http://www.app.com/article/20090224/NEWS/90225002
AP FACT CHECK: Obama glosses over complex realities
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that his mortgage-relief plan will only benefit deserving homeowners appears to be a stretch.
Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who should have known better than to buy that huge house.
The president glossed over a number of of complex realities in delivering his speech to Congress and a nation hungry for economic salvation.
A look at some of his assertions:
Obama Fact Check
Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by carpro, Feb 25, 2009.
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OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.
Actually it all started under Carter! -
OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aids for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.
In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.
If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.
This is comical. We have 243 million cars and trucks in this country that use diesel or gasoline. Even if someone invented a car that run off water we still need to drill off shore to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. -
It is wonderful to have a president who shows a little compassion, something that is sorely missing around here.
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Even if it is phoney.
It's easy to be "compassionate" with other people's money. He doesn't have to work for it.
He just steals it from those that earn it and redistributes it according too his own warped sense of what's "fair" and "good". -
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Compassion starts at home....or it should! -
OBAMA: "In the last eight years, (health insurance) premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, 1 million more Americans have lost their health insurance"
THE FACTS: The number of uninsured grew by 7 million from 2000 to 2007, the latest year for which Census figures are available, meaning Obama's claim would be true if had been talking about averages. But it's not true that the number of uninsured rose each year by 1 million. In 2007, the ranks of the uninsured dropped by 1.3 million from the year before, to 45.7 million.
Democrats have to continually lie about health coverage to accomplish their purpose.