Fact Check Friday: Obama, Biden Speak At DNC
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - It's Fact Check Friday, when we put the Presidential campaign ads under the scrutiny of factcheck.org, a nonpartisan non-profit part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
WCBS 880's Lynda Lopez Checks The Facts
Podcast
Today, WCBS 880's Lynda Lopez spoke with factcheck.org's Lori Robertson, who is still in Charlotte going over last night's Democratic National Convention speeches by the President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
Obama boasted that his plan would cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.
"Well, he even said 'independent experts' said that that's what his plan would do, but the fact is one independent expert - a government budget watchdog group - said that part of the plan included a gimmick. It includes $1 trillion in savings over the next 10 years from drawing down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that's what the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget criticized as a bit of a gimmick," Robertson told Lopez.
"A gimmick because it was deficit spending and so it shouldn't really be counted as savings?" asked Lopez.
"Yeah. If you're not spending the money that we weren't going to spend anyway. So how can we count that as a deficit reduction?" answered Robertson.
When the President was talking about the bailout of the auto industry, he characterized General Motors as back on top of the world.
Is that the case?
"Not quite," said Robertson. "GM was number one in world auto sales for 2011 and it took back that top spot after two years of not having it. But this year, it's the second place. Toyota's number one auto sales for the first half of the year and it actually looks like Volkswagen is actually going to jump into that number two spot. So, GM would end up in third place for 2012."
Vice President Biden quoted Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney as saying "It's not worth moving heaven and Earth" to catch Osama bin Laden.
But there was some context missing.
"If you look at the full story - this is from 2007 - Romney was quoted by the Associated Press, and the story goes on to say that Romney said instead of going after one person, he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement. So, in the bigger context it doesn't quite sound the way Biden put it," Robertson said.
Biden also said that the "experts" concluded that Romney's corporate tax plan would create 800,000 jobs in other countries.
Something was off there.
"Well, it's a bit of a disputed figure. There's only one expert who said this. It's a professor of economics at Reed College in Portland [Oregon] and she did a calculation on a very pure territorial system. It was Romney's plan specifically. And she, in fact, has later come out and said, 'Well, I don't have the details on what he would do specifically.' And she's also said that those job gains in other countries, that doesn't mean that we're giving up jobs here in the United States. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're losing jobs in the U.S. and that was clearly the Vice President's implication," Robertson said.
