The Second Presidential Debate featured repeated claims by each candidate that the other was not telling the truth–as well as at least one claim of fact by the moderator that turned out to be false. There were even questionable claims by the audience itself. Here are the top ten worst lies told during the Second Debate:
10. “I told you I would cut taxes for middle-class families, and I did. I told you I’d cut taxes for small businesses, and I have.” President Barack Obama has made this claim repeatedly during the campaign, but it is not true, as even the liberal Huffington Post acknowledges. The few tax cuts that Obama did enact–such as the temporary payroll tax holiday–were short-term, or conditional. Furthermore, as the Romney campaign has often pointed out, Obama has raised many taxes on the middle class, including the infamous Obamacare “penalty,” and his taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” would hit small businesess.
9. “…[H]e was asked, is it fair for somebody like you, making $20 million a year, to pay a lower tax rate than a nurse or a bus driver….And he said, yes, I think that’s fair.” Obama was referring to Romney’s recent 60 Minutes interview. But the transcript reveals Obama was not telling the truth. Romney was not saying it was fair that higher income should be taxed at a lower rate. He was referring specifically to the principle that capital gains should be taxed lower than other income because it has been taxed once already–a principle, incidentally, that Obama agrees with in his own tax policy.
8. “He called the Arizona law a model for the nation.” Obama tried to knock Romney’s immigration policy while at the same time accusing him of flip-flopping on the issue. But as Romney pointed out, he was referring specifically to the e-Verify part of the law–the requirement of instant verification of workers’ legal status. That provision is even favored by unions. Obama made it seem Romney praised the law as a whole–which he had not. He went on to say that he himself objected to the provision that allowed police to check suspected illegal immigrants’ documentation–but that provision survived a challenge at the Supreme Court.
7. “I want to make sure our timekeepers are working here.” For the third debate in a row, the Democratic candidate complained that he was not receiving as much time to speak as the Republican. And for the third debate in a row, the Obama/Biden ticket actually spoke for longer–much longer–than the Romney/Ryan ticket, a testament to the ability of the incumbents to pressure the moderators, and the susceptibility of the left-leaning moderators to such pressure. Obama received a full three minutes more time in last night’s debate–and the percentage difference was even higher at one point in the proceedings.
6. “They rely on it for mammograms.” Obama attacked Romney’s proposal to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood by claiming that the organization provides mammograms to women to help prevent breast cancer. It’s been a repeated claim made by the left for months. The problem is that it’s just untrue–and even left-leaning mainstream media fact-checkers have acknowledged that. What is perhaps worse than Obama’s misleading claim about mammograms is the unsupported implication that Romney wants to deny life-saving health care to women–a cheap shot to which Romney was given no chance to respond.
5. “You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it.” We have heard the same lie for eight years from Obama. In 2004, he ran for U.S. Senate from Illinois on a promise to end such tax breaks. He did it again when he ran for President of the United States in 2008. And yet he has never done anything about it–because there are no such tax breaks. There is merely a deduction that companies can take for moving, even within the U.S.–and which helps offset the double taxation of U.S. businesses abroad, which would make American companies less competitive. Repealing it would ship jobs overseas, actually.
