My personal comments are in brackets [ ] and blue in color.
THINKPROGRESS:
At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes
1) “I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We’re also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford school.”
Fact: Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.”
2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”
Fact: The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.
3) “And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent.”
Fact: 14 percent is a one-year number. “Overall, oil production on federal land under Obama is up from 566 million barrels in 2008 to 626 million barrels in 2011, a 10.6 percent increase.” Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of President Obama.
4) “Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”
Fact: There are slightly fewer permits in 2009 and 2010, from between 8,000-9,000 permits to over 5,000, and they have not been cut by half. The oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, where it hasn’t begun exploring or developing. Two-thirds of “acreage leased by [oil] industry lies idle” on public lands, according to the Department of the Interior.
5) “I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.” Romney is actually against a one-year renewal of the wind production tax credit. The wind production tax credit has led to $14 billion of investment in 2011 and tens of thousands of American jobs.
6) “And coal, coal production is not up; coal jobs are not up.”
Fact: 1,500 coal jobs have been created under Obama.
7) “And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years.”
Fact: Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.
8) “I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada.”
Fact: Even with generous assumptions, the impact of the pipeline on oil prices is unclear and may raise prices in Midwest states. After all, a lot of that refined tar sands crude will be sold on the international market.
9) “The proof of whether a [energy] strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more.”
Fact: Gas prices are certainly high, but oil is a global commodity, and the president has virtually no control over them. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, Romney’s proposal to increase domestic oil production would not have much impact on volatility.
10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.”
Fact: As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.
11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.”
Fact: This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it.
12) “A recent study has shown the people in the middle-class will see $4,000.00 per year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.”
Fact: Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.
13) “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”
Fact: Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.
[Lets remember that officially a small business is defined by having a limited number of owners and is privately held, thus not publicly traded on the stock exchanges. Some examples of small business that earn huge incomes, Johnson A Family Company, Koch Industries owned by the Koch brothers who earn billions of dollars annually, most every hedge fund manager who earns millions of dollars a year, Cargil that earns $109 billion, Mars that earned $30 billion, PricewaterhouseCooper that earned $29 billion, Bechtel earned $28 billion and Publix Supermarkets that earned $35 billion. There are hundreds more, but you get my point. Most Ma and Pa businesses will not be effect by this increase nor would the amount they would save with the lower rate be enough to even hire one person for a year. So his statements are false.]
14) “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.”
Fact: Romney did not ask women groups for candidates. Instead, prior to his election, a “bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.” They “put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions” and presented it to Romney after he was elected. A UMass-Boston study found that “the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.”
15) “I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.”
Fact: Romney has been uncomfortably silent on the issue of pay equity. He has refused to say whether he’d support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would allow women to sue for equal pay, and named four of the justices who voted to roll back equal pay in that Supreme Court decision as his models for any of his appointments to the federal bench.
16) “I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”
Fact: But back in March, Romney expressed strong support for the so-called Blunt amendment, which that would allow employers to deny contraception coverage to women. Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood, where 76 percent of the patients seek low-cost birth control options. Defunding the organization would make it much harder for those women to get contraceptives.
17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.”
Fact: This is false. As Buisnessweek explain: “Romney is misstating his position. He opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.”
18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.”
Fact: Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases.
19) “He keeps saying, ‘Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.’ That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country.”
Fact: Job creation is net positive since Obama took office in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression. Economists estimate that up to 3 million jobs were created by the stimulus alone.
20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.”
Fact: But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act.
21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.”
Fact: Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time.
[We must remember that there was only a few broken up months that there was any super majority because Senator Byrd was hospitalized and could not vote and then Ted Kennedy dies which left his post open for a few months until it was filled temporarily until Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill that seat. Most of the time the Democrats only had 58 votes at any given time.]
22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.”
Fact: Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son. [Additionally, Romney himself said, speaking of Ted Kennedy's blind trust, that they are not as they seem because the owner of the trust can direct the blind fund in what it can and can't invest in.]
23) “It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.” Obama called the Libya incident an act of “terror” the very next day.
Fact: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
24) “Consider the distance between ourselves and — and Israel, the president said that — that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.”
Fact: The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”
25) “The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.”
Fact: Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.” [The only apologies that the administration has issued are for misconduct by our military personnel when they burred a bunch of Korans, the soldier pissed on dead Afganies and a few other instances of misconduct. What the Republicans like to claim is that when Pres. Obama gave a speech at a university in Egypt that it was an apology, in fact it was an attempt to reduce tensions between those who think the west has a holy war against Islam. There was no apology at all.]
26) “We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”
Fact: [It is legal to own an automatic weapon, but it’s not easy. Automatic weapons are "Class III" weapons, and are titled much like cars are. Most firearms dealers do not have a Class III FFL. The title transfer fee is hundreds of dollars, and you need written permission from your local police chief or county sheriff. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was enacted in 1994 and the Bush Administration tried to extend it, but his own party in Congress rejected the extension. In July 2004, then-Governor Romney signed legislation into law that made Massachusetts' assault weapons ban permanent and not reliant on a federal ban that expired at the end of 2004. The state issued a press release at the time, in which Romney described assault weapons as "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."]
27) “The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.”
Fact: The Justice Department’s inspector general “issued a scathing critique of federal officials for their handling of the botched gun-trafficking case,” but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.” [Another report stated that the program was actually started under the Bush Administration as "Operation Castaway" and was operating out of Florida and Texas. The ATF was trying to track and find out who the cartel person was that was receiving the weapons. The IG report indicated the AG Eric Holder and Pres. Obama had no idea about this ATF operation, as the ATF didn't brief them when they took office. When AG Holder became aware of the operation, he called Arizona and all the other field offices and ordered the operation to stop.]
28) “What I will do as president is make sure it’s more attractive to come to America again.”
Fact: Romney’s plan to move the country to a territorial tax system would let corporations do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the U.S. This would no doubt encourage American companies to invest abroad, potentially costing the country up to 800,000 jobs.
29) “Canada’s tax rate on companies is now 15 percent. Ours is 35 percent. So if you’re starting a business, where would you rather start it? We have to be competitive if we’re going to create more jobs here.”
Fact: The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.
30) “And there’s no question but that Obamacare has been an extraordinary deterrent to enterprises of all kinds hiring people.”
Fact: Under the law, only companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine — that’s just 2.6 percent of businesses. If anything, expanding health care coverage to more Americans will actually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
31) “He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy.”
Fact: The possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.
AP/HUFFINGTON POST:
1) OBAMA: The day after last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, "I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
OBAMA: "Get the transcript."
THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."
But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.
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2) OBAMA: "Let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well."
THE FACTS: What Obama didn't mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.
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3) ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters."
OBAMA: "Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my – the previous president was an oilman."
THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.
According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romney's point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last year's dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.
Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.
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4) OBAMA: "For young people who've come here, brought here often times by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And that's what I've done administratively."
THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young illegal immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which illegal immigrants with long-standing ties to the U.S. and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.
[Since the Dream Act was filibustered in the Senate by the Republicans and when he met with the leadership of both parties for a comprehensive reform, it became clear that he was not going to get any immigration legislation passed. His ...pathway to citizenship is not law as pointed out, but should he get reelected and a more humble opposition party starts to work with him, he could create by law a pathway to citizenship]
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5) ROMNEY: "I know he keeps saying, `You want to take Detroit bankrupt.' Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it's important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened."
THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren't available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces.
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6) OBAMA: "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."
THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.
[One must remember that in the first couple of months of assuming the office, the spiral started by the Bush Administration was continuing until Pres. Obama could get his stimulus bill passed in Congress with no help from Republicans and it took a couple of months for the money to flow to the projects and the tax cuts in the payroll taxes to start to take effect. To me, you can't look at the actual NET jobs because I attribute the losses in the first few months as those of G. W. Bush. Just because a person is sworn in on January 20th, doesn't mean everything changes on that date.]
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7) ROMNEY: "The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4.00 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."
THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices – and gasoline prices along with them – had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as U.S. oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.
Other energy prices have fallen during Obama's term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. That's because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.
[Gas prices rose to over $4.00 a gallon under the Bush Administration. Right-wing pundits claimed at that time that the president doesn't control energy prices because it is a commodity that is traded on the global free markets. But as soon as they climbed under Pres. Obama, then it is because of his policies and not the free market. They always want it both ways. One of the biggest problems are speculators who drive up the cost artificially. Speculation manipulation has to be prohibited, as it was before Pres. Bush eliminated the ban.]
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8) OBAMA: "What I've also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president."
THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obama's proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount – and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.
[Given the time constraints and learning from the last debate that you can't get mired down in the detailed numbers because the audience can't process it in proper context of the overall complex tax code. For me, I have no problem with those over $250,000, which include me, to pay the 39.6 plus the.9 Medicare surcharge and the 3.8 on investment income when I'm at that higher income level. It is my way of paying back for things like the G.I. Bill that I received and other services when I was just starting out in adult life and needed some sort of assistance. It's only fair.]
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9) ROMNEY: "I'm going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now."
THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he can't achieve all of his goals it under the budget rules presidents must follow.
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden on to the middle class.
Romney's campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.
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10) ROMNEY: "A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration."
THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.
[What was not mentioned is that under the Bush administration, the cost of the two war where OFF BUDGET and funded by EMERGENCY BILLS, so it didn't reflect in Bush's annual budget deficit of $500 billion or more. When Pres. Obama took office he changed the accounting practice and included the war funding in his annual budget, thus doubling it just as a result of the war costs. Additionally much of the $1 trillion is legacy from the Bush tax cuts and these unfunded, borrowed, war debt that we are now paying for. The TARP money was passed by Pres. Bush. The $700 billion stimulus was the only major funding that Pres. Obama has had. Which has reversed the job losses and slowly, without any help from the Republicans, has improved. In desperation not to default on our debt, remember, Pres. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two more years. That added to the deficit by keeping revenue low during a recession. So it is unfair to blame Pres. Obama for this deficit level.]
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