The following is a fact-check from the August 8, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH)
1) Mark Zandi is a Republican. – FALSE
2) Economist Mark Zandi indicated several weeks ago that he thought raising taxes at this point in the economy was a very bad idea. – TRUE
REP. BOEHNER: Listen, you can’t raise taxes in the middle of a weak economy without risking the double-dip in this recession. President Obama’s favorite Republican economist, Mark Zandi, came out several weeks ago and made it clear that raising taxes at this point in, in the economy is a very bad idea.
Crowd-sourcer Peter Wagner looked into this statement, and here’s what he found:
On August 1st, the Washington Post published a number of economists and policy-makers opinions on the best options for the Bush tax cuts. Of those economists who provided a response was Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. Zandi stated that raising taxes when the “economy is so fragile would be a mistake.â€
Therefore, Representative Boehner was correct on this point.
However, Rep. Boehner was incorrect as to Mr. Zandi’s party affiliation. Zandi, as early as 2009, has specified that he is “a registered Democrat.”
The confusion as to his political affiliation might stem from his collaboration with John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. His involvement with the McCain campaign can be traced to a long-time friend offering him a position within the campaigns economic advisory team. Then chief economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin brought Zandi into what was described as a “diverse team” of economic advisers.
While it is true that Mark Zandi worked for the McCain campaign, he has stated previously that he is a registered Democrat. He would not, however, reveal how he voted in the 2008 election. Rep. Boehner is therefore incorrect in his assessment of Mr. Zandi’s politics.
After reviewing Mr. Wagner’s work, we agree with his conclusions.
1) Mark Zandi is open about his political affiliation and has declared, “I’m a registered Democrat.” As Peter Wagner points out, the confusion over Mark Zandi’s political affiliation probably stands from his work on the John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. So John Boehner is wrong on the assertion that Mark Zandi is a Republican, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NEV) has been wrong on the subject as well. Here’s the Washington Post quoting Harry Reid on Mark Zandi’s affiliation: “I think [he] is a Republican. I am pretty sure he is.” And Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) described Zandi on Fox News as a “conservative Republican.” So there is some general confusion on both aisles about Mark Zandi’s political affiliation, but regardless, John Boehner’s statement is incorrect, so we rate it FALSE.
2) Mark Zandi specifically says in a Washington Post article “raising taxes on anyone now, when the economic recovery is so fragile, would be a mistake.” Thus, we rate Mr. Boehner’s statement TRUE.
Special thanks crowd-sourcer Peter Wagner for assisting with this fact-check.
This fact-check took a combined 1 hour.
Here are the statements to fact-check from the August 8, 2010 Meet the Press:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT
If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. (Anonymity is fine) Also let us know how long you spent researching each fact, we will be tracking it. While we will always fact-check as much as we can on our own, the success and depth of Meet the Facts is definitively improved by the crowd-sourcing of people like you – please help if you can!
Statements are listed in chronological order
CAROL BROWNER (White House Energy Adviser) | The oil spill recovery effort utilized 6,000 vessels and 40,000 people.
MS. BROWNER: Well, I think it’s important to understand that this was the largest response to an environmental disaster. We had over 6,000 vessels, more than 40,000 people, and the goal was to keep the oil off the beaches and out of the marshes and the estuaries.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH)
1) There are 40,000 wells operating in the Gulf Coast.
2) Gulf Coast oil drilling has been occurring for 60 years.
3) The oil drilling moratorium leaves 100,000 people out of work (was a statement of opinion, but let’s check it just to see if that’s right anyway)
REP. BOEHNER: I believe the moratorium should be lifted. We’ve been drilling in the Gulf Coast now for 60 years. There are 40,000 wells operating in the Gulf Coast. There clearly was a mistake made with regard to this one well, but I think that we’re risking 100,000 jobs in the Gulf Coast with the continuation of this moratorium, and I do believe that, that there are enough practices in place, enough safety precautions in place to allow this drilling to continue.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH) | Economist Mark Zandi indicated several weeks ago that he thought raising taxes at this point in the economy was a very bad idea.
REP. BOEHNER: Listen, you can’t raise taxes in the middle of a weak economy without risking the double-dip in this recession. President Obama’s favorite Republican economist, Mark Zandi, came out several weeks ago and made it clear that raising taxes at this point in, in the economy is a very bad idea.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH)Â | There are 100 House seats “in play” this fall, and 94 of them are held by Democrats.
REP. BOEHNER: Well, David, listen, it’s only August. There are a lot of things that can happen between now and Election Day. Is it possible? Yes, it certainly is possible. There are a hundred seats in play around the country, and 94 of them are held by Democrat members.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH) | There is still about $4-500 billion of the stimulus plan that has not been spent.
REP. BOEHNER: Why don’t we stop the stimulus spending? There’s still about $400 billion or $500 billion of the stimulus plan that has not been spent.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH) | In certain parts of America, schools and hospitals are being overwhelmed with undocumented immigrants.
REP. BOEHNER: Listen, I think it’s worth considering. But it’s a serious problem that affects our country. And in certain parts of our country, clearly, our schools, our hospitals, are being overrun by illegal immigrants, a lot of whom came here just so their children could become U.S. citizens.
REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN) | The current unemployment rate in America is the result of the failure of the Obama administration’s economic policies. [is that what he’s saying here?]
REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Well, I think the, the way you resolve it is you focus on jobs. I got to tell you, when I’m home in Muncie, Indiana, people are asking the question, “Where are the jobs?” I mean, we have more than 14 million Americans unemployed. National unemployment is 9.5 percent. Clearly, the economic policies of this administration, however well intentioned, have failed.
REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN) | The President “imposed” a debt commission which would not report until after the fall elections.
REP. PENCE: Look, we, we’ve got some terrific people on the Republican side working on the debt commission, and they’re working in good faith on it. But, but why, why the president imposed a debt commission that wouldn’t report until after the election was a bit telling.
ANDREA MITCHELL (NBC) | The debt commission was set up only after mostly Republican senators, who had previously supported the debt commission, abandoned the legislation that would have established a commission with binding results.
MS. MITCHELL:Â The reason the president appointed the debt commission was because some senators who had supported it…
REP. FORD:Â Republican senators…
MS. MITCHELL: …including mostly Republican senators, abandoned it. So they couldn’t pass the legislation which would have a debt commission with teeth.
Did we miss something? Let us know!
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Identifying and posting these statements took 2 hours.
The following is a fact-check from the August 1, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
MAYOR MIKE BLOOMBERG (I-NY) | The financial reform bill will give the SEC, Fed, and other agencies the responsibility to write regulations. – TRUE
MR. GREGORY: Today is Wall Street different, and will financial reform make Wall Street different?
MAYOR BLOOMBERG: The devil’s in the details. A 2,000-page bill that very few people have ever read, but it basically turns over to the SEC and the Fed and other agencies the responsibility to write regulations. This is a dream piece of legislation for lobbyists and for lawyers. And nobody knows the answer to your question.
According to the recently passed Financial Reform Bill, a new agency will be created, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which will be a part of the Federal Reserve and led by a director appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The CFPB was created to independently and autonomously write rules for consumer protections governing all entities – banks and non-banks – offering consumer financial services or products. The CFPB will have a dedicated budget paid by the Federal Reserve Board.
There will also be a new Financial Stability Oversight Council consisting of 9 expert members from the Federal Reserve Board, SEC, FDIC, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators. The council will be chaired by the Treasury Secretary with the sole responsibility to identify and respond to emerging risks throughout the financial system.
Through the new financial regulation, the SEC came out with new powers and will have to hire 800 new employees. Here is Mary Schapiro, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Chairwoman, at a congressional hearing over the subject from the Washington Post:
“The act requires the SEC to promulgate a large number of new rules, create five new offices, and conduct multiple studies, many within one year,” Schapiro told Congress in prepared testimony. “The importance and complexity of the rules coupled both with their timing and high volume and the rule writing agenda currently pending will make the upcoming rule writing process both logistically challenging and extremely labor intensive.”
The Washington Post reports that the SEC must work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to write rules for derivatives, and the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to write rules requiring that banks that issue securities to the secondary market hold 5 percent of the investment on their own balance sheets — a “risk retention” measure.
The new financial legislation does give the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other regulators the ability to write new rules as the regulators deem fit to weed out systemic risk. Thus, we rate Mayor Bloomberg’s statement TRUE.
Special thanks to crowd-sourcer Shelley for assisting with this fact-check.
This fact-check took a combined 2 hours.
The following is a fact-check of the August 1, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
GOV. ED RENDELL (D-PA) | Less than 5% of Americans objected to the “deal†the government arranged with BP [to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to pay for the damage of the oil spill]. – LIKELY FALSE
GOV. RENDELL: I think we hold the House. We lose significant seats, but we hold. And I think we hold the Senate only because the Republicans have made a slew of mistakes, PR mistakes like opposing unemployment compensation extension, like going after the president for the BP deal. There weren’t 5 percent of Americans who didn’t think that was a good deal.
The deal Governor Rendell is referring to here is the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration convinced BP to voluntarily establish to pay for damage done by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Governor however is already in trouble with the way he makes this statement, as not including “a poll says” or “about” means it’s automatically impossible to ever declare this (definitive) statement TRUE – but in addition to that we could find no data anywhere to back up his number. The only poll we could find that even asked about the $20 billion escro fund was this mid-June CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, in which 82% said they approved of the deal, and 18% said they did not.
While according to this one survey, a significant majority of Americans certainly do approve of the BP escrow deal, Gov. Rendell is still way off with his number, which as far as we can tell did not come from any poll. However, since we only found one poll on which to base this check and therefore cannot speak with much authority as to what percentage of Americans truly do disapprove of the BP escrow deal, we will rate Gov. Rendell’s statement LIKELY FALSE.
If any of our readers know of another poll on this issue that we somehow missed, please let us know in the comments.
This fact-check took a combined 1.5 hours.
The following is a fact-check from the August 1, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
GOV. ED RENDELL (D-PA) | Starting in 1993, after raising taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans and cutting the budget, the Clinton administration produced over 23.5 million new jobs over the next 7 years – HALF TRUE
GOV. RENDELL: The debt commission. Both parties have to get together and say, “We’re going to do this together, we’re going to make the changes. They’re not going to be popular, but they’re necessary.†But you have to have increased taxes along with those reductions. And this fairy tale that increased taxes on the rich is going to hurt the economy, well, we don’t have to look any further than 1993. What Bill Clinton did, without one Republican vote, is essentially the same thing. He raised taxes on the top 2 percent in, in America. That was combined with budget cuts that the president and the Republican Congress did together, and it produced 23.5 million new jobs in the seven years that followed.
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 raised the individual income tax to 39.6% for the top 1.2%, not the top 2%, as Mr. Rendell states. Not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted for the bill, as Gov. Rendell also stated. As we pointed out in an earlier fact-check and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a total of 22.7 million jobs were created during the Clinton administration. But the bill didn’t become law til August of 1993, so if we get technical, only 21.4 million jobs were created, from the passage of the bill to the end Of Clinton’s term.
According to Politifact, unemployment fell from 6.8 percent to 3.9 percent between passage of the bill and the end of Clinton’s term. After the bill’s passage, personal income increased by about 7.5 percent a year, compared to about 5.2 percent a year prior to passage. Industrial production rose by about 5.6 percent per year after passage, compared to 3.2 percent per year before passage. From the passage of the bill until the end of Clinton’s term, the Dow Jones Industrial average rose 26.7 percent per year, from 3,651 to 10,788. It’s clear that the economy bloomed after the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, but it’s impossible to prove that the bill caused the economy to grow so substantially.
Naturally, with any economics question comes differing opinions. Here is a Politifact interview with J.D. Foster, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation:
J.D. Foster argues that the 1993 tax hikes “probably slowed the economy compared to the growth it would have achieved” and counters that the 1997 tax cuts were what kept the expansion chugging along after one would have expected it to wane.
Here is Politifact with Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution:
“Many people, including me, think this was because financial markets began to take seriously the new administration’s determination to be fiscally conservative,” Burtless said. “People buying and selling stocks and bonds on Wall Street were evidently more impressed by the appearance of fiscal discipline than they were upset by the hike in top marginal rates.” This, Burtless argues, spurred business investment because it “gave investors confidence that the drop in long-term interest rates was sustainable.” And this, in turn, “helped boost industries producing business equipment, including high-tech firms and new and old companies that supply communications and computer equipment. Of course, lower long-term borrowing rates made it cheaper to buy a house and to obtain credit for household consumption.”
And Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, pointing to other factors that spurred the economy:
“The economy did do well under Clinton, but that was because of other policies he adopted and in spite of the ’93 tax increase,” Mitchell said, citing lower government spending as a share of gross domestic product, approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, welfare reform, farm-subsidy reform. “These are the policies that boosted the economy. The tax increases in 1993 hurt, but were more than offset by other changes.”
21.4 million jobs were created between the passage of the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the end of Clinton’s term, not 23.5 million, as Mr. Rendell states. Taxes increased for the top 1.2% of Americans, not 2%, as Mr. Rendell stated. The economy did grow substantially after the passage of the bill, but just because B happens after A, doesn’t mean A caused B, and in this case it’s impossible to prove causation. Senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation all point to differing factors to what led to the huge economic growth between 1993 and 2001. However, since it is surely possible that those actions taken by the Clinton administration contributed to the economic growth, we cannot rate Mr. Rendell’s statement false, and so considering that and his close but not correct numbers, we will instead rate it HALF TRUE.
This fact-check took a combined 3 hours.
Here are the statements to fact-check from the August 1, 2010 Meet the Press:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT
If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. (Anonymity is fine) Also let us know how long you spent researching each fact, we will be tracking it. While we will always fact-check as much as we can on our own, the success and depth of Meet the Facts is definitively improved by the crowd-sourcing of people like you – please help if you can!
Statements are listed in chronological order
GOV. ED RENDELL (D-PA) | Starting in 1993, after raising taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans and cutting the budget, the Clinton administration produced over 23.5 million new jobs over the next 7 years.
GOV. RENDELL: The debt commission. Both parties have to get together and say, “We’re going to do this together, we’re going to make the changes. They’re not going to be popular, but they’re necessary.” But you have to have increased taxes along with those reductions. And this fairy tale that increased taxes on the rich is going to hurt the economy, well, we don’t have to look any further than 1993. What Bill Clinton did, without one Republican vote, is essentially the same thing. He raised taxes on the top 2 percent in, in America. That was combined with budget cuts that the president and the Republican Congress did together, and it produced 23.5 million new jobs in the seven years that followed.
MAYOR MIKE BLOOMBERG (I-NY) | The financial reform bill will enable the SEC, Fed, and other agencies to have the responsibility to write regulations
MR. GREGORY:Â Today is Wall Street different, and will financial reform make Wall Street different?
MAYOR BLOOMBERG: The devil’s in the details. A 2,000-page bill that very few people have ever read, but it basically turns over to the SEC and the Fed and other agencies the responsibility to write regulations. This is a dream piece of legislation for lobbyists and for lawyers. And nobody knows the answer to your question.
MAYOR MIKE BLOOMBERG (I-NY)
1) Canada sets aside 36% of its visas for people with skills that it needs.
2) The US sets aside 6% of its visas for people with skills that it needs.
MAYOR BLOOMBERG: And then you have to give visas for the skills we need. Canada sets aside 36 percent of their visas for people with skills they think their country needs. We set aside 6 percent. We educate the doctors and then don’t give them a green card.
GOV. ED RENDELL (D-PA) | Less than 5% of Americans objected to the “deal” the government arranged with BP [to put aside money to pay for the damage of the oil spill].
GOV. RENDELL: I think we hold the House. We lose significant seats, but we hold. And I think we hold the Senate only because the Republicans have made a slew of mistakes, PR mistakes like opposing unemployment compensation extension, like going after the president for the BP deal. There weren’t 5 percent of Americans who didn’t think that was a good deal.
Did we miss something? Let us know!
If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. Also also let us know how long you spent researching each fact.
THANKS!
Identifying and posting these statements took 1 hour.
The following is a fact-check from the July 25, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | Latino unemployment is higher than white unemployment and African American unemployment is higher than Latino unemployment – TRUE
MR. MORIAL: I don’t agree that Latinos and Asians have not suffered discrimination in this country or that Native Americans have not suffered discrimination in this country . I think the question is, how do you target and tailor policies that are going to help all economically and socially disadvantaged people. And it’s a fair debate to have, but it also needs to be positive with facts . Look at the Latino unemployment rate . It’s higher than the white rate. The black rate is higher than the Latino rate. So to suggest that there are not disparities that affect the Latino community , that affect the Native American community , most in depth, the African- American community , we’ve got to have the discussion that Jim Webb wants to have. We have facts , real facts , that give a picture of how life is in this nation.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s employment summary for June of 2010, Caucasians’ unemployment rate sits at 8.6% and Hispanics at 12.4%. African-Americans have the highest rate of unemployment at 15.4%.
Mr. Morial mentions that he believes that Latinos, Asians and Native-Americans have suffered from discrimination, then correctly states where the unemployment rates for Hispanics, Caucasians and African-Americans stand in-relation to each other. PolitiFact also did this check (same primary source/result – they have a few other sources as well) and we agree with their decision to additionally point out that the Asian community has the lowest rate of unemployment, at 7.7%. We then looked but were unable to find the current Native American unemployment rate.
Because Mr. Morial correctly stated where the unemployment rates of Caucasians, Hispanics and African-Americans stand in relation to each other, we rate his statement TRUE.
Special thanks to crowd-sourcer Shelley for assisting with this fact-check.
This fact-check took a combined 1 hour.
The following is a fact-check from the July 25, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:
MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | There have been more filibusters in the last two years than in the previous century – FALSE
MR. MORIAL: One of the things this distracts from is the news of the week that the Senate cut out $1 billion for summer jobs, but is prepared to spend $60 billion on a troop surge if — in Afghanistan. One of the things this distracts from has been the repeated use of the filibuster to block legislation and block measures that would help the economy in urban communities, and that, to me…
MR. MORIAL: …that, to me, and the persistent use of the filibuster, it being used more times in the last two years than in the previous century…
Even in the early days, representatives and senators used the filibuster to stall debate indefinitely. In 1917, US senators adopted a rule that allowed the debate to end by a 2/3 majority vote, which is known as cloture. Then, in 1975, senators reduced the number of votes required for cloture from 2/3 to 3/5 or 60 of the 100 senators.
According to the Senate historian’s office, which provides a list of the cloture votes since 1919, there were 553 cloture votes between 1919 and 2000. Currently, the 111th Congress (2008-2010) has had 65 cloture votes. Since the records of cloture votes held by the Senate historian’s office only goes back to 1919, we could not tally up the total amount of cloture votes for the previous century (100 years), but we are still able to do this check because from 1919 to 2000 there were 553 cloture votes and in the last 2 years, there has only been 65 cloture votes.
It is worth noting, however, that over the last 30 years the filibuster’s use has been increasing. The 110th Congress (2006 to 2008) tallied up a total of 112 cloture votes – the most ever recorded for a Congress. In the previous century, it took 81 years to have 553 cloture votes and in the last decade, there have been 341.
Regardless, because there were a total of 551 cloture votes between the years 1919 and 2000 and only 65 cloture votes in the last 2 years, we rate Mr. Morial’s statement FALSE.
The following fact-check took a combined 2.5 hours.
Here are the statements to fact-check from the July 25, 2010 Meet the Press:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT
If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. (Anonymity is fine) Also let us know how long you spent researching each fact, we will be tracking it. While we will always fact-check as much as we can on our own, the success and depth of Meet the Facts is definitively improved by the crowd-sourcing of people like you – please help if you can!
Statements are listed in chronological order
TIMOTHY GEITHNER | The US has seen six months of private sector job growth.
SEC’Y GEITHNER: They’re — I think businesses across the country , you know, again, faced with the prospect of an economy falling off the cliff, are still cautious, still very cautious. So they’ve been trying to get as much productivity out of their employees as possible. They’re in a very strong financial conditions, though, and I think that’s very promising, because there’s a lot of pent-up demand and there’s a lot of capacity still for them to step up and start to invest and hire again. But you’re seeing it start. You know, we’ve had six months of private sector job growth . Not as fast as we like, not as fast as we need, but I think you’re going to see it, again, gradually start to get better.
TIMOTHY GEITHNER | In the recently passed financial markets reform bill, Congress did not grant the power to get back the bonuses that were paid to bank executives during the financial crisis.
MR. GREGORY: Let me talk about the achievement of financial reform legislation that you’ve worked so hard on. The, the pay czar, Ken Feinberg , has been working on compensation, just issued a new report saying that, at the height of the crisis , you had some of the biggest banks paying bonuses that were not warranted. Do you have any way to get any of that money back?
SEC’Y GEITHNER: You know, he spoke to that earlier. Congress did not give him the authority to do that. But they did give him authority he used very effectively to change how Wall Street was paying its executives, and he did an enormously important job in trying to make sure that we have in place ways to make sure these guys don’t go back in the future — don’t go in the future back to paying executives to take risks that could imperil the stability of the economy . He did a great job, limited authority, but he used that authority very well.
MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | Andrew Breitbart doctored the video of Shirley Sherrod before posting it on his website.
MR. MORIAL: He threw a firecracker in a crowded room. He yelled “fire” in a crowded theater and doctored a video, which caused an innocent, hard-working, responsible woman, whose story was of racial reconciliation , to be cast in a negative light. And then it began from there.
MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | There have been more filibusters in the last two years than in the previous century.
MR. MORIAL: One of the things this distracts from is the news of the week that the Senate cut out $1 billion for summer jobs, but is prepared to spend $60 billion on a troop surge if — in Afghanistan. One of the things this distracts from has been the repeated use of the filibuster to block legislation and block measures that would help the economy in urban communities, and that, to me…
MR. MORIAL: …that, to me, and the persistent use of the filibuster, it being used more times in the last two years than in the previous century…
MARC MORIAL (Urban League President)
1) Latino unemployment is lower than white unemployment.
2) African American unemployment is lower than Latino unemployment.
MR. MORIAL: I don’t agree that Latinos and Asians have not suffered discrimination in this country or that Native Americans have not suffered discrimination in this country . I think the question is, how do you target and tailor policies that are going to help all economically and socially disadvantaged people. And it’s a fair debate to have, but it also needs to be positive with facts . Look at the Latino unemployment rate . It’s higher than the white rate. The black rate is higher than the Latino rate. So to suggest that there are not disparities that affect the Latino community , that affect the Native American community , most in depth, the African- American community , we’ve got to have the discussion that Jim Webb wants to have. We have facts , real facts , that give a picture of how life is in this nation.
RICK SANTELLI (CNBC)
1) 41 cents of every dollar the US government spends in fiscal year 2010 will go to pay debt.
2) The 2010 budget is $3.5 trillion.
MR. SANTELLI: Forty-one cents of every dollar this government spends in fiscal 2010 goes to pay debt. It’s borrowed money. Forty-one cents of every dollar. Marcus , we have a $3 1/2 trillion 2010 budget . Let’s look at that $34 billion for extension. These people need help, but to think that this administration — and in Timothy Geithner ‘s interview, he talks about getting their fiscal house in order. In a $3 1/2 trillion budget , they can’t come up with a way to offset $34 billion in spending. It isn’t that the conservatives want to be mean-spirited. It’s that at the end- game, if the country is broke, everybody loses.
DAVID BROOKS (NY Times)
1) In the past year the Obama administration’s approval rating has dropped about 20%.
2) A poll last week indicated that faith in the US Congress was 11%, the lowest the nations history.
MR. BROOKS: Right. There’s been a, there’s been a massive recall in the past year. The Obama administration has dropped about 20 percent among independent voters, in part because of the debt and other issues. But faith in government has plummeted back to its historic lows. Faith in Congress this week hit an 11 percent, an historic low forever. So how do you persuade people that you can do things when you have that kind of distrust, and that hasn’t been solved? The stimulus obviously created some jobs. But the fact is, it’s taken forever to get out; and the underlying reality is, the more the debt goes up, the more people are scared, and the more they’re scared, especially small business , they’re just not investing.
Did we miss something? Let us know!
If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. Also also let us know how long you spent researching each fact.
THANKS!
Identifying and posting these statements took 2 hours.
The following is a fact-check from the July 18, 2010 episode of Meet the Press.
SEN. BOB MENENDEZ (D-NJ)
1) Over the course of the Bush[43] administration there was a 72% increase in the national debt, from $5.7 trillion to $9.8 trillion – MOSTLY TRUE
2) At the end of the Bush [43] administration, the U.S. had a $1.5 trillion budget deficit – TRUE
SEN. MENENDEZ: And it’s not just talking about President Bush, it’s the policies that they espouse that are in essence Bush’s policies. Those led us to a 72 percent increase in the debt from $5.7 trillion to $9.8 trillion when Bush left. It led us to a massive elimination of the surplus that Bill Clinton gave George Bush, and he had a $1.5 trillion deficit when he left office
1) According to the Treasury Department, when George W. Bush took office in 2001 the national debt was $5.73 trillion and when Bush left office in 2009, the national debt had increased to $10.63 trillion. That’s a 85% increase of $4.9 trillion. Sen. Menendez is off by 13%, but he is correct in the underlying message that the national debt did significantly increase under George W. Bush. Thus, we rate Sen. Menendez’s statement MOSTLY TRUE.
2) According to the Congressional Budget Office, under former president Bill Clinton there was a budget surplus in 1999 ($1.9 billion) and in 2000 ($86.4 billion). But the surpluses in 1999 and 2000 were not enough to eliminate the national debt. When the federal government spends more money than it takes in, that’s a deficit. When the government takes in more money than it spends, that’s a surplus (Treasury Department budget FAQs). Though former president Bill Clinton had two consecutive surplus years, the U.S. national debt actually increased $400 billion over his term (1992 to 2000).
When former president Bill Clinton left office in 2000 there was a $86.4 billion surplus. When former president George W. Bush left office in 2008 there was a $1.5 trillion budget deficit. Because Sen. Menendez was correct in stating that there was a $1.5 trillion budget deficit when George W. Bush left office and the budget surplus that Bill Clinton left from his presidency had turned into a deficit, we rate Sen. Menendez’s statement TRUE.
Special thanks to crowd-sourcer Shelley for assisting with this fact-check.
This fact-check took a combined 2.5 hours.
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