The New York Times provided live, comprehensive coverage and fact-checking of the first presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney in Denver.
Brian StelterNo Kind Words for Obama at His Friendliest Network
For much of the night, Mr. Obama sought to explain his programs, including a long defense of his health care program and his efforts to cut the deficit and to reform Medicare.The hosts on the cable news channel friendliest to President Obama, MSNBC, groped to find anything friendly to say after the debate on Wednesday night.Liberal hosts like Ed Schultz were taken aback by what they thought was a weak performance by Mr. Obama. Mr. Schultz, who earlier said he was stunned that Mr. Obama was “off his game,” later threw up his arms and asked, “Where was the president tonight?”His exasperated colleague Chris Matthews said, “Obama should watch MSNBC.” Mr. Matthews said he felt that Mr. Obama went into the debate “disarmed” and suggested that he would learn something by watching his show, “Hardball,” and MSNBC’s other programs.“He would learn something about this debate,” Mr. Matthews said. “There’s a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it’s been held? Here on this network is where we’re having the debate. We have our knives out. We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in there disarmed!”-
Fact Check: Romney's 12 Million JobsMr. Romney promised to create 12 million jobs over the next four years if he is elected president. That is actually about as many jobs as the economy is already expected to create, according to some economic forecasters.In its semiannual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. Moody’s Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that he expected the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected, under the assumption that whoever wins will “reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceiling without major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability.”Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, has not developed explicit forecasts that go through the end of 2016, but has said that he expects an average job growth of just under 150,000 a month from now through the end of 2013.Given those expectations for the start of the next presidential term, he said that Mr. Romney’s promise of job growth averaging 250,000 a month over the next four years “would be quite a good outcome.”Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office’s latest long-term economic forecast, released in August, estimated that employment would grow by just 8.3 million from the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2017, the dates of the next presidential term.That C.B.O. forecast implies that Mr. Romney would be promising an extra two million jobs, or a 40 percent bonus from what is already expected.By law, though, the Congressional Budget Office must base its projections on the laws that are on the books rather than on what Congress is expected to do. That means that the office’s forecast assumes the “fiscal cliff” — with its sharp tax increases and deep spending cuts — materializes at the end of this year. Most economists do not believe Congress will allow this to happen.The Congressional Budget Office’s jobs numbers would probably look stronger if they likewise assumed Congress does not allow the country to go over the cliff.
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Fact Check: Medicare Cost Control BoardListing his objections to the new health care law, Mr. Romney said: “It puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don’t like that idea.”Mr. Romney was referring to a Medicare cost control board that would be created by the 2010 law. The stated purpose of the new panel, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, is to ”reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.” Spending cuts recommended by the 15-member board would take effect automatically unless Congress voted to block or change them.Mr. Obama defended the board, which he described as “a group of health care experts, doctors, etc., to figure out how can we reduce the cost of care in the system over all.”The House voted in March to abolish the board, but the Senate has not acted on the measure. Mr. Obama has said the board “‘will help reduce the rate of Medicare cost growth responsibly while protecting beneficiaries.”Under the 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act, the board cannot make recommendations to ”ration health care,” raise revenues or increase premiums, deductibles or co-payments for Medicare
beneficiaries.Republicans say the board will inevitably try to save money by cutting Medicare payments to doctors, who would then be less willing to treat Medicare patients.While the board will focus on Medicare, it is also supposed to make “advisory recommendations” to the president and Congress on how to slow the growth of national health spending in non-federal health care programs and in the private sector. -
Obama Campaign Says Romney More Assertive
Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Romney was on the offensive from the beginning of the debate and accused Mr. Obama of failing to address jobs right away as president, and being distracted by a misplaced effort to reform health care.Was President Obama surprisingly flat?Even Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for the president, acknowledged that Mr. Romney won the debate on style points, saying so in an interview on CNN.Mr. Obama has a reputation for being professorial to a fault. During the four years of his presidency, Mr. Obama has often gotten lost in the weeds during town hall meetings or at White House press conferences.The president who showed up at the debate was similar to the one who Americans have seen day-in and day-out for the last several years.Chatter on cable networks and Twitter seemed to agree with Ms. Cutter, saying that Mr. Romney was much more aggressive and animated than the president throughout the debate.That kind of snap judgement sometimes conflicts with the more thoughtful reaction of the viewing public in the days ahead.But if Mr. Romney is viewed as the aggressor in the days ahead, it will put more pressure on Mr. Obama to bring more energy and more fight to the remaining two debates later this month.Ms. Cutter argued in the brief CNN interview that style points are not what matters. She said the president effectively communicated his plans to the many people who were watching who might not have been paying much attention in the past months.But for a campaign that is not used to conceding anything, the concession on style had to be unwelcome. -
Fact Check: Financial Aid FundingMr. Romney said he would not cut federal financial aid to college students, as the Obama campaign has charged, though his campaign has called the system fiscally unsustainable.“I’m not going to cut education funding,” including grants for college, Mr. Romney said.Mr. Obama has more than doubled the size of the Pell Grant program, which provides aid to low- and middle-income students. Mr. Romney has not said explicitly that he would cut the program, but his campaign says the expansion is unsustainable. The governor’s position paper on education says he would “refocus Pell Grants dollars on the students who need them most,” suggesting that fewer people would qualify. Democrats also interpret the budget plan of his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, to mean a steep cut in the size of the program.The Obama camp also points to Mr. Romney’s position that he would allow banks bank into the federal student loan system as evidence that he would cut Pell Grants. Mr. Obama eliminated the banks’ role as middlemen servicing the loans, saving billions of dollars in fees – money that is helping pay for the Pell expansion.
John M. BroderFact Check: Did Half of Green Companies Fail?A number of readers, including Patty Freeman-Lynde from Athens, asked about Mr. Romney’s charge that half the companies invested in under the president’s green energy stimulus have gone out of business.That is a gross overstatement. Of nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy, although several others are facing financial difficulties.Mr. Romney also said that many of the companies that received such loans were supported by campaign contributors. George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, was an investor in Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker, but there are also examples of Republican and Democratic campaign contributors who invested in companies supported by the loan guarantee program.The former official chosen by the White House to audit the program earlier this year, Herbert M. Allison Jr., gave Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee $52,500 this year, according to The Associated Press.-
Fact Check: Education CutsThe candidates traded a series of charges on education, including whether Mr. Romney’s tax cuts would lead to lower government support for public education. Mr. Obama said the House budget authored by Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, would cut “the education budget up to 20 percent.”Mr. Romney rejected the charge. “I’m not going to cut education funding,” he said. “I don’t have a plan to cut education funding.”But in the past Mr. Romney has said he would do just that.In a speech to donors in Florida in the spring overheard by reporters, Mr. Romney said he would either merge the federal Education Department with another agency “or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller.”The House budget that Mr. Ryan authored and Mr. Romney has said he largely supports includes large cuts to federal programs, but does not specify how they would be distributed across the federal government. The White House, which vehemently opposed the budget, calculated that if the cuts were distributed evenly across departments and programs, it would mean eliminating 38,000 teachers and aides for poor children in 2014 and 27,000 special education teachers and support staff. In addition, 200,000 children would be dropped from Head Start and other early education programs.
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Fact Check: 'Borrow Money From Your Parents'Mr. Obama said of his opponent that “when he tells a student you should borrow money from your parents to go to college,” it calls into question whether Mr. Romney realizes that some people “don’t have that option.”The president’s statement, to which Mr. Romney did not reply directly, is based on an interpretation of a less-than-clear statement by Mr. Romney last April. Mr. Romney exhorted students: “Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents. Start a business.”The syntax left his meaning unclear; the Romney campaign later said the governor’s reference to borrowing from parents referred to starting a business, not paying for college.But an Obama ad using video of that speech omitted the reference to starting a business, making it seem as if Mr. Romney was talking about college.
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Reader Question: Tax Breaks for Moving OverseasQ: Do corporations actually get a tax break for relocating manufacturing overseas? — johng158, New York CityAnnie Lowrey: It is true. The tax code currently does allow companies to deduct certain expenses when they move operations overseas. As part of its plan to aid the manufacturing sector and promote job growth, the Obama administration has proposed ending this deduction, and giving tax credits to companies moving jobs back to the United States.
Robert PearFact Check: Government 'Takeover' of Health CareMr. Romney said in the debate that Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul would allow the federal government to “take over health care,” an assertion rejected by the president.The 2010 health care law clearly expands the role of the federal government. But it also builds on the foundation of private health insurance, providing subsidies for millions of low- and moderate-income people to buy private insurance.Under the law, close to 30 million Americans are expected to gain health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Many of them would receive insurance through the expansion of Medicaid. The federal government will initially pay the entire cost of Medicaid coverage for newly eligible beneficiaries and would never pay less than 90 percent.In addition, the federal government would subsidize the purchase of private insurance for millions of people with incomes up to four times the poverty level (up to $92,200 for a family of four). Private insurers would thus have many new customers.Projections by the nonpartisan office of the actuary at the Department of Health and Human Services show that federal, state and local government health spending will account for nearly 50 percent of all health spending in the United States by 2021, up from 46 percent in 2011. The federal share of all health spending is expected to rise to more than 31 percent, from slightly less than 29 percent.The changes reflect the expansion of Medicaid eligibility and the new subsidies for private insurance, as well as the increase in Medicare enrollment as baby boomers join the program.When Mr. Romney and other Republicans complain of a federal takeover, they are referring to more than spending and enrollment in government health programs. They say the new health care law will require most Americans to purchase “government-approved insurance” or pay a new tax. The tax issue was at the heart of the Supreme Court’s much-debated 5-4 decision in June to uphold the president’s health care overhaul law, the Affordable Care Act.Republicans also say that health insurance will be subject to much more federal regulation, specifying the types of benefits that must be offered; the value, or generosity, of the benefit package; and many other details.Mr. Obama and other Democrats say these standards are needed to make sure consumers get real protection, not just “bare bones” coverage.-
Fact Check: Romney on Dodd-FrankMr. Romney argued that Dodd-Frank, Mr. Obama’s financial regulatory reform law, designated certain financial firms as “too big to fail,” giving them a “blank check” and implicit government backing.The law does designate some financial institutions as “systemically important.” But it also puts them under significant additional regulatory scrutiny and requires them to write “living wills,” telling the government how to unwind them.That said, Mr. Romney’s criticism of the law is a common one, and many liberals and conservatives share his belief that it would not prevent future bailouts of systemically important firms.For his part, Mr. Romney has promised to repeal Dodd-Frank and to put in place a smarter system of rules and regulations. He has thus far been light on detail. But he has offered support for some of Dodd-Frank¹s main goals — like bolstering capital requirements.
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Fact Check: Obama's Health Care Law and the Deficit
Repealing Mr. Obama’s health care law, which Mr. Romney said he would do, would actually increase the federal deficit.This summer, after Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal the law, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that doing so would increase the federal deficit by $109 billion over the next decade. That is because the parts of the law that would require more spending to expand coverage would be offset by the parts of the law that raise new revenues and curb spending — including provisions calling to curb the growth of Medicare costs and several new taxes and fees. Repealing the law would also mean that 30 million fewer people would have health insurance in 2022, it projected. -
Fact Check: On Medicare PlansMr. Romney’s Medicare plan for giving future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance or a version of traditional Medicare came under scrutiny.Both agreed that old studies suggesting that the plan would raise the out-of-pocket costs of the elderly by more than $6,000 were out of date, but they disagreed on the effect of the plan. Mr. Romney suggested that private insurers would be more efficient, while Mr. Obama warned that they might cherry-pick the healthiest patients and endanger regular Medicare. And he questioned just how the plan would save money. “The money has to come from somewhere,” he said.An old proposal by Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, originally wanted to give future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance — and to limit the growth of those payments to the rate of inflation. Since health care costs rise faster than inflation, such a plan would leave beneficiaries facing higher costs. But Mr. Ryan revised his plan, and Mr. Romney has further altered it — but leaving key details too vague to estimate its impact.The Romney campaign’s policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote last month 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 detailed how the 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.”And Mr. Romney has suggested limiting the growth of the subsidies 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.”So 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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Fact Check: Size of the Oil Industry SubsidiesMr. Romney and Mr. Obama disputed the size and effect of oil industry subsidies. Mr. Obama said the oil industry received $4 billion a year in favorable tax treatment, although Mr. Romney said the figure was $2.8 billion. The president’s figure has appeared in budget documents in each of the past three years and has not been disputed by industry. Mr. Romney said he was willing to see the subsidies eliminated as part of a broader budget deal.Mr. Obama specifically proposes to eliminate more than a half-dozen tax exemptions for oil and gas companies large and small. The tax breaks for oil have a long history — the so-called percentage depletion allowance for oil and natural gas wells dates to the 1920s — and have withstood repeated efforts to kill them.Mr. Romney compared the size of the oil industry subsidies to the money Mr. Obama’s stimulus program devoted to green energy projects, including Solyndra, a failed solar panel maker, and two struggling electric car manufacturers, Fisker and Tesla. Mr. Romney said correctly that the stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, had spent $90 billion on alternative energy, energy efficiency and related programs. He said that the program had backed a number of “losers” that had cost taxpayers millions.Solyndra did indeed collapse after receiving $528 million in federal stimulus money intended to accelerate clean energy development and create jobs. It touched off an 18-month Congressional investigation and a number of embarrassing disclosures about White House efforts to promote the company for political reasons while aware of its financial troubles. However, the Solyndra grant process began under the George W. Bush administration, and it received bipartisan Congressional and lobbying support.It was by far the largest of three prominent failures of the loan guarantee program. Beacon Power received $39 million in federal funds, with the government recovering all but $8 million of that. Abound Solar’s collapse will cost the taxpayers as much as $68 million. Together, the three failed companies cost the government about $575 million.But in creating the program, which has to date issued $34.5 billion in loans, Congress set aside $2.4 billion to cover losses, so the loan defaults are a relatively small proportion of the overall portfolio.The electric car makers and a number of battery companies supported by the federal loan guarantee program are facing difficulties and could end up costing the government money.An audit commissioned by the White House found that the loan guarantee program needed tighter oversight and stricter loan standards. But it found that the loss reserve was adequate to cover expected future defaults.Mr. Romney campaigned in May at the Solyndra factory in California, where he called the venture “a symbol of gross waste,” a failure of the president’s stimulus package and an example of Mr. Obama¹s poor stewardship of a shaky economy.
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Fact Check: Medicare's $716 Billion Cut?Mr. Obama initially seemed to pre-empt Mr. Romney’s frequent criticism that the president cut $716 billion from Medicare, by bringing it up himself and saying the cost savings were from reduced payments to insurance companies and other health care providers. But Mr. Romney returned to it, suggesting that the $716 billion in Medicare reductions would indeed come from current beneficiaries.While fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked this claim, it remains a standard attack line for Mr. Romney.The charge that Mr. Obama took $716 billion from Medicare recipients to pay for his “Obamacare” has several problems — not least the fact that Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the identical savings in his annual budget plans that nearly all House Republicans voted for in the past two years.Mr. Obama did not cut benefits by $716 billion over 10 years as part of his 2010 health care law; rather, he reduced Medicare reimbursements to health care providers, chiefly insurance companies and drug manufacturers. And the law gave Medicare recipients more generous benefits for prescription drugs and free preventive care like mammograms.According to nonpartisan analysts, it is Mr. Romney who would both cut benefits and add costs for beneficiaries if he restored the $716 billion in reductions. Restoring higher payments to insurers and other companies would in turn increase Medicare premiums because beneficiaries share in Medicare’s total cost. Marilyn Moon, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, has calculated that a Medicare recipient’s out-of-pocket expenses would increase $577 a year on average by 2022.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 would revert to 2016.The charge that Mr. Obama raided Medicare originated with House Republicans two years ago in the 2010 midterm elections, and is credited with helping them to win a House majority. In 2010, however, they spoke of $500 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years, through fiscal year 2020; $716 billion is the updated sum for 2013 through 2022, and reflects increases in the cost of care and the number of Medicare recipients.
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Fact Check: Cutting Deficits a Total of $4 Trillion
Mr. Obama claimed that he has a plan to cut deficits a total of $4 trillion over the next decade.Some nonpartisan groups dispute this claim. Yet while Mr. Obama still uses the $4 trillion figure on the campaign trail, his current budget updates it to $5.3 trillion through 2022, reflecting compounding savings in later years.The difference is mainly in what Mr. Obama counts as deficit reduction. He counts: $1.7 trillion in savings from budget compromises with Congressional Republicans in 2011; more than $1.4 trillion from the expiration of Bush-era tax rates on high incomes and $480 billion from other revenue-raising tax provisions; $597 billion in savings from Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies and other so-called entitlement spending programs; $848 billion in savings from the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and $800 billion from reduced interest payments on a smaller federal debt. (Some of this money goes to additional job-creation measures.)The liberal Center on the Budget and Policy Priorities has concluded that the $4 trillion deficit reduction claim is justified, even though the center does not count savings from the wars in future years. But two centrist, business-supported groups – the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Concord Coalition — have contested the claim. The committee puts Mr. Obama’s 10-year deficit reduction at no more than $2.4 trillion.While the committee credits Mr. Obama with “some serious debt reduction proposals – including from higher revenues, health care reforms and other spending reductions” — it does not count savings from drawing down war operations, lower interest on debt or some of the 10-year spending cuts agreed to with Republicans last year.
Michael CooperFact Check: Deficit Reduction PlanPresident Obama is right that Mr. Romney indicated at a Republican debate that he would reject a deficit reduction plan that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 of revenue increases.At a debate in Ames, Iowa, in August 2011, Bret Baier, the Fox News moderator, asked all of the Republican candidates to raise their hands if they would refuse to sign on to a legislative package that included $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of revenue increases.They all raised their hands.
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