Q: How much will the “tax” penalty be for going without health insurance?
A: The minimum assessment will be $695 per person (but no more than $2,085 per family) in 2016, when fully phased in. The amount can be higher depending on income. But there are exemptions for low-income persons and others.
A TV spot from the president’s reelection committee says women are “paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” That’s not true. The ad falsely states that the pay gap is for doing “the same work.” It also implies that discrimination by employers is responsible for the difference. That’s an exaggeration..
The main point of the ad is to tout Obama’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009.
Editor’s note: A version of this opinion piece by our director, Brooks Jackson, first appeared on the website of the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper under the headline “Fact-checking the truthiness of the 2012 campaign” and is re-posted here with permission.
Let’s face it, voters love to hear falsehoods.
Mitt Romney proclaims that President Obama’s health care law is a “federal takeover of the U.S. health care system,” and his supporters approve. Obama’s people nodded in agreement when the president said “if you like your health care plan,
Q: Is General Motors becoming ‘China Motors’ using taxpayer dollars?
A: No. The restructured GM is still based in Detroit and is still one-third owned by the U.S. government. But it sells nearly as many cars in China as in the U.S. and has continued expanding operations there.
Is President Obama’s spending an “inferno,” as Mitt Romney claims, or a binge that “never happened” as an analysis touted by the White House concluded? We judge that both of those claims are wrong on the facts. The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending …
A new TV ad from Crossroads GPS features an actress playing a downcast mother of two jobless adult children. She says “things changed for the worse” after she supported Barack Obama for president. Her voice is soft, and so is the background music — but her situation is unlikely; her opinions are harsh; and her facts are one-sided and not always accurate.
This 60-second ad is the second in an announced $25 million campaign to soften up the president in key battleground states.
And now, the rest of the story on that misleading “Obama’s Promise” ad from Crossroads GPS.
Besides the almost totally false claim that we covered earlier, the ad also:
Claims the president broke a promise to help homeowners facing foreclosure, when in fact 5.9 million have received assistance.
Gives a somewhat darker picture of the mortgage foreclosure situation than the facts warrant.
Exaggerates the number of persons likely to lose employer-sponsored health coverage under the new health care law.
The latest multimillion-dollar attack ad from Crossroads GPS claims President Obama broke a promise to not increase taxes for families making less than $250,000 a year. That’s almost entirely false.
The truth is that Obama repeatedly cut taxes for such families, first through a tax credit in effect for 2009 and 2010, and beginning in 2011, through a reduction in the payroll tax that is worth $1,000 this year to workers earning $50,000 a year.
Q: Does the IRS pay billions in tax refunds to workers who are in the U.S. illegally?
A: Yes. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General determined that $4.2 billion was paid in 2010, up from less than $1 billion in 2005. Leading Democrats are resisting a bill that would stop future payments.
Q: Did President Obama secretly sign a law that makes it a crime to protest against him or ask him a question he doesn’t like?
A: No. He openly announced the signing of a bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress that slightly revises a 1971 law against trespassing into areas under Secret Service protection.