1) 3,000,000 new private sector jobs
2) Smaller government
3) $2,000,000,000,000 in deficit reduction
4) Health Care Reform
5) Wall Street Reform
6) Saved the US Auto industry
7) All “Bailout money” returned, with interest
8) Three new trade agreements
9) Repealed “Don’t ask don’t tell”
10) Killed Osama Bin Laden
11) Rescued American hostages
12) Toppled Gadhafi without an American casualty
13) Unified the world against Iran
14) Has the Arab League watching Syria
15) No tax dollars spent on BP clean-up
16) More deportations per year than Bush
17) Fewer regulations than Bush
18) Supports state’s rights on medical marijuana
19) Ended the war in Iraq
20) Reduced military spending by $500,000,000,000
21) Increased veterans’ benefits every year
22) Saved the world from global financial collapse
23) Hired more border patrol agents than Bush
24) Quit smoking
After a lot of hard work I managed to discern what appears to be fact from fiction and here is the real story:
1) Mostly true- From Feb. 2010 through Dec 2011 somewhere between 2.2 and 2.8 million private sector jobs were created (depending on your source). Obama’s own site states the more modest number of 2.6 million. This does not take into account the first year of his term but we can’t expect the economy to change gears overnight. So other than some liberal rounding this is correct.
2) Marginally- There may have been some areas where the government has shrunk but not enough to brag about, or even really note. The number of government employees is down but there are conflicting numbers on state vs. federal reductions. 273,000 few government jobs is the only statistic I could find (that's both federal and state) and while there were over 3 million federal jobs in 2008, there were more than 5 million state positions so that number is nearly insignificant to the Obama administration. The national debt has also ballooned and we have seen little to no program cuts to prove a reduce in the size of government.
3) False- The truth is the the national deficit has grown by nearly as much as this add claims it has been reduced. (See previous post on statistics)
4) True- For good or bad (probably a combination) health care reform has gone into place. Positive highlights include doing away with pre-existing conditions and requiring 100% coverage of preventative care.
5) True- I have personal issues with parts of this legislation but I'll save that for another time.
6) Undecided- What is true is that a auto industry bailout took place and our national auto industry continues to limp on, though it barely competes with foreign competitors.
7) False- Of $700 billion dollars allocated, $619.5 billion has been dealt out and only $118.5 billion has been returned from the TARP program.
8) True- With South Korea, Columbia, and Panama. Agreements that had been stalled since Bush’s reign.
9) True- And about damn time.
10) True- Yes he was killed during the Obama administration but the true credit should be given to our military personnel and leaders who planned and executed the strike. They did the real work.
11) True- But with the same caveat as #10
12) Marginally- Yes, it is true the US assisted in the overthrow, but of much greater importance in the event was the French and British involvement and especially the Libyan people who did lose lives in the struggle
13) Undecided- Calling for the world to unite against Iran is very different from it actually happening. We really need to check our ego if we're thinking that way.
14) Marginally- The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership last November. They are now going to the United Nations for support against Syria. Our involvement here is less than it was with Gadhafi.
15) True- I could find no evidence to the contrary though nothing directly stated that we did not provide funding either so I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt.
16) Misleading?- The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of Sept. 12th, compared to 1.57 million in Bush's two full presidential terms. But Obama himself says the statistic is misleading since most of the increase is from increased border patrols that send people back when they have barely entered the country (this was in a talk to a Hispanic crowd and he was trying to emphasize that law breaking illegal immigrants are the ones who will be sent back). So really Obama has checked the growth of illegal immigration and nothing more.
17) Misleading- So far Obama has passed 10,810 regulations while Bush passed 12,588 in his first three years. However, Obama’s rules tend to cost more. President Bush passed 30 "economically significant" regulations in his first three years. Obama passed 953. So called "economically significant" regulations are those that cost more than $100 million a year. To sum it up, roughly 0.25% of Bush's regulations were economically significant while almost 9% of Obama's are
18) Marginally- While President Obama does not oppose medical marijuana he has openly admitted that it is very low on the priorities list and hasn't really done anything about it besides turn a blind eye.
19) True.
20) False- The so called "cuts" are actually a reduction of projected future spending, not cuts to current spending. To give you a peek at the 2012 budget, the Department of Defense is getting an increase of 0.7% to $553 billion. This is moderately balanced by a 0.9% cut to the Department of Homeland Security down to $43.2 billion. The actual dollar change? An increase of $5.06 billion
21) Mostly true- It has not happened every year, but a 2010 bill increased medical, education, and employment benefits for veterans.
22) Misleading- Obama exhorted other world leaders to do better and helped us towards raising the US debt ceiling to prevent a US collapse, echoing around the world. We can’t prevent what is happening in China and other countries around the world, and “saved” is a very strong term for the world economy when our own is still in question.
23) False- Bush put forth the goal to achieve 20,000 Border Patrol Agents (BPA) which was achieved in October 2009, less than a year after Obama took office. For fiscal year 2011 Obama proposed reducing the number of BPA agents as a cost cutting measure until Republicans balked and he flip flopped and committed to adding another 1,000 agents. For real numbers, there were about 9,000 BPA on 9/11/2011. In Oct. 2009 there were 20,119. By Oct. 2011 we had about 21,370 agents.
24) Good for him.
So to recap. Of 24 bullet points there were:
9 true
2 mostly true
4 marginally true
2 undecided
3 misleading
and 4 outright false
and 4 outright false
Either the publisher of this was a terrible fact checker or 9 honestly true items wasn't good enough.
