This week's 4 political ads that stretch the truth
The key quote: "The money you paid for your guaranteed healthcare is going to a massive new government program that's not for you."
The Problem: This Romney ad suggests that the money seniors have paid for Medicare benefits would pay for the Obama administration's health care overhaul at the expense of their benefits. As CBS News pointed out earlier this week, the president's health care reform law is paid for in part by reductions to Medicare. According to data from the Kaiser Foundation, however, the reductions come primarily from cuts to Medicare Advantage plans, as well as in hospital reimbursements and in payments to other providers, and would not limit access to benefits for Medicare recipients. Republicans argue such reductions create disincentives for hospitals and doctors to accept new Medicare patients, but it's a stretch to say that the Affordable Care Act is "not for you" when Medicare recipients have access to equal benefits under that plan.
The key quote: "After founding Bain Capital in 1984, Mitt Romney and the private equity firm spent the next two decades destroying American jobs and creating jobs overseas."
The problem: In citing sources meant to support its claim that Romney and Bain spent "two decades destroying American jobs and creating jobs overseas," the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org uses a number of examples that have previously been put through the fact-checking ringer by outlets such as the Washington Post, the Associated Press, PolitiFact, and FactCheck.org.
The ad suggests that Mitt Romney and Bain together were responsible for outsourcing jobs from America to Australia, China, and Germany.
One of the companies in question is Modus Media, an outsource manufacturing services company. According to the Washington Post, Modus Media announced in 1997 that "it had contracted with Microsoft to produce software and training products at a center in Australia." By 1998, the company said it had operations on four continents. In 2000, Modus Media announced the firm announced it was opening a new facility in Mexico. Also in 2000, a plant in California closed.
According to an analysis by the Post's Glenn Kessler, the case of Modus Media is "not an example of shipping jobs overseas"; rather, the company "closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah" at the same time it opened an "unrelated" plant in Mexico. The Washington Post points out that the closure in California took place in 2000, after Romney had largely abdicated operational control of Bain.
Another company named in the ad, Dade Behring, declared bankruptcy in 2002, as reported by FactCheck.org. After that, the company reorganized and in 2007 was acquired by the German conglomerate Siemens AG. This also took place after Romney's time at Bain.
As for the Holson Burnes Group, the third company referenced in the ad, PolitiFact reports that Romney did indeed work at Bain during the entire period during which Bain owned the company, and that it did have operations in China. According to the Associated Press, Holson Burnes laid off workers in New Hampshire and Gaffney, S.C., as it shipped other jobs overseas.
The upshot? It's true that under Romney, companies owned by Bain did lay off workers and shipped some jobs overseas - but the idea that the company "spent two decades" doing that is an overstatement.
The key quote: "Romney's plans could cut college aid for nearly 10 million students and eliminate the tax deduction for college tuition."
The Problem: This assertion relies on multiple assumptions.
Before even getting to the key quote, this ad opens by taking some of Mitt Romney's remarks out of context. Romney did indeed in April say to students, "Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents [and] start a business." However, he wasn't talking about how to fund a college education, he was referring to business loans.
Back to the key quote: The ad bases its charge that Romney could cut college aid for nearly 10 million students on the Obama campaign's own analysis of Paul Ryan's House budget, which Romney has said he would support if it made it to his desk as president. The analysis assumes that the billions in cuts that the budget calls for would be "distributed equally across the Budget." Furthermore, it assumes that all of the approximately 9.6 million Pell Grant recipients would see their aid slashed.
The Romney campaign does indeed write in its education plan that a President Romney would tackle the challenge of rising higher education costs "by making clear that the federal government will no longer write a blank check to universities to reward their tuition increases, and by supporting institutions that are pursuing innovative operating models to drive down costs."
It's unclear, however, how many Pell Grant recipients would be impacted by Romney's policies -- most likely, it wouldn't be all 9.6 million of them. "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," the campaign wrote.
Meanwhile, the Obama ad charges Romney would "eliminate the tax deduction for college tuition."
The Romney education plan does talk about Mr. Obama's tax deduction disparagingly, though the campaign has yet to clarify to CBS News whether that means a Romney administration would eliminate it.
The campaign argues that "in spite of these changes, students attending postsecondary programs are more likely to borrow today than they were three years ago, and the average amount borrowed today is increasing. While Americans will hear President Obama tout these policies as accomplishments, they will hear less from him about the way that flooding colleges with federal dollars only serves to drive tuition higher."
The key quote: A narrator says, "If you had President Obama's record, what would you do? Would you... deny reality?" The ad then shows a clip of Mr. Obama saying, "We tried our plan -- and it worked."
The Problem: This particular Obama quote is taken out of context.
The president made those remarks at a July 23 campaign event in California, where he was arguing in favor of letting some of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. More context shows that the president was arguing that his plan was tried in the Clinton era, and it worked then.
"I'm also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs-- the biggest budget surplus in history, and everybody did well," the president said. "Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan -- and it worked."
