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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Issues: deficit

Sunday Replay

October 4, 2010

Sunday morning’s talkathons featured a few misstatements in a debate between Kentucky’s Senate contenders, and some confusion about debts and deficits.   
 Kentucky Senate Candidates Debate
"Fox News Sunday" hosted a debate between Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, a Republican, and his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway. 
Paul’s statements about the economic and citizenship status of the country’s uninsured population were false:

Paul: Well, there are two aspects to health care problems. One’s the expense and one’s access.

Bush Years Revisited in Ohio Senate Race

September 10, 2010

In the Ohio Senate race, Democrat Lee Fisher’s first TV ad of the fall campaign misrepresents Republican Rob Portman’s years in the Bush administration:

The ad is wrong when it says Portman, as President George W. Bush’s "trade czar," was responsible for "sending 100,000 Ohio jobs overseas." The 100,000 lost jobs occurred over six years, from 2001 to 2007, but Portman was U.S. trade representative for only one year, from May 2005 to May 2006.
The ad also blames Portman,

Sunday Slips

April 12, 2010

Viewers were relatively safe from false or misleading tripe on the Sunday morning talk shows yesterday.
But we can’t let a couple of statements go unmentioned, one from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and a couple from Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota; both officials are Republicans.
Barbour, speaking on CNN’s "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley, said:

Barbour, April 11: I mean, [Obama] has proposed a $3.8 trillion budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit. The whole budget in 1997 —

A Texas-size Whopper

February 1, 2010

Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, at a nationally televised meeting of House Republicans in Baltimore, accused President Obama to his face of running up deficits a dozen times greater than the GOP’s. The president said, "That’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true," and he invited "any independent fact-checker out there" to assess which man got the facts right.
OK, we will.
We have to score this one for Obama. Hensarling told a Texas-size whopper —

Obama’s State of the Union Address

January 28, 2010

President Obama peppered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation with facts, which were mostly right but sometimes cherry-picked, strained or otherwise misleading. He said “there are about 2 million Americans working right now” because of last year’s stimulus bill. But his own economic advisers say …

Long Term Debt Forecasts

December 4, 2008

Q: What’s a good source for the U.S.A.’s long-term debt, annual revenues and expeditures, and long-term deficit forecasts?

A: The Congressional Budget Office publishes data on the federal government’s budget – that’s revenues and expenditures, deficits and debt. The Treasury Dept. is the best source for daily debt figures.

The Budget and Deficit Under Clinton

February 3, 2008

Q: During the Clinton administration was the federal budget balanced? Was the federal deficit erased?
A: Yes to both questions, whether you count Social Security or not.

Facts Of The Union

January 25, 2007

We found some puffery in President Bush’s State of the Union address.

Misstatement of the Union

February 1, 2006

The President burnishes the State of the Union through selective facts and strategic omissions.