Today I am curious to see how the media fact-checked his speech.
From the Washington Post there's a "basic rundown" of three of Ryan's claims:
1. Ryan appeared to suggest that Obama was to blame for the closing of the GM plant in Janesville, Wis., saying: “Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.” But the closure of the plan was announced in mid-2008, when President George W. Bush was still in office and before Obama assumed the presidency, and the plant was mostly shuttered by the end 2008.And the conclusion:
2. Ryan took aim at Obama’s Medicare proposal: “They needed hundreds of billions more [for Obamacare]. So, they just took it all away from Medicare, $716 billion dollars funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Left unsaid: Ryan’s own budget made basically the same cuts to Medicare. Since being chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate, Ryan has embraced the GOP presidential nominee’s plan to restore those cuts. But he still favored them at one point – enough to put them in his own budget.
3. Ryan criticized Obama for assembling the Simpson-Bowles debt commission and then declining to act on the panel’s final report: “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” Left unsaid here: Ryan himself served on the debt commission and voted against its suggestions. And by doing so, the House Budget Committee chairman helped kill the proposal, given the clout he has with his party on such matters.
Fact-checkers are basically unanimous that all three of these claims either stretch the truth or are flat-out false.Then there's how the Business Insider characterizes Ryan's tale of the downgrading of the nations credit rating. Ryan said in his speech:
It began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.The Business Insider quotes Standard And Poors:
Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade. [emphasis in original]And concludes:
S&P downgraded the U.S., in part, because of a revised expectation that the Bush tax cuts would remain in place. They assumed this because of Republicans' unwillingness to enact any measures raising revenue, and they completely slammed House Republicans — including Paul Ryan — for doing so.Pretty damning stuff.
Keep it in mind next time you hear a news person discuss Ryan's speech. If they do a "he said/he said" thing, you know they're avoiding the truth.
3 comments:
28You know, about half the country is predisposed against President Obama, whether because of racism, or job losses, being a member of the Republican party or some combination of these. Maybe because that is so, the Republicans have decided to just out and out lie about Obama.
I mean, it is one thing to say Obama doesn't like America, or wants to redistribute wealth - sort of fuzzy lies that, while they have no actual statements supporting them, are hard to disprove.
But now Paul Ryan is blaming Obama for a plant the closed before he became President. He is saying that a plan that uses a agreement with hospitals to charge less for Medicare services actually charges patients more, and that the same plan reimbursing private insurance companies under contract only what Medicare costs is also going to cost patients more. Ryan is saying that Obama walked away from the Bowles Simpson final recommendations, when there were no final recommendations because he, Paul Ryan, voted against those recommendations.
This is all leaking into the mainstream press. CNN was fudging it a bit, but because other news sources are calling attention to that, I suspect CNN will start labeling the lies. Even parts of Fox were talking about the lies. So even conservative voters will know their candidates are lying to them.
That sort of dance of cognitive dissonance will conservatives/Republicans/the Tea Party have to do to reconcile this? I mean, conservatives were already denying science in several categories. But this is a whole new level of crazy. Making reality up as you go, how credible are you that you have a coherent plan to create jobs anytime soon?
That sort of in the last paragraph should be What sort of.
Ed even progressive hack Ezra Klein admitted that the plant closed after Obama took office. The left has moved the goalposts to the decision to close the plant occurred when Bush was in office.
Video: Obama promises Janesville that plant will “thrive,” “will be here for another 100 years”
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