Debate Fact Check: Romney, Obama Make Stumbles in Round Two

An occasional look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or dont tell the full story.

In the rough-and-tumble of a town hall-style presidential debate, the facts took something of a beating Tuesday night.

Topic: Libya

Mitt Romney wrongly claimed that it took 14 days for President Barack Obama to brand the assault on the US Consulate in Libya a terrorist act. Obama yet again claimed that ending the Afghanistan and Iraq wars makes money available to rebuild America, even though it doesnt.

A look at some of their claims:

OBAMA: The day after last months attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that were going to hunt down those who committed this crime.

ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

OBAMA: Get the transcript.

THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. … We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.

But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.

Topic: War

OBAMA: Lets take the money that weve been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but Americas future is going to be bright as well.

THE FACTS: What Obama didnt mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus, using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.

Topic: Energy

ROMNEY: As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters.

OBAMA: Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. Weve opened up public lands. Were actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my âEUR” the previous president was an oilman.

THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.

According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romneys point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in US history.

According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last years dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.

Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.

Topic: Immigration

OBAMA: For young people whove come here, brought here oftentimes by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And thats what Ive done administratively.

THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young undocumented immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which undocumented immigrants with longstanding ties to the US and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.

Topic: Detroit Bankrupt

ROMNEY: I know he keeps saying, You want to take Detroit bankrupt. Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think its important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened.

THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans werent available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets would have been sold in pieces.

Topic: Jobs

OBAMA: And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that weve created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone.

THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.

Topic: Gas Prices

ROMNEY: The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that youre paying at the pump. If youre paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But youre paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, its $4 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the presidents energy policies are working, youre going to see the cost of energy come down.

THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices âEUR” and gasoline prices along with them âEUR” had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as US oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.

Other energy prices have fallen during Obamas term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. Thats because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.

Topic: Taxes

OBAMA: What Ive also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president.

THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obamas proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount âEUR” and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.

ROMNEY: Im going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but Im going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than theyre paying now.

THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he cant achieve all of his goals under the budget rules presidents must follow.

The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there arent enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden onto the middle class.

Romneys campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romneys plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesnt recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.

ROMNEY: A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.

THE FACTS: Romneys claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obamas watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.

However, Obama is not responsible for all of the deficits that have occurred on his watch. Most of the federal budget âEUR” like Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security âEUR” runs on autopilot, and no one in a leadership position in Washington has proposed deep cuts in those programs. And politicians in both parties voted two years ago to renew Bush-era tax cuts that have contributed to the deficit. Even under the strict spending cuts proposed by Romney, the debt would continue to rise, just not as quickly.

Associated Press writers Jonathan Fahey, Tom Krisher, Stephen Ohlemacher, Andrew Taylor, Bradley Klapper, Matthew Daly, Matthew Lee and Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report.