It has been seven whole weeks now since the midterms, and like you, perhaps weve enjoyed watching football and "Glee" uninterrupted by campaign ads. But that doesnt mean theres no campaigning going on. Potential Republican presidential aspirants are off and running, jockeying for exposure on the airwaves and before audiences in key primary states. We have been keeping track, and have noticed some twisting of the truth already! (We know, youre shocked.) Sarah Palin revisits her earlier claim of "death panels" in the health care law, attributing the term to a different board than she did before the law was passed. But the claim is just as false: The Medicare advisory board doesnt have the power to ration care, and its recommendations can be changed by Congress.
Mike Huckabee maintains that he never supported a mandatory cap-and-trade system for reducing carbon emissions. But theres ample evidence in a 2007 speech in New Hampshire where he referred to "true cap and trade" that he was endorsing a mandatory program, and has only recently flip- flopped.
Mitt Romneys attempts to differentiate his Massachusetts health care overhaul from the federal law enacted this year ring hollow. The laws have many similarities. And hes wrong when he says the federal law cuts half-a-trillion dollars from "the private side of Medicare": cuts to the Medicare Advantage program total $136 billion over 10 years.
Ron Pauls claim that the estate tax "especially harms small and family-owned businesses" misses the mark farms and businesses accounted for less than 10 percent of taxable estates even before the Obama/GOP compromise took effect, and most of them werent very small. Also, Pauls claim of double taxation is only partly true. Much of the value of big estates is capital gains that has never been taxed.
Tim Pawlenty writes that since January 2008, private sector employment has declined while public sector employment has increased. But hes dead wrong about the public sector, where employment has gone down, not up. He used information that was months out of date and distorted by temporary Census Bureau hiring.
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