“I’ve put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan,” President Obama said during his debate with Mitt Romney on Wednesday night. “It’s on a website. You can look at all the numbers, what cuts we make and what revenue we raise.”
ABC’s Jon Karl correctly calls Obama’s claim “mostly fiction.”
Does President Obama have a plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion?
No. The “$4 trillion plan” he is referring to includes about $1 trillion Congress has already agreed to and $1 trillion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are already ending.
This would be Mostly Fiction.
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler has also noted Obama’s claim is “simply not accurate,” and pointed out that “virtually no serious budget analyst agreed” with the administration’s accounting. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon has more on Obama’s false budget claim:
Keith Hennessey, a former director of the National Economic Council, estimated the true value of Obama’s deficit reduction—minus these gimmicks—to be about $2.8 trillion, and called even that reduced figure a “generous” assessment.
The president’s budget, for instance, takes credit for about $1 trillion in spending cuts that were already signed into law in 2011, and should already be incorporated given that they fall outside the 10-year budget window.
Read more at weeklystandard.com
