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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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Keeping both sides honest

Sen. John McCain incorrectly claimed that earmarks nearly doubled from $7.8 billion to $14.5 billion in Newt Gingrich’s first two years as House speaker. Actually, the increase was about half that.

Furthermore, earmarks first peaked, then declined under Gingrich. By the final year of his speakership, earmarked spending was 20 percent higher than before, not double.

McCain is a longtime opponent of earmarks, which are pet projects added to annual appropriations bills at the request of members of Congress. McCain, who has endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president, has been making an issue of earmarks to help undermine Gingrich’s claim that he is a fiscal conservative. The Romney campaign has posted McCain’s critical remarks about earmarks on its website.

The Arizona senator’s latest comments came on “Meet the Press.”

McCain, Jan. 29: My problems with Newt have been over earmark spending, billions and billions and billions. They — when Newt Gingrich became speaker, they turned earmarks into an art form and it — as [Sen.] Tom Coburn says, it is the gateway to corruption. And we had members, former members of Congress in jail. Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Abramoff, all of this is because of the corruption that is bred by this outrageous, obscene corruption–earmark process. They went in his first year from $7.8 billion in earmarks to two [years] later to $14.5 billion in earmarks.

It’s true that spending on earmarks went up while Gingrich was speaker. But McCain is cherry-picking data to make it appear spending increased more than it actually did. McCain misled viewers of “Meet the Press” to believe that earmark spending rose 86 percent in Gingrich’s first two years — but the rise was actually 45 percent. Also, McCain ignores that such spending went down in Gingrich’s final two years, so the last budget passed when Gingrich was speaker represented a modest 20 percent increase over four years.

The senator relied on data compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste. That data show that Congress spent $7.8 billion on earmarks in fiscal year 1994, $10 billion in fiscal year 1995, $12.5 billion in fiscal year 1996 and $14.5 billion in fiscal year 1997.

But here’s McCain’s problem: Gingrich became speaker in January 1995, and the first set of annual appropriations bills to be passed under his leadership was for the fiscal year 1996 budget — which congressional historians will remember triggered a battle that led to two partial government shutdowns in November and December of 1995. Fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, so the fiscal year 1996 budget started Oct. 1, 1995, and ended Sept. 30, 1996. In order to show the growth in spending under Gingrich, one would have to compare Gingrich-era spending bills to the fiscal year 1995 spending bills, which were signed by President Clinton prior to the November 1994 election that gave Republicans control of the House and elevated Gingrich to speaker.

Earmarks totaled $12.5 billion in fiscal year 1996, the first budget under Gingrich. That’s an increase of 25 percent compared with the prior year’s budget bills ($10 billion in earmarks in fiscal year 1995). Earmarks increased again in fiscal year 1997 — reaching a high of $14.5 billion in the Gingrich era. That’s an increase of 45 percent over two years, not 86 percent.

But then spending on earmarks started to decline — a point that McCain ignores. Earmarks dropped to $13.2 billion in fiscal year 1998 and $12 billion in fiscal year 1999, according to the CAGW database. Gingrich left Congress in January 1999. The fiscal year 1999 spending bills were all signed into law in 1998, making the FY1999 budget Gingrich’s last as speaker.

So, McCain is right in that earmarks did reach $14.5 billion while Gingrich was speaker. But, in fairness to Gingrich, McCain was wrong to use $7.8 billion as his baseline to show the growth in spending. Plus, earmarks did drop to $12 billion before Gingrich left office.

McCain wasn’t alone in misusing CAGW’s data. ABC News in December and the National Review in January both mistakenly said that earmarks under Gingrich “nearly doubled” (National Review) or “roughly doubled” (ABC News). Both cited the CAGW database.

ABC News, Dec. 15, 2011: ABC News has taken a look back at Gingrich’s record on the issue of so-called earmarks — a common congressional practice of inserting taxpayer money for special projects into big appropriations bills — and found a startling spike under Gingrich’s leadership as speaker. Not only did earmark spending in Congress increase between 1994 and 1998, when he departed, the overall dollar amount roughly doubled.

National Review, Jan. 27: Earmarks nearly doubled under Gingrich’s tenure as speaker, according to an analysis done by CAGW. In fiscal year 1994, $7.8 billion in earmarks was included in the budget. By fiscal year 1997, that number had skyrocketed to $14.5 billion. The funds allotted to earmarks tapered off a little by 1999, when earmarks totaled $12 billion, but they would never again drop to 1994 levels. The 2010 budget included $16.5 billion in earmarks, according to CAGW.

Both news organizations made the same mistake McCain did in using fiscal year 1994 as the baseline, instead of fiscal year 1995. In addition, ABC News used fiscal year 1998 as Gingrich’s last, when in fact he was still speaker when the fiscal year 1999 spending bills passed Congress and were signed into law, as we said earlier in this article.

Again, this is not to say that earmarks did not go up under Gingrich’s leadership or that he didn’t have a role in their expanded use. In fact, CAGW President Tom Schatz wrote in a 2010 blog post that Gingrich was responsible for making earmarks more accessible to rank-and-file members, instead of just leadership. Schatz writes that “one of the driving factors for the dramatic increase came from a request by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to the Appropriations subcommittee chairmen (known as ‘Cardinals’) to add projects to their respective bills in the districts of vulnerable Republican freshmen.”

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, agreed with Schatz. He told us in an email that Gingrich “took earmarks from being the province of the powerful appropriators and shared the spoils with rank and file lawmakers.”

Even so, the true explosion in the growth of earmarks occurred in the early to mid-2000s — after Gingrich left office. After falling to $12 billion in fiscal year 1999, spending on earmarks steadily climbed and reached a peak of $29 billion in fiscal year 2006, according to CAGW’s database. That’s an increase of 142 percent in seven years.

– Eugene Kiely

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Keeping both sides honest

Newt Gingrich falsely claimed he never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance. Rick Santorum claimed five times more people are seeking free care at Massachusetts hospitals because of Mitt Romney’s health care law — a claim contradicted by official statistics.

Romney repeated a false accusation that President Obama failed to denounce Hamas rocket attacks in a speech to the United Nations. And Santorum insisted that Muslim terrorists are seeking missile bases in Cuba — a wild claim based most likely on mistranslations of an Italian newspaper report.

These were among the factual fouls that we noted as four GOP presidential candidates met for yet another debate. This one, the final debate prior to Florida’s Jan. 31 primary, took place Jan. 26 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., and was carried live on CNN.

Gingrich Rewrites His Mandate History

Former House Speaker Gingrich claimed he had never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance — only a state requirement.

Gingrich: I didn’t advocate federal mandates. I talked about it at a state level …

Not true. Gingrich said “Congress” must require high-income persons to have insurance, not state legislatures. He did so explicitly in a 2007 opinion piece:

Gingrich, June 25, 2007: In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more, including passing legislation to [among other things] require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.

His support for a federal mandate is of long standing. In 1993, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said:

Gingrich, 1993: I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.

Gingrich was proposing an individual mandate as an alternative to the Clinton administration’s ill-fated health care plan, which was centered on an employer mandate, requiring businesses to provide insurance for their workers. And he held to a similar position as recently as last May, also on “Meet the Press”:

Gingrich, May 15, 2011: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care. And, and I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond … or in some way you indicate you’re going to be held accountable.

NBC’s David Gregory: But that is the individual mandate, is it not?

Gingrich: It’s a variation on it.

If Gingrich was thinking about a state-only mandate, he never said so at the time. And he clearly said “all of us” would be subject to his “variant” of the mandate just last May. We judge that Gingrich is falsifying his own history on this matter.

Santorum Attacks ‘Romneycare’

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Santorum claimed the Massachusetts health care law had quintupled the number who seek free care at hospitals rather than buying coverage.

Santorum: Free ridership has gone up five-fold in Massachusetts. Five times the rate it was before. Why? Because … Because people are ready to pay a cheaper fine and then be able to sign up to insurance, which are now guaranteed under “Romneycare,” than pay high cost insurance, which is what has happened as a result of “Romneycare.”

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said that was “simply impossible” that free riders had gone up, because the percentage of insured residents had increased under the law to 98 percent.

Romney is right. The percentage of insured residents in the state went up from 93.6 percent in 2006, the year the law was enacted, to 98.1 percent in 2010. And data from the state Division of Health Care Finance and Policy show a 46 percent decline in the number of free care medical visits paid for by the state’s Health Care Safety Net. The number of inpatient discharges and outpatient visits under the program went from 2.1 million in 2006 to 1.1 million in 2010 (see page 12).

Contradicting Santorum’s claim, the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation said in a November report that usage of the state’s free care, or safety net, “fell dramatically, as expected” after the law took effect.

BSBC Foundation report, Nov. 2011: In fact, the number of HSN patient visits at hospitals and community health centers declined by 36 percent in the first full HSN fiscal year of health reform. Over the past three years, HSN utilization has trended upward but is still below pre-reform levels.

A Santorum campaign spokesman pointed us to a Wall Street Journal column by Michael F. Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute, who stated that “Massachusetts reported a nearly fivefold increase in such free riding after its mandate took effect.” But that doesn’t square with official data just cited. Cannon didn’t specify the time period and so may have referred to some temporary or transitory bump in free riders. We will update this item if we are able to get more information from Cannon.

Santorum blamed the supposed increase in free riders on persons choosing to pay the penalty instead of buying insurance. But that doesn’t square with official state data either. In 2009, only 48,000 residents paid a penalty — 26,000 of them were uninsured for the entire year, and 22,000 for part of the year, according to state figures. Those aren’t big numbers compared with the usage numbers for the Health Care Safety Net — 1.1 million payments in 2010. The evidence doesn’t suggest that those penalty-payers are driving an increase — let alone a “fivefold” one — in reliance on free care.

Romney’s False Rocket Claim, Again

Romney once again falsely accused Obama of saying “nothing” about the Palestinians launching rockets into Israel during a 2009 speech to the United Nations. In fact, Obama said those who suffer include “the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night.”

We called out Romney for this same false claim last year, when he made it at a GOP debate in Orlando, Fla., on Sept. 22.  Here’s the way he worded it this time:

Romney: This president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Romney is referring to President Obama’s first-ever address to the United Nations in September 2009, but his claim is still false. We’ll just repeat what we said last time.

Obama not only said, “We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel,” he made specific reference to suffering caused by rocket attacks:

Obama, Sept. 23, 2009: We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It’s not paid by politicians. It’s paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It’s paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own.

Jihadist Missiles in Cuba

Santorum made a wild claim that Cuba is working to harbor Muslim terrorists seeking to develop missile sites.

Santorum: We’re going to reward a country [Cuba] that is now working with these other countries to harbor and bring in Iran and the terrorist — the Jihadists who want to set up missile sites and to set up training camps.

Santorum’s comment sounds very similar to a claim that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann made back in the fall about Hezbollah working with Cuba, and potentially building missile sites within its borders.

Bachmann, Sept. 26, 2011: There’s reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is potentially looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran and, of course, when you’re 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don’t want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba. This would be foolish.

But according to a report on the Hill’s Briefing Room blog, Bachmann was getting her information from an Italian newspaper that did not report that Hezbollah was developing missile sites in Cuba.

The Hill, Sept. 27, 2011: Bachmann was referring to a report in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, which claimed that Hezbollah was setting up a base in Cuba to target Israelis in Latin America. The article was circulated on some conservative blogs, but did not report that Hezbollah planned to import weapons; rather, the terror operation was said to be oriented around intelligence collection, coordination of the group’s logistics in Latin America and identification forgery.

‘Language of the Ghetto’

Asked about an ad running in Florida that claims Gingrich once said “Spanish is the language of the ghetto,” Romney claimed not to know about the spot, adding, “I doubt that’s my ad.” It is. And that’s not exactly what Gingrich said. He referred to “bilingual” education but not specifically to Spanish.

The Miami Herald reported this week that the Romney campaign released a Spanish-language radio ad in Miami that argues that Ronald Reagan would not have agreed with Gingrich. The Herald translated it as saying, “Reagan would have never offended Hispanics as Gingrich did when he said Spanish is the language of the ghetto.”

The announcer says the ad was “paid for by Romney for President.” And then Romney himself adds at the end, in Spanish, “Soy Mitt Romney. Estoy postulado para presidente y apruebo este mensaje.” Translation: “I’m Mitt Romney. I’m running for president, and I approve this message.”

After a commercial break, CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer noted that his staff had checked, and confirmed the ad was Romney’s. Romney then posed a question to Gingrich: “Did you say what the ad says or not?”

Gingrich said the “language of the ghetto” comment was “taken totally out of context.”

“Oh, OK, he said it,” Romney responded.

Not exactly. Gingrich claimed he never specifically used the word “Spanish” in connection with the phrase “language of the ghetto,” and that he was speaking “in general, about all languages.” That’s true. Gingrich never specifically mentioned Spanish at all. In fact, shortly after making his “ghetto” comment, Gingrich criticized the government for printing ballots in 700 languages.

As Romney said, “Let’s take a look at what he said.”

The comment in question comes from a speech Gingrich gave to the National Federation of American Women on March 31, 2007, which C-SPAN has archived in its video library (the part in question begins around the 24-minute mark).

Gingrich, March 31, 2007: [W]e should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

That same day, the Associated Press wrote a story — later picked up by the Washington Post – about Gingrich’s comments and quoted Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, saying, “The tone of his comments were very hateful.”

Several days later, Gingrich posted a video on YouTube, in which he addressed his comments, in Spanish (he explained in the video that he had been taking Spanish lessons “for a while now”). According to the English subtitles provided, Gingrich began:

Gingrich, April 4, 2007: Last weekend I made some comments that I recognize produced a bad feeling within the Latino community. The words I chose to express myself were not the best, and what I wanted to say is this. In the United States it is important to speak English well in order to progress and have success. To achieve this goal, we should replace bilingual education programs with intensive English instruction courses and in this way permit that English be the language that all of us have in common.

This is an expression of support for Latinos, not an attack on their language. I have never believed that Spanish is a language of people of low income nor a language without beauty.

Gingrich’s Dubious Freddie Mac Claim

Gingrich said the consulting contracts between the Gingrich Group and Freddie Mac expressly stated that he would do “no lobbying, none.” His campaign website makes the same claim. But that’s not quite true. The 1999 contract did contain such language, but the 2006 contract did not.

Gingrich, Jan. 26: The contracts we released from Freddie Mac said I would do no consulting, wrote in, no — I mean no lobbying, none.

Gingrich website, Nov. 9, 2011: Speaker Gingrich’s consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, was retained in 2006 by Freddie Mac. To be clear, Speaker Gingrich did no lobbying of any kind, nor did his firm. This was expressly written into the Gingrich Group contracts.

On Jan. 23, the Gingrich Group released a one-year consulting contract for 2006 with Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage entity. The contract paid the firm $25,000 a month in exchange for “consulting and related services by Freddie Mac’s Director, Public Policy,” Craig Thomas, who is a registered federal lobbyist.

There was no provision “written” into the 2006 contract that Gingrich would do “no lobbying,” as Gingrich said. Lobbying was mentioned only once in the contract: “Consultant will also supply copies of any disclosures or reports it may be required to file by law, such as reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.”

A day after releasing the contract, the Gingrich Group released a second contract: a 1999 agreement with Freddie Mac that also paid $25,000 a month, plus reimbursement of up to $1,000 per month for expenses. It was this contract — as Gingrich said — that had language clearly stating that Gingrich would do no lobbying for Freddie Mac. It said: “Neither The Gingrich Group nor Newt Gingrich will provide lobbying services of any kind nor participate in lobbying activities on Freddie Mac’s behalf.”

The 1999 contract “was entered into by the Gingrich Group on July 21, 1999 and was a renewable contract, which lasted through 2002,” according to the firm’s press release.

Bottom line: There were two contracts released, and only one contained the language cited by Gingrich and his website. So they are wrong to use the plural form “contracts” when saying that the agreements released to date included a no-lobbying clause.

Santorum: ‘Stolen’ Social Security Numbers?

We have a small quibble with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s choice of words in claiming that most illegal immigrants are working on Social Security numbers that are “probably stolen.”

Santorum: And people who have come to this country illegally have broken the law repeatedly. If you’re here, unless you’re here on a trust fund, you’ve been working illegally. You’ve probably stolen someone’s Social Security number, illegally.

His word choice — describing the numbers as “stolen” — wasn’t exactly on target. But his overall point is backed up by Pew Hispanic Center estimates that most illegal immigrants are working under “fraudulent” Social Security numbers, which could be stolen or just falsified.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that workers have traditionally used phony names and Social Security numbers to gain employment. But technology has made it increasingly difficult for counterfeit documents to pass muster, resulting in illegal immigrants increasingly acquiring the documents of real people. In 2009, the Supreme Court noted the difference between fake and stolen Social Security numbers, ruling that harsher federal sentences for identity theft cannot be handed down unless an illegal immigrant knowingly uses the number of a real person. Either way, the illegal immigrants are breaking the law, which was Santorum’s point.

– Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, D’Angelo Gore and Ben Finley

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Keeping both sides honest

Summary

The air wars in a pivotal Florida Republican primary race have so far been a decidedly one-sided affair, with Mitt Romney and a pro-Romney super PAC saturating the airwaves for weeks with a slew of attack ads aimed chiefly at Newt Gingrich.

Many of the attacks are accurate. But the avalanche of negativity also contains a few distortions, including some that are being recycled.

One claim that is repeated in several of the ads is that Gingrich supported funding for “China’s brutal one-child policy.” The truth is that the bill in question specifically prohibited the use of funds for “involuntary sterilization or abortion,” or “the coercion of any person to accept family planning services.”

Another claim is that Gingrich “supports amnesty for illegal immigrants.” He does advocate allowing some to gain legal status — but only those who have resided in the U.S. for years, are employed, and have ties to their communities. It’s not known how many could meet the tests Gingrich proposes.

One of the newest attacks makes fun of Gingrich for his constant mentions of Ronald Reagan, noting correctly that the former president mentioned Gingrich only once in his published diaries. But the ad slightly exaggerates when it claims Reagan said Gingrich’s “ideas” — plural — would “cripple our defense.” It was only one idea — to freeze all federal spending at 1983 levels. Plus, we found that Reagan in public speeches voiced support for Gingrich’s ideas on taxes and school prayer.

But accurate or not, the pounding has been going on for weeks on Florida television, with no response from Gingrich or his allies. Romney and Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, spent $6.7 million on TV ads in Florida from Dec. 26 to Jan. 24, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit of Kantar Media. Restore Our Future went on the air the day after Christmas and spent $3.3 million through Jan. 24. The Romney campaign followed on Jan. 4 and spent $3.4 million, the data show. Most of Romney’s ads are positive, but one recent addition is a pure attack on Gingrich.

Gingrich won’t be so defenseless in the final days before the Jan. 31 vote, however. The pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, entered the fray Jan. 25 with a promised $6 million ad campaign. We’ll check its ads in a later article.

Meanwhile, we offer in our Analysis section a sampling of the ads that have been hammering away at Gingrich, along with our comments on what’s accurate, what’s not and what additional context voters might find useful.

Analysis

The assault on Gingrich started early in Florida. The pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, went on TV the day after Christmas and hasn’t stopped since. Through Jan. 24, as we mentioned earlier, Romney and the super PAC supporting him outspent Gingrich $6.7 million to nothing, according to data supplied by the ad-tracking service CMAG.

It wasn’t until Jan. 25 that the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, started to run TV ads in Florida. But even if the group spends $6 million in Florida, as reported by the Washington Post, Romney and his allies will far outspend Gingrich.

Romney leaves most of the attacks on Gingrich to the super PAC supporting him. We have only one example of an anti-Gingrich ad that comes from Romney’s own campaign. That attack ad started running Jan. 24.

Note: For additional coverage of the Florida ad wars, see our Jan. 26 items, “Liberal Union Joins Attack on Romney in Florida” and “Gingrich Spanish Radio Ad Pulled.”

Misleading ‘Florida Families’

The Romney ad accuses Gingrich of contributing to the housing crisis (which has hit Florida particularly hard) and for ethics violations. We find it contains some exaggerations.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Romney for President TV Ad: “Florida Families”

Announcer: While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. Gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create the crisis.

Gingrich: And I offered my advice, and my advice as a historian …

Announcer: A historian? Really? Sanctioned for ethics violations, Gingrich resigned from Congress in disgrace. And then cashed in as a DC insider. If Newt wins, this guy [Obama] would be very happy.

The ad says Gingrich “cashed in” and “was paid over $1.6 million” from Freddie Mac, “while Florida families lost everything” in a housing crisis Freddie Mac “helped create.” It’s an exaggeration to link Gingrich’s consulting contract to the suffering of Floridians, and to say he personally was paid $1.6 million.

That $1.6 million figure — which is also repeated in many of the anti-Gingrich attack ads from Restore Our Future — refers to money paid to the former speaker’s consulting firm. As we have reported before, the firm had many employees and expenses.

Gingrich this week released a $25,000 per month contract with Freddie Mac, which states that the firm was hired to perform “consulting and related services as requested” by Freddie Mac’s director of public policy, a registered lobbyist for the government-sponsored mortgage entity. The $1.6 million figure — reported by Bloomberg — was not disputed when Romney cited it during the Florida GOP debate on Jan. 23. But Gingrich said, “My share annually was about $35,000 a year.” If that’s true, he personally received somewhere around $280,000 over an eight-year period.

It’s also debatable how much Freddie Mac and the other government-sponsored mortgage agency, Fannie Mae, “helped create” the housing bubble. As we said a few times in 2008, there is a lot of blame to go around — including but not limited to the Federal Reserve, investment banks, mortgage lenders, homeowners, regulators, and both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Plus, there’s no evidence that whatever Gingrich did for Freddie (and we still don’t know) had even a tenuous link to the suffering of Florida homeowners.

The ad also strains the facts when it links Gingrich’s decision to leave Congress to his ethics. It says, “Sanctioned for ethics violations, Gingrich resigned from Congress in disgrace.” But Gingrich announced his resignation nearly two years after the ethics case was resolved, prompted by a miserable election result. As we wrote twice earlier this month, Gingrich stepped down as House speaker in November 1998 after the Republicans suffered historic losses in the 1998 election. He then left Congress altogether in January 1999. The House voted to reprimand Gingrich in January 1997.

Amnesty, Ethics and Obama’s ‘Plan’

Restore Our Future, meanwhile, is spending more than $1 million each on two ads that are in heavy rotation in Florida. In one of them, “Smiling,” the pro-Romney super PAC focuses on electability — telling viewers that Obama would prefer to run against Gingrich. That may be so, but the ad misrepresents Gingrich’s immigration position, his ethics case and even a news article.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Restore Our Future TV Ad: “Smiling”

Announcer: Barack Obama’s plan is working. Destroy Mitt Romney. Run against Newt Gingrich. Newt has a ton of baggage. He was fined $300,000 for ethics violations and took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac before it helped cause the economic meltdown. Newt supports amnesty for illegal immigrants, and teamed with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming. Maybe that’s why George Will calls him the least conservative candidate. Check the facts at NewtFacts.com.

The ad starts off by saying, “Barack Obama’s plan is working. Destroy Mitt Romney. Run against Newt Gingrich.” To support that claim, the ad cites an Aug. 9, 2011, story by Politico that carries the headline: “Obama Plan: Destroy Romney.” But the story does not mention Gingrich at all, or any of the “baggage” that the ad claims will hurt the former speaker in a general election. Politico’s story was about the Obama campaign’s strategy for running against Romney in the general election, not about any plan to torpedo him in the primaries.

The ad also claims that Gingrich “supports amnesty for illegal immigrants.” That’s not true for most illegal immigrants; Gingrich supports something resembling amnesty for only a relatively small portion of those who are in the U.S. illegally.

As Gingrich has said in campaign appearances and debates, he believes that illegal immigrants who have lived a long time in the United States, are employed, and have ties to their community should not be deported. He would give them legal permission to remain, but not allow them to become citizens.

The ad contains the now familiar claim that Gingrich was “fined” $300,000 for ethics violations. As we have written, it was technically not a fine. The House ethics report on the case said the $300,000 was a reimbursement to defray some of the cost of the investigation.

Gingrich ‘Is No Ronald Reagan’

Another ad from Restore Our Future was released the morning of Jan. 25, and is titled “Reagan.” It says Gingrich exaggerates his connection to the former president, dropping his name 50 times in debates while Reagan mentioned Gingrich only once in his diaries, saying his “ideas” would “cripple our defense.”

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Restore Our Future TV Ad: “Reagan”

Narrator: From debates, you’d think Newt Gingrich was Ronald Reagan’s vice president.

Gingrich: I worked with President Ronald Reagan … worked with Ronald Reagan …. Ronald Reagan playbook … President Reagan … Reagan … Reagan … Reagan

Narrator: Gingrich exaggerates, dropping Ronald Reagan’s name 50 times. But in his diaries, Reagan mentioned Gingrich only once. Reagan criticized Gingrich, saying Newt’s ideas, quote, “would cripple our defense program.” Reagan rejected Newt’s ideas. On leadership and character, Gingrich is no Ronald Reagan.

This ad exaggerates only slightly. Gingrich indeed mentions Reagan’s name constantly and boasts of “helping” him create jobs and lower taxes, among other things. He mentioned Reagan seven times in the most recent debate on Jan. 23, for example, and a total of 10  more times in the two previous debates on Jan. 19 and Jan. 16. There have been 17 GOP debates so far.

And it’s true that Reagan mentioned Gingrich — at the time a junior House member from Georgia — only once in his published diaries. As we reported earlier when Romney brought this up during a debate, Reagan wrote that the young congressman’s 1983 suggestion to freeze spending “would cripple our defense program,” and he rejected it.

But this ad goes a bit too far when it says Reagan rejected “Newt’s ideas,” in the plural. Reagan mentioned rejecting only one — the spending freeze.

We also did a text search of Reagan’s public statements, speeches and papers on the Reagan presidential library website and found only seven mentions of Gingrich – most of them pro-forma at times when Reagan visited Georgia. That’s less than one mention a year during Reagan’s two terms. However, Reagan twice singled out Gingrich for praise on policy issues — specifically taxes and school prayer. In a March 2, 1984, speech to conservatives at the annual CPAC convention, Reagan noted that he was “gratified” that Gingrich was going to organize a rally on the Capitol steps in support of the prayer in school amendment.

Gingrich ‘Has Tons Of Baggage’

Yet another Restore Our Future ad, titled “Risk,” started running in Florida the afternoon of Jan. 24. It asks, “Can we risk four more years of Barack Obama,” and suggests that Gingrich would lose the general election because he “has tons of baggage.”

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Restore Our Future TV Ad: “Risk”

Narrator: Can we risk four more years of Barack Obama? Newt Gingrich’s tough talk sounds good, but Newt has tons of baggage. How will he ever beat Obama? While Newt was speaker, earmarks exploded. He co-sponsored a bill with Nancy Pelosi that would have given $60 million a year to a U.N. program supporting China’s brutal one-child policy. And he teamed up with Pelosi on global warming. Beating Obama is important. Too important to risk on Newt Gingrich.

This spot repeats an unfair and misleading claim that Gingrich backed funding for a U.S. program “supporting China’s brutal one-child policy.” As we reported when Restore Our Future first used this claim against Gingrich in Iowa, it’s a distortion. The truth is that the bill specifically prohibited the use of funds for “involuntary sterilization or abortion,” or “the coercion of any person to accept family planning services.” The funding in question was a small part of a much larger bill, which died before ever coming up for a vote. For more details, see our Dec. 23 article, “Attacks Against Gingrich: How Accurate?”

The ad’s claim that appropriations earmarks “exploded” under Gingrich is accurate, however. The ad cites a Dec. 15 story by ABC News:

ABC News, Dec. 15: [We found] a startling spike under Gingrich’s leadership as speaker. Not only did earmark spending in Congress increase between 1994 and 1998, when he departed, the overall dollar amount roughly doubled.

And the ad is also true — as far as it goes — when it says Gingrich “teamed up with [Nancy] Pelosi on global warming.” Gingrich did indeed appear in a TV commercial with Pelosi back in 2008 and urged unspecified federal action to address climate change. But he later opposed Pelosi’s cap-and-trade bill. For full details on Gingrich’s shifting stance on climate change and cap-and-trade legislation, see our Dec. 15 item, “Gingrich On Climate Change.”

‘Desperate’ For Facts

A Restore Our Future ad called “Desperate” picks up on the same Gingrich-has-more-baggage-than-the-airlines theme that worked so well in Iowa in mid-December. And it  makes some of the same dubious claims that we checked then.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Restore Our Future TV ad: “Desperate”

Announcer: Newt Gingrich’s attacks are called foolish, out of bounds and disgusting. Newt attacks because he has more baggage than the airlines. Newt was fined $300,000 for ethics violations, took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, and co-sponsored a bill with Nancy Pelosi that would have given $60 million a year to a U.N. program supporting China’s brutal one-child policy. Don’t be fooled by Newt’s desperate attacks.

The ad repeats some of the claims of other ads we discussed above, including claims about being “fined” $300,000 for ethics violations and “supporting China’s brutal one-child policy.”

On Admitting Mistakes

Another Restore Our Future 30-second ad landed some punches against Gingrich for admitting mistakes or flipping on issues.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

Restore Our Future TV Ad: “Whoops”

Announcer: Ever notice how some people make a lot of mistakes?

Gingrich: It was probably a mistake. … I made a mistake. … I’ve made mistakes at times. …

Announcer: So far, Newt Gingrich has admitted his mistakes or flipped on teaming up with Nancy Pelosi, immigration, Medicare, health care, Iraq, attacking Mitt Romney and more.

Gingrich: I made a big mistake in the spring.

Announcer: Haven’t we had enough mistakes?

“So far, Newt Gingrich has admitted his mistakes or flipped on teaming up with Nancy Pelosi, immigration, Medicare, health care, Iraq, attacking Mitt Romney and more,” the ad says while showing clips of Gingrich admitting mistakes.

We’ve previously reported that Gingrich made a partial flip on his illegal immigration stance; he said in 2005 he would require “all” illegal immigrants to return to their countries. And we’ve written that Gingrich regretted making an ad with Pelosi about climate change but ultimately opposed her cap-and-trade bill.

Regarding Medicare, Gingrich did indeed backtrack and apologize to Rep. Paul Ryan after criticizing the congressman’s plan to revamp the program. As for flipping on his attacks against Romney, Gingrich’s campaign recently said it would pull or edit a Spanish-language radio ad running in Florida that claims Romney is “anti-immigrant.”

Regarding health care, the former speaker flipped on “Romneycare,” according to a Wall Street Journal article. Gingrich has been denouncing the Massachusetts health care law on the campaign trail but voiced enthusiasm for the state legislation when it was passed six years ago.

As for flipping on Iraq, Gingrich wrote a USA Today column in 2002 urging an invasion of Iraq. Under the headline “Strike Sooner Than Later,” he wrote: “I believe [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld’s guidelines make an overwhelming case for replacing Saddam as soon as possible.” But after things went badly, Gingrich said in 2006: “It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. …We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.”

– by Robert Farley, Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson and Ben Finley

Sources

Miller, Joe and Brooks Jackson. “Who Caused the Economic Crisis?” FactCheck.org. 1 Oct 2008.

Miller, Joe. “Oversimplifying the Fiscal Crisis.” 7 Oct 2008.

Kiely, Eugene, et. al. “Factual Flubs in Florida.” 24 Jan 2012.

Farley, Robert. “Disgrace, Influence Peddling and Other Debate Charges.” 24 Jan 2012.

Smith, Ben and Jonathan Martin. “Obama plan: Destroy Romney.” Politico. 9 Aug 2011.

Phillips, Frank. “Romney profited on firm later tied to fraud.” Boston Globe. 10 Oct 2002.

Morse, Michael. “McCollum’s Misleading Accusations.” FactCheck.org. 14 Jul 2010.

Hiassen, Scott and John Dorschner. “Rick Scott touts CEO experience in run for Florida governor, to a degree.” Miami Herald. 27 Jun 2010.

Miller, Joe and Brooks Jackson. “Who Caused the Economic Crisis?” FactCheck.org. 1 October 2008, accessed 25 January 2012.

Miller, Joe. “Oversimplifying the Fiscal Crisis.” 7 October2008, accessed 25 January 2012.

Kiely, Eugene, et. al. “Factual Flubs in Florida.” 24 January 2012, accessed 25 January 2012.

Farley, Robert. “Disgrace, Influence Peddling and Other Debate Charges.” 24 January 2012, accessed 25 January 2012.

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Huisenga, Sarah. “Gingrich Outlines ‘Path to Legality’ for Some Illegal Immigrants.” National Journal. 26 Nov 2011.

Oppenheimer, Andres. “Gingrich brings common sense to immigration debate.” Miami Herald. 26 Nov 2011.

Madison, Lucy. “Newt Gingrich apologizes to Paul Ryan.” CBS News. 18 May 2011.

Mullens, Brody and Adamy, Janet. “Gingrich Applauded Romney’s Health Plan.” Wall Street Journal.” 27 Dec 2011.

Yadron, Danny. “Gingrich Pulls Ad Attacking Romney After Rubio Criticizes It.” Wall Street Journal.” 25 Jan 2012.

Hotsheet Live. “Gingrich: I was wrong about mandates.” CBS News. 28 Dec 2011.

Woodward, Calvin. “Positions of the Republican candidates, in brief.” Associated Press. 23 Jan 2012.

Gingrich, Newt. “Strike sooner than later.” USA Today. 18 Oct 2002.

Labelle, Monica. “Gingrich at USD: Pull out of Iraq.” Argus Leader. 11 Apr 2006.

Farnam, T.J. “Mitt Romney likely to far outspend Newt Gingrich on Florida TV ads.” Washington Post. 25 Jan 2012.

Weiner, Rachel. “Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich makes $6 million ad buy in Florida.” Washington Post. 24 Jan 2012.

“Campaign Summary: 2012 Presidential Election: 12/25/11 — 1/23/12.” Kantar Media. Accessed 25 Jan 2012.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. “The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan.” Undated, accessed 26 Jan 2012.

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