The First Debate: Mitt Romney's Five Biggest Lies

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Ken O’Brien


Mitt Romney turned in a polished performance in the presidentialdebate – and revealed himself to be an accomplished and unapologetic liar. Inan evening where he sought to slice and dice the president with statistics,Romney baldly misrepresented his own policy prescriptions, made up numbers tofit his attacks and buried clear contrasts with the president under a heapingpile of BS..Here are Mittens’ five most mendacious statements: 
1. "I don't have a $5 trillion taxcut." Romney flatly lied about the cost of hisproposal to cut income-tax rates across the board by another 20 percent(undercutting even the low rates of the Bush tax cuts). Independent economistsat the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for thosecuts is $360 billion in the first year, a cost that extrapolates to $5 trillionover a decade.
2. "I will not reduce the taxespaid by high-income Americans." Romney hasclaimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes anddeductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn't named a single loophole he'swilling to close; worse, there's no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts evenif you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romneyhas not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percentcapital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney'sproposal would create a "net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a nettax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers." Moreover, some ofRomney's tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly hisproposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons' taxburden by tens of millions of dollars.
3. "We've got 23 million people outof work or [who have] stopped looking for work in this country." Romneyis lying for effect. The nation's crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 millionAmericans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who holdpart-time jobs as also being "out of work."
4. Obamacare "puts in place anunelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatmentsthey can have." Romney is reviving Sarah Palin'sold death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent PaymentAdvisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body hasno authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. Andthe law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care orlimiting medical benefits to seniors.
5. "Pre-existing conditions arecovered under my plan." In the biggestwhopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal wouldguarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just nottrue. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unableto obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than90 days because you lost your job or couldn't afford the premiums, you would beshit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny youcoverage, as even Romney's top adviser conceded after the debate was over.

(from Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone)