Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Walmart Welfare 2012

Earlier this year, my former wingnut carpoolian buddy boasted in a comment section of my blog how he had annuitized his 401K through an insurance company: he expressed a seeming anger that if he had the opportunity to invest himself, he could have done much better over what he received from Social Security, to which he had contributed heavily over the years. Although I am highly dubious of the value of such annuities, he may be correct about “doing better” himself than through “forced” contributions to social security; however, the point is that in either case Social Security is an insurance annuity option for retirement income.

All this (and a little more) is part and partial to a statement by Rick Santorum which PolitiFact (PF) rated Mostly True, that “a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them." An excerpt from PolitiFact’s finding:

The Census Bureau found that a little over 147 million Americans received payments from at least one of these programs at a time when the U.S. population was just over 303 million. This meant that 48.5 percent of Americans received federal cash or cash-like benefits -- and it means that Santorum’s number is well-supported. In fact, counting such items as amounts refunded from the Earned Income Tax Credit or agricultural subsidies -- neither of which are included in these figures -- would push that number higher.

I believe Santorum’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details (Half True by PolitiFact): many of the entitlements are actually a form of insurance that have already been contributed toward through payroll taxes. Then there’s the point made by the Washington Post that “the usefulness of these numbers is weakened because they count everyone in a household as benefiting from a particular federal payment even if that payment is made in the name of only one person.”

Then, there’s the statement following which, taken in context, was a patently absurd one: that “After Obamacare….it will be 100%.”

Then there’s a problem I have with the states that Santorum won in the primaries: the “bite the hand that feeds them” states, in particular, Mississippi and Alabama, where we already know there are a higher percentage of food stamp recipients relative to other states, and where they receive more assistance than what they pay in taxes. As noted by Lee Pappas, the Rude Pundit:

Some conservatives see the social safety net as a calculated plot by liberals to make people dependent on the federal government, a way of controlling them. Of course, since the states where people receive more in government assistance than they pay in taxes vote Republican, that's pretty much demonstrably false.

Let’s get back to the first point, Social Security as insurance. Over 37 million people age 65 or higher receive Social Security. Almost 8 million people under 65 receive social security because of a disability. I would imagine the vast majority of the total 45 million contributed to the Social Security system. Even my conservative counterpart admits it’s a form of insurance. If that’s what it is, how can Santorum say those who receive it depend on it, when they planned to get it because they contributed to it in the first place?

Politi-Score: Three Debates, Part 2

Before a review of some of the rulings made on statements in the recent three Republican debates, I thought it might be a good idea to present a topic breakdown.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare/Medicare, jobs, social security and the debt ceiling made up 66% of the fact-checked topics in the debates.

The Number One Topic of fact-checking interest was Healthcare/Medicare, followed by Jobs and then Social Security. Most reviewed Topic Number 4, the Debt Ceiling, was a one-man, or I should say, one-woman topic, as all the rulings were on Michele Bachmann, centered on her determined-to-be-false “Obama blank check” claims, mostly made during the first debate in Ames. She also Politi-Scored a hefty negative on this topic at -88. Including Bachmann’s topic of the debt ceiling, these four topics made up two-thirds of those fact-checked from the debates.

Healthcare/Medicare, besides being the most fact-checked, had one of the most negative Politi-Scores at a slightly-worse-than-Mostly-False -61. Healthcare/Medicare was also a topic dominated by Michele Bachmann, with her making 11 of the 16 statements fact-checked and the rest divided between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney (oh, and a single one by Tim Pawlenty).

There were a few miscellaneous topics that were specialties of certain debaters. A good example is the Federal Budget, which consisted of a statement by Newt Gingrich (his contention that he balanced it four years in a row, determined to be a misleading claim by the fact-checkers). Another one was Border Security and Rick Perry’s challenging claims that Obama made about it at El Paso, Texas, which PolitiFact found to be Half True and the other fact-checkers, misleading.

So now we have a pretty good over-view of the fact-checking side of the three debates. For a heads up on the next item of interest, I’ll note that there were 51 fact-checks representing 21 statements where the fact-check was re-covered, or duplicated. So please stay tuned as I sort through them.