Obama really say what the McCain camp says he said?

The Facts

"Obama Bombshell Audio Uncovered. He wants to Radically Reinterpret the Constitution to Redistribute Wealth!!" runs the YouTube headline from the conservative video blog Naked Emperor News. "This video exposes the radical beneath the rhetoric."

On closer inspection, the "bombshell audio" turns out to be a rather wonkish, somewhat impenetrable, discussion of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren. Obama, then a University of Chicago law professor and Illinois state senator, argued that the courts have traditionally been reluctant to get involved in income distribution questions. He suggested that the civil rights movement had made a mistake in expecting too much from the courts -- and that such issues were better decided by the legislative branch of government.

You can read the entire transcript of the interview here, courtesy of Fox News, but here is the passage in which Obama explains that courts are "not very good" at redistributing wealth:

Maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know the institution just isn't structured that way.... Any of the three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. I think that, as a practical matter, that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.

In other words, Obama says pretty much the opposite of what the McCain camp says he said. Contrary to the spin put on his remarks by McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, he does not express "regret" that the Supreme Court has not been more "radical." Nor does he describe the Court's refusal to take up economic redistribution questions as a "tragedy." He uses the word "tragedy" to refer not to the Supreme Court, but to the civil rights movement:

One of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think, there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.

Holtz-Eakin "read a different interview to the one I heard," said Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor who joined Obama in the panel discussion. "Obama said that redistribution of wealth issues need to be decided by legislatures, not by the courts. That is what a progressive income tax is all about."

While there are sharp differences between the two candidates on economic issues, they both favor a progressive income tax system in which people with high incomes are taxed at a higher rate than people with low incomes.

The Pinocchio Test

With very few exceptions, all American politicians, including both presidential candidates, are in favor of a progressive income tax system and welfare policies (such as Medicare and Social Security) that "redistribute wealth." Barack Obama is more enthusiastic about "spreading the wealth around" than his Republican rival. But that does not make him a "Socialist." The McCain camp is wrong to suggest that the Illinois senator advocated an "wealth redistribution" role for the Supreme Court in his 2001 interview.

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Posted at 4:56 PM ET on Oct 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (97)
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Candidate Watch

Is Obama Guilty of 'Infanticide'?

Palin on CBN.

"To withhold medical intervention for a baby who is born alive as a result of a botched abortion and to allow that child to die without the medical intervention that that child deserves, it's appalling to me and I think it should concern voters."
--Sarah Palin, interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, Oct. 21, 2008.

According to Sarah Palin, Barack Obama's position on abortion is "so far left, it's way beyond the mainstream." The Republican vice presidential hopeful says that she is "most troubled" by Obama's opposition, as an Illinois state senator, to a "Born Alive" bill that would have guaranteed medical protection to children born as a result of a bungled abortion. The Obama campaign describes the Palin attack as "dishonest" and "insulting."

Is it true that Obama was ever in favor of withholding medical treatment for babies born alive as a result of a botched abortion?

The Facts

The "born alive" controversy is one of the most emotional -- and legally complex -- issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin's attack on Obama echoes, in somewhat politer language, the accusations of "infanticide" made by various anti-abortion activists. It stems from Obama's "No" votes on a series of bills that were introduced into the Illinois state Senate between 2001 and 2003 to define the term "born alive infant."

Under the definition employed in the bills, the term "born alive" meant "any member of the species homo sapiens" expelled or extracted from his or her mother that exhibits "a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles."

Pro-abortion groups, such as Planned Parenthood, viewed the legislation as part of a broader attempt to give fetuses the same rights as pregnant women and to impose criminal sanctions on doctors offering abortion services. They pointed out that Illinois state law already offered protection to babies born as the result of bungled abortions. A 1975 Illinois law requires doctors performing abortions on so-called "viable fetuses"--i.e. a fetus that might be able to survive outside the mother's body -- to take steps in advance to ensure adequate medical treatment in the event of a live birth.

The 1975 law requires the presence on such occasions of a second doctor whose primary responsibility is the provision of "immediate medical care for any child born alive as a result of the abortion."

Anti-abortion groups argue that the 1975 law needed to be strengthened as it was full of "loopholes." The "born alive" bills under consideration by the Illinois state Senate -- and subsequently adopted at the federal level -- would have effectively done away with the distinction between "viable" and "non-viable" fetuses. According to Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, the 1975 law makes the doctor performing the abortion responsible for determining whether a fetus is "viable" or "non-viable."

Obama has depicted the Illinois bills as an assault on the principles of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman's right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy within certain limits. The "pro-life" camp says that the Illinois senator has offered shifting explanations for his opposition to the "born alive" legislation.

Obama has never made any secret of his "pro-choice" views, and has a 100 percent voting record from NARAL and other abortion rights groups. On the other hand, he has heatedly denied ever being in favor of "withholding life-saving support from an infant born alive." He now says that he would have supported a federal "Born Alive" bill, which included very similar language to the later versions of the Illinois bill.

The Pinocchio Test

Reasonable people can differ on whether the 1975 Illinois state law needed to be strengthened, and the likely effect of the various "Born Alive" bills rejected by the Illinois legislature between 2001 and 2003. But it is unfair to accuse Obama of supporting the withdrawal of medical treatment from babies born as the result of a botched abortion. He has never adopted such an "extreme" position.

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Posted at 4:47 PM ET on Oct 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (119)
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