Below are the statements we think were the most important to dig into from this week’s
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Please help us research these statements – you can either email us the information you’ve found confirming or refuting the statements to MeetTheFacts@gmail.com or post in the comments.
The specifics to check are in bold.
This week we will be posting the results individually and as soon as possible.
Secretary Janet Napolitano | Govt. Response to Oil Spill
MR. GREGORY: Secretary Napolitano, there are questions about when the government acted, whether it did everything it could at the right moment. Is the government playing catch-up here? You yourself didn’t even request, until late in the week, for additional DOD resources to be brought to bear. Is this a, a situation of playing catch-up?
SEC’Y NAPOLITANO: No, not at all. We had DOD resources there from day one. This was a situation that was treated as a possible catastrophic failure from, from day one. So we had prepositioned in place hundreds of thousands of feet of boom. There were 73 vessels, now over a hundred ships there to work on preventing the oil from actually reaching the shore, to, to stage that fight offshore, as it were.
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Gov. Charlie Crist | Florida’s Health Care
MR. GREGORY: All right, couple more issues. Would you support legislation that repealed the president’s healthcare legislation?
GOV. CRIST: Yeah, I think we need to start over. I really do. We’ve got a great plan here in Florida, David. There’s no government mandate, no tax increases. It offers coverage to those who can’t afford it, who have lost a job. It’s a compassionate way to do it, and I think that’s a good model for the country.
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Sen. Lamar Alexander | Joe Lieberman’s 2006 Campaign CHECKED: HALF TRUE
MR. GREGORY: But why–you know, when Senator Lieberman ran as an independent, the Democratic Party did not push him away. They said, “No, we’re still, still–stay with us here.” And yet the Republican leadership has said, “No thanks, Governor.” You know, “We’ve changed our mind about you,” as you just said. Is that a right strategy?
SEN. ALEXANDER: Senator Lieberman was different. First, he ran as an independent at the same time he was running as a Democrat. Second, he had a very strong principled opposition to the Iraq war. And third, the Democratic leadership in that case said that they didn’t, they didn’t support him.
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Rep. Mike Pence | Stimulus Bill Employment Effects CHECKED: HALF TRUE
MR. GREGORY:Â His–the, the stimulus plan.
REP. PENCE: Yeah. The so-called stimulus bill that has taken us from 7.5 percent unemployment to nearly 10 percent unemployment nationwide; worse in Michigan.
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Sen. Lamar Alexander | Energy
MR. GREGORY: Well, senator and the former secretary of energy is here as well. But, Senator, this was the Tampa Tribune editorial on Monday on this point: “The tragic explosion of a drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana exposes the big lie espoused by the oil industry and its minions in the Florida Legislature: Modern drilling is harmless. …
“Americans have to accept some tradeoffs if we want an abundant and affordable energy. But we must balance the risks intelligently…To permit drilling in Florida’s coastal waters where there is no margin for error is unnecessary and irresponsible.” This has to be seen as a setback for offshore drilling.
SEN. ALEXANDER: It is a setback, and we ought to stop for a moment and see if there’s anything we can do to make it safer. All 40 Republican senators, now 41, support electrifying half our cars and trucks, the best way to reduce the use of oil. If we were to do that, it’d probably take 20 years and we’d still need 12 million barrels of oil a day in this country. And one-fourth of all the air–oil that we produce for ourselves comes from the Gulf of Mexico. So, unless we want $14 a gallon gasoline and tankers bringing oil from Saudi Arabia, which has been 99 percent of the oil spills in history, we’re going to have to find a way to continue to drill safely in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Gov. Bill Richardson | BP Role in Oil Spill
GOV. RICHARDSON: I believe BP is to blame. They have to pay for this. This is something that, obviously, they saw coming. They predicted wrongly.
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Rep. Mike Pence | Arizona Statistics re: Unauthorized Immigration CHECKED: TRUE
REP. PENCE: Well, well, let, let’s be clear for a second. This is no laughing matter for the people of Arizona who are–have been profoundly affected by the fact that there’s nearly a half a million illegal immigrants and, and a rampant drug trade and, and, and human trafficking trade that’s been besetting. Phoenix, Arizona, is, is the kidnapping capital of the United State of America.
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Rep. Mike Pence | Federal Spending for Border Security
REP. PENCE: David, here’s the numbers. Fiscal 2007, the last year Republicans wrote a budget, $1.2 billion for border security and fencing. By 2010 that was cut by–to $800 billion. If you’d kept funding level…
MR. GREGORY:Â Right.
REP. PENCE:Â I mean, the Democrats have cut three-quarters of a trillion out of this…
MR. GREGORY:Â All right.
REP. PENCE:Â …and the president wants to go to 50 percent of the level that Republicans…
MR. GREGORY:Â Governor…
REP. PENCE: …spent on border security. We have got to take border security seriously.
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All statements were taken from the transcript here
