The good people at FactCheck.org took a look at former President Clinton's convention nomination speech. They called it a "fact checker's nightmare" because - get this - it required "lots of effort to run down his many statistics" which turned out to be factually correct.
Put more simply, there was a lot of fact checking work but little for them to write about.
To be sure, they pointed out that there was some rhetorical exaggerations (it was a convention speech). But when it came to the numbers - like his budgets - President Clinton got his arithmetic right (41:50 in the speech).
As far as I'm concerned, what stood out for me was when President Clinton reminded everyone that Republicans have blocked more than 1 million potential new jobs from being created during the Obama administration. FactCheck.org wrote that Clinton's jobs blocking claim "checked out too" and added:
So, yeah, if anything, President Clinton understated the GOP's job killing numbers. But the point remains, not only did the stimulus work but our unemployment numbers would have been much worse were it not for President Obama's initiatives.
I especially enjoyed President Clinton reminding us about congressional Republicans turning their backs on the American worker because - as I've been arguing for a long long time - the GOP has been deliberately sabotaging the advancement of our nation to score cheap political points.
Today they've fine tuned their strategy to make President Obama look bad.
And, yes, that means making sure millions of Americans remain unemployed so they can point fingers.
- Mark
Put more simply, there was a lot of fact checking work but little for them to write about.
To be sure, they pointed out that there was some rhetorical exaggerations (it was a convention speech). But when it came to the numbers - like his budgets - President Clinton got his arithmetic right (41:50 in the speech).
As far as I'm concerned, what stood out for me was when President Clinton reminded everyone that Republicans have blocked more than 1 million potential new jobs from being created during the Obama administration. FactCheck.org wrote that Clinton's jobs blocking claim "checked out too" and added:
Two independent economists — Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics and Joel Prakken of Macroeconomics Advisers — had estimated that Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act would add more than 1 million jobs. Zandi claimed it would add 1.9 million jobs; Prakken 1.3 million. Senate Republicans blocked the $447 billion measure, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell denounced it as “a charade that’s meant to give Democrats a political edge” in 2012.
So, yeah, if anything, President Clinton understated the GOP's job killing numbers. But the point remains, not only did the stimulus work but our unemployment numbers would have been much worse were it not for President Obama's initiatives.
I especially enjoyed President Clinton reminding us about congressional Republicans turning their backs on the American worker because - as I've been arguing for a long long time - the GOP has been deliberately sabotaging the advancement of our nation to score cheap political points.
Today they've fine tuned their strategy to make President Obama look bad.
And, yes, that means making sure millions of Americans remain unemployed so they can point fingers.
- Mark
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