In a spirited debate between South Carolina congressional candidates Elizabeth Colbert Busch and Mark Sanford, we found a couple of misleading statements — and one seemingly contradictory exchange about Sanford’s voting record that isn’t.
A number of Republicans are using misleading numbers when they say the Federal Aviation Administration should cut consultants and travel before resorting to furloughs that are causing airport delays.
Sen. Marco Rubio claimed during a Sunday talk show interview that the immigration bill he is pushing is not a change of position for him since his 2010 campaign. But it is.
Sen. John Cornyn alleged President Obama has told the families of Newtown shooting victims that the Republican party “doesn’t really care about their loss.” But Obama never actually said that.
Both parties are putting political spin on the deficit reduction contained in President Obama’s $3.78 trillion budget plan.
A conservative gun rights group is going after three congressmen with “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association by falsely claiming they support President Obama’s gun control agenda.
Rep. Michele Bachmann used misleading and at times wildly inaccurate portrayals of two key domestic and foreign policy issues — food stamps and the response to an attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya — to paint President Obama as someone who doesn’t “care.”
Her account of the White House response to the Benghazi attack included unsubstantiated claims, distortions of omission and outright factual errors, including the bogus claim that Glen Doherty “defied orders” to help colleagues under attack.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi seized on an old talking point, miscasting a now-famous quote by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in 2010 about the goal of making Obama a “one-term president.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on March 10, host Candy Crowley asked the leader of the House Democrats if President Barack Obama’s stated commitment to helping return the House to Democratic power, with Pelosi at the helm, wasn’t the same as McConnell’s comment about his goal of making Obama a one-term president.
An ad from a fiscally conservative group makes a true but misleading claim that the sequester only amounts to “a 3 percent cut in federal spending.” A majority of federal spending is exempt from the sequester cuts, so the parts that are not will be cut much more deeply than that. For example, defense spending (other than for military personnel) will be cut by 8 percent across the board, and nondefense discretionary spending will be cut by between 5 percent and 6 percent.
House Speaker John Boehner claimed the federal government will take in more revenue this year than any other year in history. That’s true in nominal dollars, but not as a percentage of gross domestic product — a measure preferred by most economists that accounts for growth in population, inflation and earnings.
In fact, as a percentage of GDP, revenues this year are actually lower than the historical average since World War II.
In an interview on CBS Evening News on Feb.