Birds on the Brain

theweekmagazine:

The Obama-Romney debate fact-check: Who told the biggest whoppers? 

• Romney: Obama is “cutting $716 billion” from Medicare
  The verdict: “Half-True”
  What’s true is the number — ObamaCare reduces the growth of Medicare spending by $716 billion over 10 years, primarily in what’s paid to hospitals and insurers, says PolitiFact. But Romney “gives the impression that the law takes money already allocated to Medicare away from current recipients,” and that’s not true. In fact, “Medicare money isn’t being taken away,” period, adds FactCheck.org. And the slower growth, if successful, will actually keep the depleting Medicare trust fund solvent for eight years longer.
   
• Obama: Romney “would give millionaires another tax break and raise taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year”
  The verdict: “Mostly true”
  This claim is based on a reputable analysis of Romney’s incomplete plan by the Tax Policy Center. Number-crunchers agree that to meet Romney’s stated goals of cutting taxes by 20 percent while not increasing the deficit, the closed loopholes and scrapped exemptions can’t just hit the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center’s view that middle class families would lose exemptions up to $2,000 fits with what we know of Romney’s proposal.
   
• Romney: Obama “doubled the deficit”
  The verdict: “Not true”
  When Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that the federal deficit in fiscal 2009 (ending in September) would be $1.2 trillion, says Jackie Calmes at The New York Times. It ended up being $1.4 trillion. For fiscal 2012, the deficit was $1.1 trillion lower than when he took office. And “measured as a share of the economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly — from 10.1 percent of the economy’s total output in 2009 to 7.3 percent for 2012.”

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