By James Taranto
Fact Check: Cardinals to Win Super Bowl
If President Obama has his way you will soon have to submit to government rationing of medical care and drive a tiny car. But at least your taxes wont go up if you make under $250000 a year right?
Oh you poor naive soul. The Associated Press <
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090709/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_tax_promise_6> delivers the bad news in a dispatch by Stephen Ohlemacher titled PROMISES PROMISES: Obamas Tax Pledge Unrealistic:
Obama made a firm tax pledge during the presidential campaign repeating it numerous times in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day: no tax increases for individuals making less than $200000 a year or couples making less than $250000.
Not your income tax not your payroll tax not your capital gains taxes not any of your taxes Obama told a crowd in Dover N.H. last year.
But less than a month after taking office Obama signed an expansion of child health care financed by 62-cent tax increase on each pack of cigarettes.
Obama also signed an anti-smoking bill in June that grants authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. To pay for the new program a fee is being imposed on the industry--and presumably passed on to consumers--estimated to generate more than $5 billion over the next decade.
While not directly increasing taxes a House-passed version of Obamas plan to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming would similarly increase American families home energy bills by $175 a year on average according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Obama hasnt offered a detailed plan to fix health care though his aides are working with lawmakers as they craft proposals. Obama included only a down payment for health care reform in the budget proposal he unveiled this spring.
He proposed limiting itemized tax deductions for individuals making more than $200000 and couples making more than $250000. The plan which faces stiff opposition in Congress would limit deductions for mortgage insurance state and local taxes and charitable contributions raising about $270 billion over the next decade.
Obama also proposed a series of business tax increases and accounting changes that would raise an additional $30 billion.
If only someone had warned us back when Obama was running for president! Well actually John McCain and the Republicans did issue such warnings--but the AP in a series of fact check articles declared that the warnings were false and implied that they were lies.
On Sept. 2 the APs Jim Kuhnhenn <
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-09-02-1178641315_x.htm> filed a dispatch from the GOP convention titled Fact Check: Checking the GOPs Speakers:
FORMER SEN. FRED THOMPSON R-TENN.: Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No theyre just going to tax businesses! So unless you buy something from a business like groceries or clothes or gasoline or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small business dont worry its not going to affect you.
THE FACTS: Obama would raise income taxes on the wealthiest and their capital gains and dividends taxes. He would raise payroll taxes on wealthiest by applying it to the portion of income over $250000 and he would also raise corporate taxes. Only small businesses that make more than $250000 a year would see taxes rise. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks mainly for poor workers and the elderly including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. The Tax Policy Center a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute concluded that Obamas plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012 or nearly $2200 annually.
An Oct. 27 offering from the APs Beth Fouhy <
http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/10/27/FACT_CHECK_McCain_persists_exaggerations_6080.html> was headlined FACT CHECK: McCain Persists in Exaggerations:
McCain also accuses Obama of aiming to raise taxes on small businesses which he says would cause them to cut jobs. He has recently fleshed out that point by invoking Joe the Plumber who told Obama on a campaign stop in Ohio that he wants to buy the plumbing business where he works but is afraid Obamas tax plan would make that impossible.
In fact Obama would raise taxes on small businesses making more than $250000 but only about two percent of small businesses in the country fall into that category. And Obama is also proposing targeted tax relief for small businesses such as a tax credit for offering health care to employees and elimination of capital gains taxes on startup businesses.
And on Nov. 3 2008 the APsCalvin Woodward <
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-11-03-1686579489_x.htm> summed things up disapprovingly: Altogether facts took a beating in the campaign. . . . When a non-licensed plumber who owes back taxes and would get a tax cut under Obama is held out by McCain as a stand-in for average working people who should vote Republican you know truth-telling took a back seat to myth-making.
In truth facts took a beating in the APs campaign coverage because the wire service in embracing an opinionated style of reporting it calls accountability journalism mired itself in epistemological confusion.
The statements that Thompson McCain and Joe the Plumber made and that the AP claimed to refute were not factual claims at all. They were predictions. We now have sufficient facts as reported by Ohlemacher above to conclude that those predictions were accurate. But an accurate prediction (the Steelers will win the Super Bowl) is quite different from an accurate statement of fact (the Steelers won the Super Bowl). If you dont grasp the distinction try going to Vegas and placing a bet on the Steelers to win Super Bowl XLIII.
So the AP repeatedly made a cognitive error in treating as-yet-untested predictions as if they were statements of fact. Even more ludicrous however is the basis on which the AP concluded that the GOP statements were false. It treated Obamas campaign promise as if it were not only a statement of fact but an incontrovertible one.
A promise is a statement of intent not a fact. Sometimes people are unable to do what they intend because of circumstances beyond their control. Giving Obama the benefit of the doubt--assuming that he sincerely intended not to raise taxes on people making under $250000 and that circumstances made it impossible to do otherwise--its as if the AP had done a pre-Super Bowl fact check along these lines:
CLAIM: The Pittsburgh Steelers are favored to win.
THE FACTS: Arizona Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt has made clear that our guys are ready to play and that they intend to be victorious.
But the APs campaign coverage was worse than this. Politicians sometimes make promises in bad faith--surely more often than American pro sports teams throw games. By treating Obamas campaign pledge as if it were an established fact the AP displayed either a staggering naivet or an appalling pro-Obama partisanship.
The Cost of Cutting Costs <
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106384226>
The nations hospitals will give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments to help defray the cost of President Obamas health care plan a concession the White House hopes will boost an overhaul effort thats hit a roadblock in Congress the Associated Press reports from Washington:
Of the $155 billion in projected savings from hospitals about $40 billion to $50 billion would come from reducing federal payments hospitals receive for providing care to uninsured and low-income patients according to lobbyists. Those payments are now made through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Medicaid cuts would be apportioned by state as 10 percent annual reductions beginning around 2015.
About $100 billion more would come from reductions in planned Medicare payments to hospitals. A small amount of savings would come from trimming the money hospitals get for preventing patients from being readmitted for additional care.
Hospitals would also get something out of the deal. They won an agreement that if the Finance Committees legislation includes a public health insurance plan it would reimburse hospitals at above the rates Medicare and Medicaid pay which hospitals have long complained are insufficient.
Brilliant! The hospitals agree to accept reduced payments from the government and in exchange the government agrees to increase payments to the hospitals. Step right up and play the shell game!
