Political lies are as old as the Republic, but that doesn't make the practice any less of an insult to the American people.
Whether they are about Obamacare or taxes, political lies are a special kind of deception.
Rarely are they blatantly false. Political lies rely on misrepresentation of facts and convenient omissions that make their target look better - or worse - than it really is.
So convincing are today's politicians and their minions it's not even clear they always realize when they're bending facts past the breaking point.
"The problem is we never know whether they believe what they're saying or not," Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist and author ofAll the President's Spin, told USA Today.
At least three fact-checking organizations - the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, the Washington Post's Fact Checker column and the Tampa Bay Times' PolitiFact - do their best to point out the almost daily deceptions.
But politicians know that few citizens ever visit such Websites. And that's what politicians and their surrogates are counting on.
"I don't think [the fact checkers] make a whit's worth of difference," Rick Tyler, a senior adviser to Winning Our Future, a super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich, told USA Today. "Millions more people will see [our] ad than will ever see the political fact check."
That doesn't deter the fact checkers, however. The constant stream of political lies has been keeping them very busy lately.
Here are five issues that have been particularly prone to political lies over the past several months. You'll probably hear variations of these all the way through the 2012 election.
- Obamacare: Brooks Jackson, head of FactCheck.org, says the 2010 Affordable Care Act is "the most lied about legislation I have seen in all my years in Washington." And it's not just Republicans twisting the truth on this one, but Democrats, too (although in the opposite direction).
Let's start with a new 17-minute campaign film released by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. The film implies that the law has arrested health care costs, which it says had been rising three times the rate of inflation. But FactCheck.org found that health care costs have increased just as quickly since the law passed. Not only that, but experts told FactCheck.org that the health care law was partly responsible for the 2011 increase.
On the Republican side, presidential candidate Rick Santorum has on several occasions claimed that the law will result in 100% of Americans dependent on some form of government help. PolitiFact begs to differ: "It's likely that the new health care law will increase the number of Americans receiving benefits from the federal government, but it's highly unlikely that it will push the percentage beyond 60% -- far from the 100% Santorum claims. We rate his claim False."
- Oil Reserves: With gasoline prices soaring, both sides have been eager to lie about oil. To support his contention that the United States needs alternatives to imported oil, President Obama has pointed out on multiple occasions that the nation uses 20% of the world's oil output but has just 2% of the world's oil reserves. The Washington Post's Fact Checker notes that while both facts are true, they bear no relation to each other. Oil reserves and oil production are two very different things.
Republicans, most notably presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, have claimed that tapping more of those oil reserves in the United States could drop the price of gas to $2.50 a gallon. Most experts say there's little the government can do to lower the price of gas, a point emphasized by last week's Associated Press statistical study that showed no historical connection between increased rates of U.S. oil production and the price of gas at the pump.
- The Automaker Bailout: Expect to hear lots of political lies on this topic. During one of the countless Republican debates, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that President Obama "gave" the auto companies to the United Autoworkers of America (UAW) union. While the bailout deal did give the UAW's health care trust some company stock, PolitiFact pointed out, that hardly qualifies as "giving" the automakers to the union. Furthermore, the trust is independently run. PolitiFact ruled the statement "False."
Meanwhile, President Obama has been overstating the bailout's success. The president's new campaign film strongly implies the now-thriving automakers have paid back in full the $80 billion the government loaned them. But FactCheck.org says only half of that money has been repaid so far.
- Alternative Energy Policies: Political lies about oil reserves are just a sliver of the energy-related falsehoods you'll hear this year. President Obama recently said that algae-based biofuel could replace up to 17% of U.S. oil imports. Not so fast, countered the Post's Fact Checker. It found that algae-based biofuel would not be cost-competitive with gasoline until oil hits $800 a barrel - more than seven times the current price.
Republicans have been hitting back with attacks on the law that phases out the incandescent light bulb. Mitt Romney specifically blamed "Obama regulators" and quipped that the Wright brothers would have had a hard time inventing under Obama. Romney should have taken a closer look at the light bulb law; it was passed in 2007 and signed by President George W. Bush.
- Taxes: Money issues always elicit overblown rhetoric. The political lies on this topic from the past year alone could probably fill a book.
One of the most frequently repeated whoppers is President Obama's claim that the U.S. is "poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans." First off, the president is not referring to the 2013 budget, as most listeners might assume, but a ten-year projection. And what's more the nation is not on track to spend that money. The Bush tax cuts President Obama is talking about are scheduled to expire for all taxpayers at the end of this year. Only legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Obama can extend the Bush tax cuts again, with a ten-year extension being extremely improbable. As FactCheck.org put it: "Saving money is not the same thing as spending money if the payments are automatically scheduled to stop."
President Obama has often spoken of his desire to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. Republicans usually counter with the argument that such taxes would unfairly target small business owners, who they claim make up more than 50% of this group. Turns out the Treasury Department did a study last fall that showed the Republican claims to be greatly exaggerated. Only 1.4% of all small business owners even fall into the tax category of millionaire. And of that group, only 13% derive at least 25% of their gross income from their small business (GOP critics use a broader definition that includes any small business income, no matter how small.). So practically speaking, only a tiny group of small business owners would be affected by any new "millionaire tax."
Related Articles and News:
- Money Morning:
Five Things Obama Didn't Want You to Hear in His State of the Union - Money Morning:
President Obama's 2013 Budget: 5 Things You Should Know - Money Morning:
How Super PACs Are Choosing Your Next President - Associated Press:
FACT CHECK: More US drilling didn't drop gas price - The Washington Post:
The Fact Checker - Annenberg Public Policy Center:
FactCheck.org - Tampa Bay Times:
Politifact
About the Author
David Zeiler, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
Dave has a BA in English and Mass Communications from Loyola University Maryland.