Vice-Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan square off on Thursday night in Danville, Ky. in the only vice-presidential debate.
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Fact Check: Positions on AbortionMr. Ryan said Thursday that the Democratic Party supported abortion “without restriction and with taxpayer funding’’ under the health care law signed by President Obama in 2010.READ MORE
Michael WinesFact Check: Romney's Bipartisan Record(Alan: It is often said that Governor Romney worked well with a legislature that was 87% Democratic and that President Reagan did much the same with Tip O'Neil's Democratic congress. It is never mentioned that both legislative bodies were predominantly Democratic and that Democrats are, by nature, prone to compromise whereas contemporary Republicans pride themselves on Absolute Refusal to compromise. Grover Norquist's "No Tax Hike" pledge is prima facie evidence.)Seeking a contrast to Mr. Obama’s difficulties in dealing with Republican legislators, Mr. Ryan said that as Massachusetts governor, Mr. Romney “found common ground” with a legislature that was 87 percent Democratic, meeting each week with Democratic leaders. The result, he said, was a state budget that was balanced each year without tax increases.READ MORE-
Fact Check: Did Obama Apologize for American Values?Mr. Ryan suggested that Mr. Obama has apologized for American values, similar to repeated assertions made by Republicans that the president went on an “apology tour” after his inauguration, or that he has sought to apologize for American principles. “What we should not be apologizing for is standing up for our values,” Mr. Ryan said at the debate. Are those charges correct?READ MORE
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Issue of Abortion Raised In Answers on FaithIf there was one subject that hard-core Democrats wanted raised, it was abortion and contraception. Mr. Biden did not disappoint.Prompted by a question about the Roman Catholic faith of both men, Mr. Biden warned that a Republican administration would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal.“Just ask yourself, with Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for Mr. Romney,” Mr. Biden said, “who is he likely to appoint? You think he’s likely to appoint someone like Scalia?”Mr. Ryan said that he personally believed that “life begins at conception,” but said that the policy of a Romney administration would be to oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother.Mr. Ryan accused Mr. Obama’s administration of trying to force religious institutions to pay for contraception, a charge that Mr. Biden rejected as wrong.And Mr. Ryan said that the Republican ticket did not “think that unelected judges should make this decision.”
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Fact Check: Would Ryan Budget Slash Early Education?(Alan: Once again, notice the GOP's lack of specificity. Romney-Ryan systematically hide the actual outcomes of the cuts they propose.)Mr. Biden charged that Mr. Ryan’s budget, which was passed by Republicans in the House, would have cut early childhood education for 200,000 children. Is that accurate?READ MORE
Graphics DeskAlan: What "entitles" Ryan to include the 8.6 Americans who are "working part time for economic reasons?"
Thom ShankerFact Check: Would Romney Military Plan Add $2 Trillion?During a rapid-fire exchange of talking points on defense spending, Mr. Biden argued that the Romney-Ryan military spending plans would add $2 trillion to the budget and that the military itself does not want many of the items in question at a time the nation simply cannot afford all of them.READ MORE-
Fact Check: Waste and the StimulusDid the $787 billion stimulus package, overseen by Mr. Biden, suffer from waste and fraud, as Mr. Ryan contended?READ MORE
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Fact Check: Tax Increases on Small BusinessesWould President Obama’s plan to repeal income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans kill jobs? Possibly, economists say, but the Clinton-era tax rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were responsible for creating millions of jobs.READ MORE
Michael D. ShearDebate Highlights Differences, Especially on Taxes
Max Whittaker for The New York TimesStudents at Centre College watch the vice-presidential debate from outside the debate hall.Anyone looking for a clash of philosophy found it in this debate, especially on taxes.Mr. Biden angrily denounced the tax proposal forwarded by Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney, calling it an attack on the middle class.“This is unconscionable,” Mr. Biden said “The middle class got knocked on their heels. The great recession crushed them. They need some help now.”By contrast, he said, the Bush tax cuts on wealthy people should be allowed to expire.Mr. Ryan offered a drastically different vision, saying that the Democratic approach would be an increase of tax rates on small businesses that would cost 700,000 jobs.“There aren’t enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending,” Mr. Ryan said.Turning to the camera, he said to viewers, “Watch out, middle class, the tax bill is coming to you.”The debate offered viewers a clear picture of the differences between the two campaigns — a difference that was at best muddled by the performance at the first debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney.But the exchange was also less civil, with Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan repeatedly interrupting each other. Mr. Biden was especially aggressive, offering retorts to just about every fact that Mr. Ryan tried to offer.“Not mathematically possible,” Mr. Biden repeatedly said to Mr. Ryan’s claim about the Republican tax cut plan.- Alan: In this graph, notice that "the military" is the area in which Americansare prepared to cut spending whereas the Romney-Ryan plan to raise military spending.The GOP's proposed "mystery" cuts do not exist. They exist only in theory.
Graphics Desk
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Fact Check: What Did the Stimulus Accomplish?Mr. Ryan issued a broadside against Mr. Obama’s stimulus plan, noting that it did not keep unemployment below 8 percent, as Mr. Obama’s economic advisers projected it would before he took office. Mr. Biden defended the bill, saying it helped the economy recover. Who is right?READ MORE
- Alan: Again, NO details. The Romney-Ryan ticket pushes "acts of faith" without spelling out ANY of the facts.
Graphics Desk
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Fact Check: Medicare's $716 Billion Cut?Mr. Ryan made a claim that journalists and independent fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked: that President Obama and Congressional Democrats raided Medicare benefits of $716 billion. But for Mr. Ryan, the claim has drawn countercharges of hypocrisy on his part.
It was notable enough when Mr. Romney last summer started attacking Mr. Obama for “raiding” Medicare of $716 billion over 10 years to help pay for “Obamacare,” and then picked as his running mate Mr. Ryan. As the House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan had included the same Medicare reductions in the Republican budgets he had passed in the House for two years in a row.What was even more remarkable was that Mr. Ryan began echoing the charge against Democrats within days of joining the Romney ticket. By contrast, two years ago Mr. Ryan mostly was silent on this line of attack when Republicans took it up in the 2010 midterm elections. (Back then they spoke of $500 billion in Medicare cuts; the higher figure now reflects a 10-year period through 2022 instead of 2020; savings grow over time.) Though the attack helped Republicans capture control of the House in 2010, the next spring Mr. Ryan, now elevated to Budget Committee chairman, incorporated the Democrats’ Medicare savings into his own 10-year budget. He did so again earlier this year.Now, as in 2010, the Republican charge has several problems.The $716 billion in reductions over a decade would come not from Medicare benefits, but from lower reimbursements to health-care providers, drug-makers and insurers selling so-called Medicare Advantage policies. However, economists argue that cuts to providers often result in reduced services, and some doctors do refuse to accept Medicare.The Democrats’ reductions did help offset the cost of Mr. Obama’s 2010 health-care law. But rather than reduce Medicare benefits, that law also provided Medicare recipients with more generous coverage of prescription drugs and new benefits like free mammograms and other preventive-care treatments.Also, the Obama reductions added eight years to the life of Medicare’s financially troubled trust fund, to 2024, according to Medicare trustees. If the cuts were restored, the insolvency date could revert to 2016.
***Fact Check: Comparing Medicare PlansNo program faces bigger changes under Mr. Ryan’s budget than Medicare, the program providing health coverage for the elderly, and his plan to overhaul the program forms the basis in many respects for Mr. Romney’s plan — and Mr. Biden just took it on head on.Mr. Ryan’s plan calls for reshaping the curren, government-sponsored defined benefit fee for service insurance system. Under his plan, which would begin a decade from now, each beneficiary would receive a fixed amount of money — Democrats call it a voucher — to purchase private insurance or buy into the existing government program. Under the most recent Ryan plan, the money, known as premium support, would rise each year by the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, considerably slower than health care’s current rate of inflation.Mr. Ryan believes competition will drive down the cost of health care, keeping the voucher’s value up to date. The Congressional Budget Office projected that over time, the value of the voucher would erode, shifting the extra costs to the elderly.Critics also warn that under Mr. Ryan’s plan, private insurers would try to sign up the healthiest seniors, leaving the sickest, most-expensive-to-cover elderly to enroll in the government program. That would boost the government’s costs and steeply erode the value of those recipients’ vouchers.Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Romney’s original Medicare plan would have cost future beneficiaries $6,400 in higher costs and questioned what his current plan would cost. But it is difficult to assess what Mr. Romney’s plan would cost, because he has not released key details.Unlike Mr. Ryan, who proposed capping the growth of premium support to the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, Mr. Romney has not specified how much money he would give to future beneficiaries to buy coverage, or how fast it would grow — making the effects of his proposal difficult to assess.The Romney campaign’s policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote that while higher-income seniors might be asked to pay more under Mr. Romney’s plan, “all seniors will be guaranteed sufficient support because the support is actually set based on what plans will cost.”But the campaign has not said how its plan would work. A question and answer section of the campaign’s Web site puts it this way: “How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow? Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost.”Mr. Romney has suggested keeping the growth of the subsidies below the rate of medical inflation in the past. He told the Washington Examiner last December that allowing the subsidies to grow at the rate of medical inflation “would have no particular impact on reining in the excessive cost of our entitlement program.”If his campaign’s theory that increased competition among private plans will slow the growth of health care costs proves wrong, future beneficiaries could well face higher costs. (Mr. Romney’s pledge to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law would also cost them more, because part of the law helps Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs by filing the so-called doughnut hole.) But without knowing the size of the subsidies or how fast they would grow, it is impossible to assign a dollar value to the cost, as the Obama campaign has tried to do.
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