Fact-Checking The Debate

Glenn Kessler has it:

Newt Gingrich: “As [House] speaker, I came back, working with President Bill Clinton. We passed a very Reagan-like program: less regulation, lower taxes. Unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent. We created 11 million jobs.”

Fact: Former president Clinton would be shocked at this description, since he always credited the 22 million jobs created during his presidency to the deficit-reduction package he narrowly passed early in his tenure without a single GOP vote.

Gingrich led the charge against that bill, which included higher taxes on wealthy Americans.

Romney:“And four of the companies that we invested in — they weren’t businesses I ran, but we invested in — ended up today having some 120,000 jobs. Some of the businesses we invested in weren’t successful and lost jobs….. We invested in well over a hundred different businesses.”

Fact:  A new and tweaked number from the former Massachusetts governor! Last week, we said his claim of helping to create more than 100,000 new jobs was untenable.

Romney: “I was also proud of the fact that we balanced the budget every year I was in office. We reduced taxes 19 times.”

Fact: Somehow, he always fails to mention that, in order to balance the budget, he created hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new fees and closed as much as $1.5 billion worth of corporate tax loopholes.

Romney: “We’ve got a president in office three years, and he does not have a jobs plan yet.”

Fact: This is a strange comment, given that President Obama has just spent several months demanding that Congress pass his jobs plan.

Gingrich: “The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

Fact: We have examined this issue before, giving Gingrich a Pinocchio for this statement.

This is an example of taking a fact — an all-time high for food stamp recipients — and taking it out of context. The president is struggling with the aftermath of an economic situation he inherited, while building on food stamp changes that preceded his tenure

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.