Ken Carr's Daily Read

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has been hammering a statistic that “over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women,” evidence, he says, that President Obama’s policies amount to a “war on women.” Romney’s statistic is accurate, as far as it goes. But it’s not the whole story.

Looking back at the whole recession, men have lost many more jobs than women. But the biggest job losses for men came earlier in the recession, and recovery for men has come faster than it has for women.

With Romney under attack from the Obama campaign for policies it says are anti-woman (such as Romney’s opposition to abortion rights and support for federal de-funding of Planned Parenthood), Romney has tried to turn the tables, pointing to a statistic that shows the unemployment rate for women is recovering more slowly from the recession.

Here’s what Romney said in a Fox News interview on April 11 (at about the 5:45 mark):

Romney, April 11: He [Obama] has lost 800,000 jobs during his presidency. And by the way, do you know what percentage of those jobs lost were lost by women? Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women. His policies have been, really, a war on women.

Romney’s statistic is accurate. It’s true, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that between January 2009, when Obama took office, and March 2012, there has been a net decline of 740,000 jobs for both men and women, and that among women there has been a net loss of 683,000 jobs. The Romney campaign did the math and calculated that 92.3 percent of the jobs lost under Obama were lost by women.

But is that a result of Obama’s policies, as Romney says? A look at this chart — which we created based on official Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly figures for seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment (the standard measure for jobs) — tells another story.

What the graph shows clearly, and the numbers back up, is that men took a bigger hit than women, and the decline in jobs for men began much earlier. The downturn in male employment began in May 2007 — a full seven months before the official start (in December 2007) of what became the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Female employment continued to rise for 10 months after the downturn in male employment, and it peaked in March 2008.

By the time Obama took office in January 2009, both male and female employment were in a steep decline that continued for over a year. Male employment hit bottom in February 2010, and female employment continued to slump for another seven months, bottoming out in September 2010. And as the chart clearly shows, the job recovery for women not only started later, the rate of recovery has been slower.

Why is that? “If you look back to the start of the recession, many of the industries (construction and manufacturing) that were very hard hit initially were male-dominated,” said Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, in an interview with FactCheck.org.

It wasn’t until later that jobs like retail and government jobs, particularly teaching jobs, began to take a hit, affecting women more, Dorfman said. Those jobs have been slower to recover.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush, says Romney’s statistic isn’t properly focused. She notes that the unemployment rate for women has been about one full percentage point below the unemployment rate for men for much of the recession. It is only fairly recently that the gender gap has begun to close. The unemployment rate is now 8.3 percent for men, 8.1 percent for women.

“That’s why many people have called this a man-cession,” said Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Men have fared worse in the recession, she said, mainly because industries such as construction and manufacturing – male-dominated industries – have been harder hit than education and health care – female-dominated sectors.

Furchtgott-Roth said she couldn’t think of any Obama policies that have led to a slower recovery for women.

“Obama’s policies have been anti-growth,” she said. “But if anything, they have been anti-male jobs.”

For example, she said, his policies have hurt coal mining and oil drilling, which are typically male-dominated jobs, whereas the health care law will expand the health care industry, which should disproportionately help women.

“There’s an argument that some of the recent job losses have been from state and local governments,” said Dan Mitchell, an expert on fiscal policy issues at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said “women are disproportionately affected” now that federal stimulus funds no longer support state and local payrolls.

“At the same time, as the private sector slowly but surely gets back on its feet, men are benefiting since they suffered a disproportionate share of the jobs losses in recent years,” Mitchell said. “In other words, people are making too much out of short-term factors.”

Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist for the Department of Labor under Obama, said that while men have fared somewhat better than women in the private sector, most of the phenomenon cited by Romney can be tied to a loss of government jobs.

About 78 percent of the decline in people on payrolls has been a decline in government employment, said Stevenson, now an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. And, she said, women have absorbed 76 percent of the net decline in government jobs.

“The recovery has not been particularly good for women, but a primary reason is the unprecedented decline in government jobs, particularly the loss of workers in education,” Stevenson wrote to us in an email. “It’s also the case that men bore the brunt of the job losses in the depths of the recession and are now yielding more of the benefits of jobs being added back in manufacturing and other areas where they experienced massive job loss.”

In addition, she said, men are also starting to compete with women in traditionally female jobs, “a transition that is necessary for our economy, but may cause some short run changes in employment.”

We asked the Romney campaign which policies Romney was specifically referring to when he said Obama’s policies amounted to a “war on women.” We got this response from campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul:

Saul, April 12: While women were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands, President Obama chose to focus on an agenda of more taxes, more regulations, and more expensive energy that only made our economy weaker. When Obamacare discourages employers from hiring and raises taxes on innovative medical companies, women are hurt. When Dodd-Frank prevents banks from making loans to small businesses, women are hurt. When EPA regulations drive up electricity prices and the Department of Interior prevents oil drilling, women are hurt. Of course, all Americans want a strong, prosperous economy and opportunity for themselves and their families, and men have been hurt by the President’s agenda as well. The reality is, on the issues that matter to the American people, President Obama has been a total failure.

We’ll let readers judge the extent to which Obama’s tax policy, energy policy, financial services regulation and health care legislation have affected the economic recovery. In none of that, however, could we discern an explanation for why women would be affected more than men.

– Robert Farley

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Welcome to Spin Detectors!

The 2012 campaign season is well under way, and we could use your help monitoring the candidates and potential candidates running for president, Congress and governor. We are asking you to consider becoming a “Spin Detector” for FactCheck.org. We want you to send us campaign materials — videos, robocalls, campaign fliers — that you suspect may contain false or misleading information, and we’ll check it out. We may even write about it.

For instance, we’re looking for videos of candidates making dubious claims at campaign appearances in your area. What events could you videotape? Candidate forums, stump speeches, campaign events or even casual conversations the candidates have with you and your neighbors as they walk about town shaking hands and kissing babies.

We also want to know about questionable claims made in campaign fliers mailed to your home, fundraising solicitations emailed to you, or robocalls left on your voice mail.

Click here to upload your videos. Directions and technical requirements can be found on the upload guidelines page.

Our staff regularly monitors the major public affairs programs; nationally televised speeches, debates and interviews; and the TV ads run by presidential, House and Senate candidates. Where we need your help is in covering local campaign events, and gathering targeted fundraising solicitations or voter persuasion messages that go unnoticed by the national press corps.

Spin Detectors is supported with subscriber contributions we received during our year-end donation drive to raise money for our coverage of the 2012 elections.

If you have any questions, please send them to editor@factcheck.org and put “Spin Detectors” in the subject field.

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

The growing trend of legislators in Southern states that already have low union density and so-called “right-to-work” laws on the books proposing harsher anti-union laws has now spread to Georgia.

In a move that could impact non-labor groups engaged in direct action, picketing, or protest, Georgia’s Senate Bill 469 includes felony penalties for “criminal trespass” and, unbelievably, “conspiracy to commit criminal trespass”–the punishment being a $10,000 fine or a year in jail, or possibly both. That this is specifically included in a bill that cracks down on organizations’ right to picket outside a workplace or company seems to indicate that a union or other group engaged in picketing could be charged with a crime for the activity of one member who crosses the line.

And in the bill, the line is pretty nebulous. The bill has this to say about what would constitute “unlawful” picketing:

It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in mass picketing at or near any place, including private residences, where a labor dispute exists in such number or manner as to obstruct or interfere with or constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with the entrance to or egress from any place of employment or the free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railroads, airports, or other ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance.

What’s that mean? “Constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with” could be interpreted pretty broadly, and leaves a lot of discretion up to police on the scene–or to business owners, who could have picketers removed by claiming they presented a “threat.” But that’s not all:

A person, or organization that he or she is affiliated with or acting on behalf of, commits an offense when he or she engages in targeted picketing of a private residence that has or intends the effect of interfering with the resident’s right to quiet enjoyment, or when such targeted picketing has or intends the effect of violence or intimidation.
I wasn’t aware that one’s right to “quiet enjoyment” trumps the First Amendment. These provisions would seem to target, in addition to labor unions, movements like Occupy that have engaged in actions both at businesses and at private residences.

Along with the attacks on unions and other protest groups’ right to peaceably assemble, the bill also includes a slew of provisions to make it clear that the already right-to-work-for-less state isn’t going to make it easy for workers to join unions. “Right-to-work” already makes sure that workers don’t have to even pay their share of the costs of representation, despite requiring the union to bargain for all employees in a union shop. The new bill would reiterate this, and require private employers to post notices in the workplace reminding workers that they have the “right” not to join the union. (In other words, it mandates anti-union information being posted in the workplace; management will no doubt be happy to comply.)

It also requires workers to certify in writing every year that yes, they really do want their boss to deduct their union representation fees and dues from their paycheck.

Eric Robertson, Georgia Teamsters Local 728 Political Director, told AlterNet, “This bill is obviously a an attack on working people and anyone who believes in organizing for justice. It undermines civil liberties, and clearly is designed to cripple working peoples’ ability to organize and build organizationations to improve their working conditions. Labor, civil rights and community organizations, and our allies are going to have to play hardball to beat this bill.”

Thanks to @JimNichols and @erictheteamster via Twitter for bringing this to our attention.

Summary

The wind-power lobby is spinning the facts in a $1.4-million TV ad campaign aimed at extending a lucrative tax break worth billions to the industry.

• Its ads claim that Congress is “threatening new taxes” targeting wind power, which isn’t true. No “new taxes” are envisioned. Instead, Congress is considering whether or not to renew an existing $1.3-billion-a-year tax break that expires at the end of 2012.
• The industry is also claiming that wind energy is “on track” to support half a million new jobs within 20 years. Maybe so. But those jobs “would displace jobs and economic activity elsewhere,” according to the very study cited by the wind lobby.

The debate over the tax break couldn’t be coming at a worse time for the wind-power industry. Falling natural gas prices are already bringing stiff competition from gas-fired electric plants, making some wind-power projects economically uncompetitive even with the advantage of a tax subsidy.

And although there is some bipartisan support for extending the tax break for wind power, several Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Paul Ryan, are pushing to repeal all existing tax breaks for “renewable” energy sources — including the credit for wind power.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s scandal-plagued loan guarantee to Solyndra Corp. has made federal support for renewable energy projects in general a political target for Republicans. Already the Republican-leaning Crossroads GPS group is running ads calling the president’s green-energy program a “disgrace” and calling on Congress to “shut it down.”

But the Crossroads ads also strain the facts. For example, they cite an inflated figure for the Obama administration’s loan guarantees and grants to “clean energy” firms owned by Obama campaign backers. The figure came from a conservative author, but Crossroads misleadingly attributes it to a respected news magazine.

Note: This is the first in an occasional series of stories on deceptive advertising campaigns by lobbying groups.

Analysis

The American Wind Energy Association’s ad, titled “Weld by Weld,” has been running in 11 states at an estimated cost of $1.4 million so far, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. Variations of the ad target specific Republican House members with the anti-tax, pro-jobs message.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

AWEA Ad: Weld by Weld

Announcer: Piece by piece. Weld by weld. American manufacturing jobs are coming back. With tens of thousands of new jobs from wind energy. But now, these jobs could vanish. Congress is threatening new taxes, targeting the wind power industry; crippling an American manufacturing success story, and sending our jobs to foreign countries.

A bipartisan team is fighting to save American wind power jobs. Log on. Join us. Fight for American  jobs.

(On screen: “STOP THE JOB-KILLING TAX www.SaveUSAWindJobs.com”)

No ‘New Taxes‘

Despite the claim of the AWEA, Congress is not “threatening new taxes” against wind energy. Congress is considering H.R. 3307, which would extend tax credits for energy production from a variety of renewable energy sources, but most immediately for wind power.

This tax credit, first enacted in 1992, offers a tax rebate of 2.2 cents for each kilowatt-hour of energy produced for the first 10 years of electricity production from utility-scale turbines powered by renewable sources. Wind farms put into service after the end of 2012 won’t qualify for the credit under existing law. H.R. 3307 would extend that deadline by four years.

The tax credit is a multibillion-dollar prize for the industry. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation projects that it will reduce federal revenue by $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year, $1.4 billion in fiscal 2013 and $1.5 billion the following year.

Losing this benefit for future wind farms almost certainly would hurt the industry’s business. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists — which backs federal support for renewable energy — the credit has been allowed to expire for a while on three occasions in the past, followed in each case by a sharp drop in installation of new generating capacity. “This ‘on-again/off-again’ status contributes to a boom-bust cycle of development that plagues the wind industry,” the UCS states.

This time the industry faces stiff opposition from many free-market conservatives. A bill by Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas would repeal all such energy tax credits — including the one for wind power. That bill now carries the names of 18 additional cosponsors, all Republicans, including Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The repeal also has the support of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform and several other conservative groups.

Support for extending the credits is bipartisan, but leans heavily Democratic. The legislation is sponsored by Republican Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state, but only 15 of the 64 additional cosponsors are Republican. So the wind lobby is scrambling to pick up additional GOP support with its “new taxes” pitch.

The most recent variation of the wind lobby’s ad targets freshman GOP Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas, for example. The 15-second spot started running in Little Rock on Feb. 6, asking “Where does Congressman Tim Griffin stand?” An on-screen graphic asks, “Is he protecting American wind jobs?”

Similar 15-second versions began running earlier in the districts of freshmen GOP Reps. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania and Bobby Schilling of Illinois (a Tea Party favorite). In all, according to CMAG, the main 30-second ad or shorter versions have run in 11 states — Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and West Virginia.

But however much the wind lobby feels the need to line up Republican support in the House, in our judgment it does not justify the deceptive tactic of passing off an expiring tax break as “new taxes.”

Inflated Jobs Claim

The wind lobby is also making puffed-up claims about jobs, based on a 2008 study that the industry itself helped put together. It focuses only on potential winners — and ignores the potential losers.

The claim appears on the AWEA’s website (to which viewers of its TV ads are directed) and also popped up Feb. 8 in a print ad that ran in the newspaper Politico, which is widely read in Washington and on Capitol Hill.

“[E]xperts say half a million more jobs could be created here in the next 20 years,” the ad says. The website urges visitors to “Join the fight to protect 500,000 new American jobs.”

But that figure is exaggerated, in a number of ways. Most important, it is a projection only of jobs directly and indirectly supported by a vastly expanded wind industry — without accounting for the many jobs that would be lost in other industries, such as the mining and transportation of coal and the production of natural gas.

The half-million estimate comes from a 2008 report issued by the Department of Energy, and it was never intended to be an official prediction. It was, to quote the report, a “scenario” produced in a “joint effort with industry” (including the AWEA), asking whether it would be “feasible” for 20 percent of U.S. electricity to come from wind power by the year 2030.

That would be a huge increase. Wind power supplied less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity in the most recent 12 months on record, according to a report issued in January by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, even after several years of rapid growth fueled by the tax credit and by funds from the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill.

The 2008 report concluded that the 20 percent goal was “ambitious” but “could be feasible” if “significant challenges” could be overcome. And in that case, the report said, “the wind industry could support 500,000 jobs” in the years after 2020. (See page 209, figure C7.) Only 150,000 of those would be “direct jobs” such as construction or operation of wind farms, and the rest would be from presumed “ripple effect” jobs in other industries.

But even assuming the “optimistic” prediction turns out to be accurate, it doesn’t mean that anywhere near 500,000 jobs would be added to the U.S. economy. As the study itself said, rapid growth in wind-power jobs will come at the expense of other jobs.

Buried on page 199 of the study, in “Appendix C” is this admission (with our emphasis added):

Energy Department Study, July 2008: Ramping up wind capacity and electricity output from wind would displace jobs and economic activity elsewhere. However, identifying such transfers accurately would be very difficult. Therefore, the impacts cited here do not constitute impacts to the U.S. economy overall but are specific to the wind industry and related industries.

Those job costs could be significant. The AWEA’s website contains a one-page summary of the study, saying that if wind power expands to supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity, that would displace about half the natural gas used to generate electric power, amounting to 11 percent of all natural gas used across all industries. Coal consumption would be affected even more dramatically, reduced by 18 percent. The report didn’t attempt to estimate the direct and “ripple effect” job losses in those industries.

And it’s not certain that the industry can reach its ambitious 20 percent goal, even if the tax credit is renewed. Since 2008, the supply of natural gas has grown dramatically, pushing down prices and making gas-fired electric plants “the cheapest option for new power generation,” according to a recent report by Bloomberg News. The wholesale price of electricity has plunged 50 percent since 2008, and some wind projects are already being cancelled. Bloomberg reported that the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc., “has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year.”

Conservative Counter Spin

Meanwhile, conservative opponents of federal help for renewable energy are engaging in some spin of their own.

Pompeo, for example, says his bill, H.R. 3308, will repeal “all energy tax credits.” In an op-ed piece he co-authored after he introduced the bill, he said: “It is equal opportunity — not one single solitary tax credit would survive this bill.” But that’s not the whole story.

He’d repeal all “credits,” maybe, but not all energy tax breaks. He would still leave intact some long-standing tax preferences for the oil and gas industries, including the expensing of exploration and development costs, the depletion allowance, and amortization of geological expenses. Those three are worth a total of $1.8 billion to the oil and gas industries this year alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (page 34). So when Pompeo writes that he’d “do away with energy subsidies once and for all,” he doesn’t include some valuable breaks that benefit the “drill, baby, drill” crowd.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s Solyndra scandal is encouraging partisan attacks on “green” energy subsidies in general. A new ad from Crossroads GPS claims that President Barack Obama’s administration awarded “billions” to clean energy companies that backed his 2008 campaign, which is true enough. But the ad deceptively attributes some dollar figures to Newsweek, when, in fact, they come from a conservative author’s book. Newsweek ran an excerpt. 

This is the second ad from the Republican-leaning Crossroads GPS attacking Obama for his involvement with Solyndra — the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. This one is titled “Every Level” and is backed by a $500,000 buy on national cable TV.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

Crossroads GPS ad: “Every Level”

Narrator: He [Obama] promised …

Obama: We’re investing in a clean energy economy, with the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs …

Narrator: Then he gave his political backers billions, a big government fiasco, infused with politics at every level. $500 million to Solyndra, now bankrupt. Nearly $100 million to a pet project teetering on default. Laid off workers forgotten. Typical Washington. Tell President Obama we need jobs, not more insider deals. Crossroads GPS is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The TV ad’s claims are echoed in a print ad that Crossroads GPS ran in The Hill and in Politico — two newspapers widely read by members of Congress and their staffs. The print ad makes a lobbying pitch: “Investigate It. Clean It Up. SHUT IT DOWN.”

The “it” in the print ad refers to “President Obama’s ‘green energy’ program,” which the ad calls “a disgrace” that is “sticking taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans.”

$16.4 Billion?

Central to both ads is a claim that Obama gave “$16.4 billion … to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” But we find that figure is both inflated and from a partisan source that Crossroads obscures with deceptive attribution.

The ad cites Newsweek as the source of the figure, but the magazine was just publishing an excerpt from the book “Throw Them All Out,” by conservative writer Peter Schweizer. A former foreign policy adviser for Sarah Palin and speech-writing consultant for the George W. Bush administration, Schweizer is now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.

In checking Schweizer’s $16.4 billion claim, we found it to be too high by nearly $6 billion. In his book, Schweizer lists 25 companies he says were headed by “Obama bundlers, large donors and supporters” who he said received a total of $16.4 billion in loan guarantees.

Schweizer says in his book that all of that came from the Department of Energy’s 1705 program (which awarded stimulus dollars for renewable energy systems, electric power transmission systems and leading-edge biofuels projects). But by our count, only seven of the 25 companies on Schweizer’s list got 1705 loan guarantees. And they totaled about $3.7 billion, not $16.4 billion.

We did find that some companies on Schweizer’s list got aid from other federal clean-energy programs, but not enough to total $16.4 billion. For example, two firms got DOE loan guarantees through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program. But those companies — Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors — secured less than $1 billion.

In all, the Department of Energy reported clean energy loans of only about $4.7 billion to firms on Schweizer’s list. Some others on the list got loans or grants through other programs with the Department of Agriculture and Treasury Department.

There are other problems as well. Four of the companies on Schweizer’s list received conditional commitments for loan guarantees but never ultimately got the money (either because they were unable to provide necessary documentation in time to meet application deadlines, or because they decided to seek private, commercial financing). Schweizer told us he included them because “that doesn’t undermine the point that political connections helped at the federal level.” That may be, but the ad claims the companies received the money, and they did not. Schweizer also claimed Summit Texas Clean Energy got $1.5 billion in federal aid, which isn’t so. In fact, the Department of Energy provided the company $450 million in grants, for a $1.7 billion project financed mostly by industry. Together, those factors inflated Schweizer’s figure by nearly $6 billion.

We asked Schweizer about the problems with his figures. He responded via email: “There are other companies besides those mentioned in the book that got money. It’s not presented as a complete list.” But he did not supply the “complete list” for us to validate.

One more thing: Some of those listed as Obama backers also gave substantial sums to Republicans.

Pay to Play?

The Crossroads ad correctly cites a Washington Post analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal emails that concluded the green-technology program was “infused with politics at every level.” But the Post story didn’t document any corrupt pay-to-play scheme, as viewers might well be led to think from the ad. Instead, the “politics” described by the Post involved the backing of financially shaky companies to push the administration’s green agenda, not rewarding campaign donors. The story says: “The records do not establish that anyone pressured the Energy Department to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors.”

There’s a criminal investigation under way of Solyndra’s executives, and Republican-led House investigators are still on the case. So new revelations could emerge in the future. But so far what’s been documented is evidence of questionable business judgments or wishful thinking about the economic viability of solar energy, not of any outright payola or quid pro quo.

A final comment: The sort of exaggerated claims we document here, on both sides, have been common fare in Washington lobbying battles for decades. And in recent years, these deceptive tactics have increasingly spilled out in advertising aimed at the public, in the hope that constituents will be persuaded to pressure their senators and representatives to vote the way the special interests want. So we are launching with this piece a new “Lobby Watch” series. We’ll follow up with other articles as the occasion warrants.

– by Brooks Jackson, Rob Farley and Scott Blackburn

Sources

The Library of Congress. “Bill Text, 112th Congress (2011-2012) H.R.3307.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Taxation. “Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2011-2015.” 17 Jan 2012.

Union of Concerned Scientists. “Production Tax Credit for Renewable Energy.” 13 Sep 2011.

Govtrack.us. “H.R. 3308: Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy. “20% Wind Energy by 2030; Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electric Supply.” July 2008.

Johnson, Julie and Mark Chedia. “Electricity Declines 50% as Shale Spurs Natural Gas Glut: Energy.” Bloomberg News. 17 Jan 2012.

Rep. Pompeo, Mike and Rep.Raul R. Labrador. “Era of energy subsidies is over: American consumers, not Congress, should choose best power sources.” The Washington Times. 26 Nov 2011.

U.S. Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office. “Solyndra, Inc.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

Crossroads GPS. “Crossroads GPS Launches New TV Ad on Solyndra Fiasco,” press release. 1 Feb 2012.

Schweizer, Peter. “Obama Campaign Backers and Bundlers Rewarded With Green Grants and Loans.” 12 Nov 2011.

Vogel, Peter. “Sarah Palin PAC fundraising craters.” Politico. 31 Jan 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office. “Our Projects.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance. “EIS-0444: Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), Ector County, Texas.” Final Environmental Impact Statement. 5 Aug 2011.

Restuccia, Andrew. “First Solar CEO steps down.” The Hill. 25 Oct 2011.

Stephens, Joe and Carol D. Leonnig. “Solyndra: Politics infused Obama energy programs.” Washington Post. 25 Dec 2011.

Restuccia, Andrew and Ben Geman, “White House sends GOP another batch of Solyndra documents.” The Hill. 13 Jan 2012.

Woody, Todd. “Why A Solar Developer Turned Down $2.1 Billion From The Government.” Forbes. 18 Aug 2011.

Department of Energy. Press release: DOE Offers $2.1 Billion Conditional Commitment Loan Guarantee, Support Solar Thermal Power. 18 Apr 2011.

Martin, Christopher. “SolarCity Loan Guarantee Rejected by U.S. in Wake of Solyndra’s Bankruptcy.” Bloomberg News. 24 Sep 2011.

Department of Energy. “Obama Administration Offers $59 Million in Conditional Loan Guarantees to Beacon Power and Nordic Windpower, Inc.” 02 Jul 2009.

Department of Energy. Secretary Chu Announces Two New Projects to Reduce Emissions from Coal Plants. 01 Jul 2009.

Restuccia, Andrew. “First Solar CEO steps down.” The Hill. 25 Oct 2011.

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Entrepreneur Donald Trump dismissed the surging candidacy of Rick Santorum by claiming that Santorum lost his Senate seat in 2006 by a wider margin than any incumbent senator in history. He’s wrong.

In fact, there have been two dozen incumbent senators who have taken worse beatings than Santorum did in 2006. Trump need only have checked back as far as the 2010 midterm elections — when Democrat Blanche Lincoln lost her Arkansas seat — to find an incumbent senator who lost by a bigger margin than Santorum did.

Trump, who flirted for months with a presidential run, announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney on Feb. 2. A week later, Trump opined on CNN about Santorum, who the night before had pulled off a clean sweep of caucuses and non-binding primaries in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

Trump, Feb. 8: Rick Santorum was a sitting senator who in reelection lost by 19 points, to my knowledge, the most in the history of this country for sitting senator to lose by 19 points.

It’s unheard of. Then he goes out and says, oh OK, I just lost by the biggest margin in history now I’m going to run for president. Tell me, how does that work? How does that work?

With electability ranking as a high priority for Republican primary voters, Trump’s statistic is more than just cocktail party trivia. But he’s way off.

We came across some research on this very subject done by Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, a market research and exit polling firm based in Somerville, N.J.

Using data from America Votes and Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, Lenski compiled a list of the worst drubbings ever absorbed by incumbent senators. Topping the list is Jacob Javits. Despite winning four terms in the Senate as a Republican, Javits lost in the 1980 Republican primary to Alfonse D’Amato. Javits then ran in the general election as a Liberal Party candidate, vainly trying to retain his seat. But he finished third in the race, 33.8 points behind the winner, D’Amato.

So where does Santorum fall on the list? Santorum — who in 2006 lost a reelection bid to Democrat Bob Casey Jr. by 17.4 points — is 24th. And that was before incumbent Democrat Blanche Lincoln lost her Senate seat in 2010 by 21 points.

Lenski noted in his Aug. 27, 2010, research that only 29 senators had lost by as wide a margin as 17 percentage points in 48 election cycles covering more than 1,000 reelection bids (less than 3 percent).

“When incumbent senators lose they usually lose by small margins,” Lenski wrote. “And with the advent of modern polling, when they realize they are heading for a big loss they tend to withdraw from the race first. That is probably why the only recent name on the list is Rick Santorum in 2006.”

It was a big loss for Santorum, Lenski told us by phone. But as is often the case, he said, when people use superlatives — as Trump did — “it is not 100 percent accurate.”

Speaking of which, Republican rival Newt Gingrich has several times made a similar claim, saying Santorum “lost Pennsylvania by the largest margin of any senator in the history of the state.” But even by limiting the claim to Pennsylvania senators, Gingrich is wrong.

Incumbent Sen. Joe Guffey, a Democrat from Pittsburgh, Pa., was soundly defeated in 1946 by Gov. Edward Martin, by a margin of 19.4 points. That ranks as the worst showing by a senate incumbent in Pennsylvania history.

When asked on CNN to react to Trump’s quote later in the day, Santorum wisely refrained from saying that his was only the 25th worst loss by an incumbent senator. Instead, he offered this comeback:

“Why don’t you ask Abraham Lincoln, who lost just about every single race he ran before he ran for president?” Santorum said. “A lot of folks lose races, but I didn’t lose, unlike Governor Romney, is my principles. I stood up and fought for what I believed in, in a very tough election year.”

Santorum, we should note, has himself not been immune to a bit of revisionism with regard to the topic of defeating incumbents. In August 2011, when Santorum claimed he “defeated three Democratic incumbents,” we pointed out that he defeated two incumbents; in two other congressional elections, he was the incumbent.

– Robert Farley

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Federal workers overall get just 2 percent higher wages than private-sector employees holding similar jobs, but they receive 16 percent more in total compensation because of generous benefits.

There are, however, great differences in wages and benefits depending on education levels; less-educated federal workers receive higher wages and benefits compared with private-sector employees, while those with advanced degrees are paid less.

That’s the conclusion of a new Congressional Budget Office report that dispels misinformation spread by both sides in a long-running debate over federal pay. As we wrote once before, it’s simply not true that the average federal worker is paid twice as much as the average private-sector employee doing similar work and with similar qualifications. But it’s even less true that federal employees are vastly underpaid, as public-employee unions would have you believe.

The CBO report found:

• The gap in wages between the private and public sectors isn’t that wide. Federal employees overall are paid about 2 percent more than private-sector counterparts.
• There is a significant gap, however, in benefits — largely because most federal employees have defined-benefit pension plans that are becoming less common in the private sector. Federal employees on average receive 48 percent more in benefits than those in the private sector.
• Bottom line: The federal government paid 16 percent more on average in total compensation — wages, plus benefits — than private employers paid similar employees.

But the picture is not so good for federal workers with professional or doctorate degrees. Even generous federal benefits cannot make up for the big wage gap between them and their higher-paid private-sector counterparts.

In addition, the CBO report is chock full of data that help illuminate the ongoing pay debate:

• Federal workers make up a declining percentage of the U.S. workforce. The figure was 1.7 percent in 2010, down from 2.3 percent in 1980. However, since President Obama took office, the size of the federal civilian workforce (exclusive of the U.S. Postal Service) has gone up by nearly 149,000 workers, an increase of 7.2 percent.
• The federal government spends about $200 billion a year on federal civilian wages and benefits. “Of that amount, $80 billion goes for civilian personnel who work in the area of national defense,” the CBO report says.
• Nearly two-thirds of federal civilian employees work in four departments: Defense, 35 percent; Veterans Affairs, 14 percent; Homeland Security, 8 percent; and the Department of Justice, 5 percent.

Federal Pay Debate, Continued

The CBO produced the report at the request of Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The report was issued Jan. 30, and it was used two days later by House Republicans to support legislation to freeze federal and congressional pay for one year. As other reports have been in the past, this one was misused for partisan purposes during floor debate.

Rep. Dennis Ross, a freshman Republican and cosponsor of the pay freeze bill, incorrectly said “hardworking taxpayers” in the private sector “take home 72 percent less in benefits than their government counterparts.” That’s true only for private-sector employees who have no more than a high school diploma. At all education levels, federal workers receive better benefits, but the percentage varies depending on education — ranging from 2 percent to 72 percent.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat who represents many federal workers, correctly cited the CBO when he responded to Ross by saying that “[t]hose on the upper end of the scale aren’t doing so well” compared with their private-sector counterparts. But Hoyer falsely said of those highly educated federal workers: “None of them are getting paid as much as the gentleman [Ross] is who made this speech or that I’m getting. None of them are making as much as we are.” That’s not so. Rank-and-file members of Congress, including Ross and Hoyer, receive $174,000 in wages. As of September 2011, 19,592 federal workers were paid $180,000 or more, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s online database. Most were Veterans Affairs doctors, as USA Today reported in an article relying on September 2010 data.

Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings sought to rebut the CBO report by citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Compensation Survey, which he said shows “that Federal employees were paid 26 percent less than private sector employees.” That’s true, but as we reported previously, the pay survey does not include federal benefits. And critics say it is flawed because the survey is too broad and not job-specific.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, claimed that “[f]ederal employees actually earn less than their private sector counterparts when factors such as skill and education level are taken into account.” That’s not what the CBO found in its report. The CBO says it compared federal and private-sector employees based on “similar observable characteristics.” The CBO “sought to account for differences in individuals’ level of education, years of work experience, occupation, size of employer, geographic location (region of the country and urban or rural location), and various demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, immigration status, and citizenship).”

Clearly, the federal pay debate will continue. The House pay freeze bill easily passed by a bipartisan vote of 309-117. In the Senate, a group of Republicans has introduced a bill — citing the CBO report — that goes even further. The Senate bill would freeze pay for federal civilian workers for two years, not one.

The CBO report will be cited by both sides and, if history is a guide, not always accurately.

– Eugene Kiely, with Michael Morse

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Q: How much has the federal debt gone up under Obama?

A: During his first three years in office, it rose $4.7 trillion, an increase of 45 percent. Partisan graphics circulating via email and Facebook are both incorrect.

FULL ANSWER

Both sides are circulating deceptions about the federal debt, judging by the many queries we get from our readers. So we’ll try to set the record straight here.

There’s no sugar-coating it, as some supporters of President Obama have tried to do. And the rapid rise in the debt is alarming enough without fabricating false statistics, as some Obama critics have done.

It’s not true, for example, that the debt has increased only 16 percent since Obama took office. That erroneous calculation originally came from the office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. And — despite being corrected later — it has continued to circulate via email.

Even the corrected version, currently appearing on the site of the liberal group MoveOn.org and Pelosi’s Flickr site, is many months out of date as of this writing. It shows a 35 percent increase for Obama, which is now far too low.

And it’s also untrue — as claimed in a graphic widely circulated by email and in social media postings — that the debt has increased more under Obama than under all previous 43 presidents combined. In fact, as of Jan. 31, 2012, the rise under Obama had yet to surpass the rise under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The figures in that graphic are pure fabrications, as anyone can easily confirm by plugging Obama’s inauguration date — Jan. 20, 2009 — in the Treasury Department’s handy “debt to the penny” website. That shows the nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office (not $6.3 trillion), and it had increased to nearly $15.4 trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7 trillion in just over three years (not $6.5 trillion).

That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then be the biggest dollar increase for any president in U.S. history.

Here is how the nation’s total debt has fared under the past several presidents, as of Jan. 31, 2012, in trillions of dollars. The percentage increases are given in parentheses.

Our chart looks much different from Pelosi’s, because ours shows the actual dollar increase, not just the percentage change. As can be seen here, Obama’s 45 percent rise is nearly equal in dollar terms to his predecessor’s 85 percent increase — because Obama started from a much higher base.

Similarly, had we based our chart on the rate of rise, it would show the debt rising much faster under Obama than it did under Bush, whose increase was spread over eight years. Other adjustments could be made to account for inflation. Indeed, one of the most meaningful ways to look at the debt is to measure it not just in raw dollars but in comparison with the economy — as a percentage of the gross domestic product.

In this chart, which we generated from the most recent historical data and projections (Table 7.1) from the Office of Management and Budget, it can be seen that the total federal debt in relation to the economy is reaching historically high levels — approaching levels not seen since World War II. But it can also be seen that the rise started long before Obama took office.

In fact, the upward trend began with Ronald Reagan’s fiscal 1982 budget, declined somewhat from fiscal 1997 through 2001, and resumed the upward climb with George W. Bush’s first budget in fiscal 2002 (which started Oct. 1, 2001).

And the rise accelerated as the economy slid into the worst recession since the Great Depression, starting in December 2007. As the economy shrank, the debt-to-GDP ratio jumped 5 percentage points in the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, 2007, and another 14.8 percentage points during the following year. Obama took office nearly one-third of the way into that 12-month period. At the time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting the deficit for that fiscal year would be $1.2 trillion. It later rose to $1.4 trillion after enactment of Obama’s economic stimulus package, to be followed by back-to-back deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010 and $1.3 trillion again in fiscal 2011. CBO just projected the deficit for the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, will be $1.1 trillion.

A caution: The chart we’ve shown here is for total debt, including money the government owes to itself, chiefly through the Social Security trust funds. But a chart tracking only the debt owed to the public would show a similar shape. CBO projects that the debt owed to the public was nearly 68 percent of GDP in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, and will reach 73 percent this year and exceed 75 percent at the end of fiscal 2013.

We won’t attempt here to assess which side is more to blame for the mounting debt, or how much of the increase is Obama’s fault. Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein argues that the economic stimulus and other Obama policies account for just under $1 trillion of the debt added since he took office, while Bush added $5.1 trillion in his eight years — mostly due to tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, former Washington Post reporter Eric Pianin and others fault Obama for not getting more strongly behind the recommendations of his own deficit-reduction commission more than a year ago. Obama agreed to extend Bush’s tax cuts for two years, even as his commission called for tax reform. And he attacked Republican proposals to hold down the cost of Medicare, despite the commission’s call to move beyond the “phantom savings” in his own health care law, savings the commission said “will never materialize.”

All we can do here is point to the correct figures for how much debt has piled up on Obama’s watch, and note that there is ample blame to go around. When the partisan deceptions on each side are disregarded, the plain fact remains that the debt has increased, for many years, under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it is currently increasing rapidly, reaching historically high levels, while partisans continue to struggle over what to do about it.

– by Brooks Jackson

Sources

U.S. Treasury. “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It.” Online database. Accessed 2 Feb 2012.

Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.” 31 Jan 2012.

Office of Management and Budget. “Historical Tables: Table 7.1—Federal Debt at the End of Year: 1940–2016.” 14 Feb 2011.

National Bureau of Economic Research. “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions.” 20 Sep 2010.

Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019.” 8 Jan 2009.

Klein, Ezra. “Doing the math on Obama’s deficits.” Washington Post. 2 Feb. 2012.

Pianin, Eric. “Super Flaw: “If Only Obama Had Upheld Bowles-Simpson.” Fiscal Times. 22 Nov 2011.

Dorning, Mike. “Obama Agrees to Extend Bush Tax Cuts for 2 Years.” Bloomberg News. 6 Dec 2010.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. “The Moment of Truth,” final report. Dec 2010.

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest