Midterm elections are an embarrassment of riches for fact-checkers — this year more than others. With Democrats fighting desperately to keep control of the House and Senate, and a torrent of money from corporations and other undisclosed, unaccountable sources adding fuel to the Republican attack, the amount of deceit in political advertising is at least as high as we’ve ever seen.
Some candidates slung whatever mud they thought would stick, regardless of the facts. One falsely claimed his opponent had been a Vietnam draft dodger who "doesn’t love his country" — and then compared his opponent to the Taliban.
Republicans accused Democrats of favoring cuts in Medicare benefits, while Democrats claimed their opponents would cut Social Security benefits. Republicans accused Democrats of planning to unleash a huge tax increase on ordinary families and on small-business owners, while many Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to slap a 23 percent national sales tax on everything from groceries to medicine, as though that would come on top of all existing taxes. We found fault with all those claims, on both sides.
For our round-up of the campaign year’s most widely repeated misstatements — and the wildest — read on.
HEALTH CARE MISREPRESENTATIONS:
Misrepresentations of the new health care law have been a staple of Republican campaigns. Some ads go so far as to claim (falsely) that the law would cause Medicare patients to lose their doctors, or (also falsely) that Democrats favored giving Viagra to s*x offenders, or (false again) that typical families will pay $2,100 more in premiums.
A common theme is that the law contains a $500 billion Medicare "cut" that will translate into less benefits, but that’s misleading. The law calls for reducing the future growth of Medicare spending over the next 10 years by about 7 percent. Plus, the law stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals. Those seniors on Medicare Advantage plans (one out of four beneficiaries), however, will likely see their extra benefits reduced. These private insurance plans currently receive higher payments from the government than traditional Medicare, and the law decreases those payments over time. In addition, the law calls for reducing the future growth in payments to hospitals and other providers. While experts say some hospitals will have trouble coping with the new spending restraints, ads go too far in claiming that the law will "gut Medicare" or "hurt the quality of our care."
TAXING THE TRUTH:
Another misleading Republican theme is that Democrats are about to unleash a huge tax increase on the typical family, or on small-business owners. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said "Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history." Similar claims have been spread by Republican TV ads, by widely forwarded chain e-mails, in interviews and even by "tweets" and other social media.
It’s true that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are set to expire at the end of this year, under terms set in law by a Republican Congress and President George W. Bush. But Democrats have said all along that they don’t intend to let all of the tax cuts expire, or even most of them. President Obama and most House and Senate Democrats favor keeping all the cuts that apply to taxpayers who earn less than $250,000 as a couple, or $200,000 as single filers. In addition, a number of conservative Democrats (or those nervous about reelection) even say they favor extending the cuts for everybody — including those at the top — at least for another year or two. A lame-duck Congress will decide, after the election.
As for the claim that Democrats favor "a huge tax hike on small business," in the words of one ad, that’s also wrong for the vast majority of small-business owners. Only about 3 percent of those with any business income showing on their personal returns would see a tax increase. Republicans retreated to claiming that half the small-business "income" — as opposed to business owners — would see an increase. But that’s wrong, too. Much of the "small"-business income they are counting comes from businesses with yearly income of $50 million or more — which is big business income in just about anybody’s book.
STIMULUS SPIN
Ads by Republicans in Connecticut, Florida, Washington, South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere have claimed that the economic stimulus has failed to create jobs. We heard the same claims on talk shows and in speeches. House Minority Leader John Boehner even said in an address that the stimulus had harmed the job situation, since "America’s employers are afraid to invest in an economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending and hamstrung by uncertainty."
In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million people, compared with what employment would have been otherwise. Observers may differ on whether that’s a reasonable return on investment, but it’s not accurate to say that the stimulus harmed employment or that it didn’t help.
FAR OUT ON BAILOUT
Everybody took the Wall Street bailout’s name in vain this campaign season. Democratic House incumbents in nine states claimed that they voted against "the bailout" — meaning the Troubled Asset Relief Program — when in fact they weren’t yet in office when it was enacted. (They voted against a later bill to allow release of the second half of TARP funds, a purely symbolic and futile vote. The Senate had already approved release and only disapproval by both houses could freeze the funds under terms set by the original bailout legislation.)
Meanwhile, some Republican ads accused Democratic House members of voting to give huge bonuses to Wall Street employees. That’s a misleading reference to the stimulus bill — its final version contained looser restrictions on bonuses than the version originally passed in the Senate. But the actual funds used by companies for those bonuses came from TARP, not the stimulus, and nothing in the bill the Democrats supported called for or supported bonuses. The enacted bill simply failed to prevent as many of them as the Senate version might have.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, October 28th 2010 at 11:39AM
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