Obama’s Whoppers
FactCheck.org
Eugene Kiely
2 hrs ago
Summary
In his farewell address, President Barack Obama quoted his mother when he spoke about the virtue of honesty. “[A]s my mother used to tell me,” Obama said, “reality has a way of catching up with you.”
The president speaks from some experience.
For years, Obama repeated his promise that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” However, reality caught up with the president in 2013, when insurance companies began to cancel policies that did not meet the new requirements of the Affordable Care Act, and Obama was forced to apologize.
That wasn’t the only time when reality caught up with Obama. As he prepares to leave office after eight years, we look back at some of the more egregious falsehoods uttered by a president who did not always follow his mother’s advice.
...
Analysis
President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010. It was the most significant health care law since Medicaid and Medicare were established in 1965. It was “a big [expletive deleted] deal,” to quote Vice President Joe Biden.
...
Several of the claims on the list of Obama’s whoppers deal with the law that would become known as Obamacare.
‘If You Like Your Health Care Plan …’
On Aug. 15, 2009, Obama held a town hall event on health care in Grand Junction, Colorado, as part of his effort to lobby public support for what would become the Affordable Care Act.
The audience cheered as Obama told his audience, “I just want to be completely clear about this; I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren’t listening — if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.”
...
After the minimum benefit standards were set, the ACA marketplace opened for business on Oct. 1, 2013. Almost immediately, some individual policyholders began to receive cancellation notices from their insurance companies. By Nov. 14, 2013, Obama announced a temporary fix to address the problem and admitted that he made some assumptions about the law that were incorrect. “[T]hat’s something I deeply regret because it’s scary getting a cancellation notice,” Obama said.
Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone. Aug. 18, 2009
Obama’s Glowing Assessment, March 4, 2010
A Final Weekend of Whoppers? March 19, 2010
Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods, June 28, 2012
Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition, July 20, 2012
Reality Confronts Obama’s False Promise, Oct. 29, 2013
Other Health Care Claims
Untrue Anecdote: In his zeal to expand health care coverage, Obama also claimed in a speech to Congress that an insurance company was responsible for the death of an Illinois cancer patient. It wasn’t.
...
Sweet: Another Stretch by Obama, Sept. 13, 2009
Too Good to Check? Sept. 18, 2009
Another Untrue Anecdote: In 2011, we learned that another Obama anecdote he used to promote his health care plan also turned out not to be true. This anecdote was about his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.
Before and after he became president, Obama told the story about his mother’s battles with her health insurance carrier. He claimed that she was nearly denied health insurance coverage for a preexisting condition while she was dying. But in 2011, author Janny Scott published a biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.” And in it, she wrote that Dunham’s fight was over disability coverage (which was not affected by Obama’s health care law) and not over medical insurance coverage.
...
Rewriting History
On more than one occasion, the president backtracked on past statements and then tried to rewrite history by claiming he had not changed his position.
Perhaps the most famous of these whoppers is the “red line” he set in Syria.
...
ISIS and the JV Team: Obama also denied that he once dismissed the terrorist Islamic State group as “the jayvee team,” meaning junior varsity. But he did exactly that.
...
Immigration: In 2014, Obama also tried to rewrite history by claiming that his “position hasn’t changed” regarding his legal authority to issue sweeping executive orders on immigration.
...
On Nov. 16, 2014, Jim Avila of ABC News asked Obama about his earlier comments regarding his limited legal authority to act on immigration. “Mr. President, what has changed since then?” Avila asked.
Obama insisted “my position hasn’t changed.” It did.
Obama’s Immigration Amnesia, Nov. 18, 2014
Taxes
During the 2008 election, Obama campaigned on a promise to end the Bush-era income tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or more (and individuals earning $200,000 or more), but once in office he was forced to compromise on that promise. In late 2012, Obama and the GOP-controlled Congress kept the tax cuts in place for all taxpayers except those families that earned $450,000 or more (and individuals earning $400,000 or more).
...
Obama’s Teacher Tax Whopper, Sept. 28, 2011
Buffett Rule: In advocating for the “Buffett Rule,” Obama left the false impression that many, if not most, millionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the middle class.
The “Buffett Rule,” the president explained in an April 10, 2012, speech, is “very simple: If you make more than $1 million a year … you should pay the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle-class families do.” Sounds good, but in fact most already do.
...
Abortion
During the 2012 campaign, the Obama campaign more than once falsely claimed that Republican nominee Mitt Romney “backed a law that outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.” But that wasn’t Romney’s position, and there was no such law.
The Obama campaign made this false claim in two TV ads that we wrote about in July 2012. The claim was based on a question about a hypothetical “federal ban on all abortions” posed by an audience member at a GOP primary debate in 2007. In his answer, Romney did not say what, if any, exceptions he supported — so the Obama campaign filled in the blanks.
But Romney had been specific, both before and after that debate. He opposed abortion but supported exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
Twisting Romney’s Abortion Stance, July 9, 2012
Falsifying Romney’s Abortion Stance, Again, July 31, 2012
Education
In a speech on education, Obama claimed that the high school dropout rate had “tripled in the past 30 years.” That wasn’t even close. At the time, the dropout rate had actually declined by a third.
According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the “status dropout rate” – defined as the percentage of people between ages 16 and 24 who are not in school and do not have high school diplomas or GEDs – was 9.3 percent in 2006. In 1976, 30 years before that, it was 14.1 percent. That’s actually a 34 percent decrease in the high school dropout rate.
How could the president have been so wrong? The White House referred us to a report by the College Board, which in turn cited a 2004 study by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy. The NBETPP reported a threefold increase in the percentage of students failing ninth grade — not dropping out — from 1969-70 to 2000-01.
Education Spin, March 18, 2009
Etc, etc, etc,...
Obama’s Whoppers
FactCheck.org
Eugene Kiely
2 hrs ago
Summary
In his farewell address, President Barack Obama quoted his mother when he spoke about the virtue of honesty. “[A]s my mother used to tell me,” Obama said, “reality has a way of catching up with you.”
The president speaks from some experience.
For years, Obama repeated his promise that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” However, reality caught up with the president in 2013, when insurance companies began to cancel policies that did not meet the new requirements of the Affordable Care Act, and Obama was forced to apologize.
That wasn’t the only time when reality caught up with Obama. As he prepares to leave office after eight years, we look back at some of the more egregious falsehoods uttered by a president who did not always follow his mother’s advice.
...
Analysis
President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010. It was the most significant health care law since Medicaid and Medicare were established in 1965. It was “a big [expletive deleted] deal,” to quote Vice President Joe Biden.
...
Several of the claims on the list of Obama’s whoppers deal with the law that would become known as Obamacare.
‘If You Like Your Health Care Plan …’
On Aug. 15, 2009, Obama held a town hall event on health care in Grand Junction, Colorado, as part of his effort to lobby public support for what would become the Affordable Care Act.
The audience cheered as Obama told his audience, “I just want to be completely clear about this; I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren’t listening — if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.”
...
After the minimum benefit standards were set, the ACA marketplace opened for business on Oct. 1, 2013. Almost immediately, some individual policyholders began to receive cancellation notices from their insurance companies. By Nov. 14, 2013, Obama announced a temporary fix to address the problem and admitted that he made some assumptions about the law that were incorrect. “[T]hat’s something I deeply regret because it’s scary getting a cancellation notice,” Obama said.
Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone. Aug. 18, 2009
Obama’s Glowing Assessment, March 4, 2010
A Final Weekend of Whoppers? March 19, 2010
Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods, June 28, 2012
Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition, July 20, 2012
Reality Confronts Obama’s False Promise, Oct. 29, 2013
Other Health Care Claims
Untrue Anecdote: In his zeal to expand health care coverage, Obama also claimed in a speech to Congress that an insurance company was responsible for the death of an Illinois cancer patient. It wasn’t.
...
Sweet: Another Stretch by Obama, Sept. 13, 2009
Too Good to Check? Sept. 18, 2009
Another Untrue Anecdote: In 2011, we learned that another Obama anecdote he used to promote his health care plan also turned out not to be true. This anecdote was about his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.
Before and after he became president, Obama told the story about his mother’s battles with her health insurance carrier. He claimed that she was nearly denied health insurance coverage for a preexisting condition while she was dying. But in 2011, author Janny Scott published a biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.” And in it, she wrote that Dunham’s fight was over disability coverage (which was not affected by Obama’s health care law) and not over medical insurance coverage.
...
Rewriting History
On more than one occasion, the president backtracked on past statements and then tried to rewrite history by claiming he had not changed his position.
Perhaps the most famous of these whoppers is the “red line” he set in Syria.
...
ISIS and the JV Team: Obama also denied that he once dismissed the terrorist Islamic State group as “the jayvee team,” meaning junior varsity. But he did exactly that.
...
Immigration: In 2014, Obama also tried to rewrite history by claiming that his “position hasn’t changed” regarding his legal authority to issue sweeping executive orders on immigration.
...
On Nov. 16, 2014, Jim Avila of ABC News asked Obama about his earlier comments regarding his limited legal authority to act on immigration. “Mr. President, what has changed since then?” Avila asked.
Obama insisted “my position hasn’t changed.” It did.
Obama’s Immigration Amnesia, Nov. 18, 2014
Taxes
During the 2008 election, Obama campaigned on a promise to end the Bush-era income tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or more (and individuals earning $200,000 or more), but once in office he was forced to compromise on that promise. In late 2012, Obama and the GOP-controlled Congress kept the tax cuts in place for all taxpayers except those families that earned $450,000 or more (and individuals earning $400,000 or more).
...
Obama’s Teacher Tax Whopper, Sept. 28, 2011
Buffett Rule: In advocating for the “Buffett Rule,” Obama left the false impression that many, if not most, millionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the middle class.
The “Buffett Rule,” the president explained in an April 10, 2012, speech, is “very simple: If you make more than $1 million a year … you should pay the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle-class families do.” Sounds good, but in fact most already do.
...
Abortion
During the 2012 campaign, the Obama campaign more than once falsely claimed that Republican nominee Mitt Romney “backed a law that outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.” But that wasn’t Romney’s position, and there was no such law.
The Obama campaign made this false claim in two TV ads that we wrote about in July 2012. The claim was based on a question about a hypothetical “federal ban on all abortions” posed by an audience member at a GOP primary debate in 2007. In his answer, Romney did not say what, if any, exceptions he supported — so the Obama campaign filled in the blanks.
But Romney had been specific, both before and after that debate. He opposed abortion but supported exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
Twisting Romney’s Abortion Stance, July 9, 2012
Falsifying Romney’s Abortion Stance, Again, July 31, 2012
Education
In a speech on education, Obama claimed that the high school dropout rate had “tripled in the past 30 years.” That wasn’t even close. At the time, the dropout rate had actually declined by a third.
According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the “status dropout rate” – defined as the percentage of people between ages 16 and 24 who are not in school and do not have high school diplomas or GEDs – was 9.3 percent in 2006. In 1976, 30 years before that, it was 14.1 percent. That’s actually a 34 percent decrease in the high school dropout rate.
How could the president have been so wrong? The White House referred us to a report by the College Board, which in turn cited a 2004 study by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy. The NBETPP reported a threefold increase in the percentage of students failing ninth grade — not dropping out — from 1969-70 to 2000-01.
Education Spin, March 18, 2009
Etc, etc, etc,...
Obama’s Whoppers
