Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) When Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney decried the "prairie fire" of U.S. debt Tuesday, he ignored some of the sparks that set it ablaze. One was the Great Recession that took hold before Barack Obama became president. That landmark event went unmentioned in Romney's speech. Another was a series of Bush-era tax cuts that Romney wants to follow with even lower rates.
Instead he laid the blame on Obama, a president who has certainly increased the nation's eye-popping debt but not, as Romney claimed, by nearly as much as all other presidents combined. A look at some of Romney's assertions and how they compare with the facts:
ROMNEY: "America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of your dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined."
THE FACTS. Hardly. Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush ran the national debt up to $10.62 trillion, the amount it was on the day Obama took office. Today, it is $15.67 trillion, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt. So it has gone up by $5.05 trillion under Obama. That's roughly half of the amount amassed by all the other presidents combined. In short, the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/mitt-romney-debt-speech-inferno_n_1519253.html
liberal N proud
(60,332 posts)hue
(4,949 posts)Journeyman
(15,026 posts)(and you won't find a Republican running for office today who would dispute that fact about truth.)
cstanleytech
(26,248 posts)You left out some other things that arent important when you a republican and running for office and they are "honor", "integrity", "intelligence", "independence" (after all we know 99.999999% of them jump when commanded to when it comes to voting on a bill) and a few other things.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,766 posts)tanyev
(42,523 posts)zbdent
(35,392 posts)maybe even more so ...
flpoljunkie
(26,184 posts)http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/obama-romney-deficit-debt-chart.php
fasttense
(17,301 posts)Every time someone blames homeowners, Obama, Democrats, the poor for the 2nd RepubliCON Great Depression I always point out the 3 major contributors (2 unfunded Wars, Tax cuts for wealthy and the economic crash). Thanks for posting a graph that illustrates it.
Seems the largest gap lies in the give away in tax cuts to the uber rich.
SpankMe
(2,957 posts)Republicans repeat lies over and over again and these lies begin to stick and become the truth.
Democrats need to repeat the essential facts of this HuffPo economic story over and over again. It will work.
All of us on DU need to go forth and put this story in as many other forums as we can - including FreeperVille.
Please rec the crap out of this and keep it on top for as much of the day as possible. These facts need to be repeated over and over again.