"Lest we forget...
Each year since he took office in 2009, Obama has continued the ritual of making public his economic forecasts. But he suffered a political backlash for a forecast his top economists issued in early 2009.
Obama's aides said then that if Congress were to pass his $800 billion economic stimulus package, it would prevent the U.S. unemployment rate from surging above 8 percent.
The Democratic-led Congress quickly approved the stimulus package but the jobless rate ultimately climbed above 10 percent before eventually declining to its current rate of 8.3 percent.
news.yahoo.com
#2 | Posted by wisgod at 2012-02-09 12:09 PM"
Forget or "mis-remembered"?:
"Romney, who led the Republican field by a sizeable margin in a state hammered by unemployment and foreclosures, used those themes to make his case against Obama.
He also repeated a claim we have heard -- and checked -- numerous times.
"Three years ago, a newly elected President Obama told America that if Congress approved his plan to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, he would hold unemployment below 8 percent," Romney said in his speech in Las Vegas on Feb. 4, 2012.
It's a common claim by critics of the stimulus bill, the two-year spending package Obama championed to get the economy going again.
We heard similar statements from House Republican Whip Eric Cantor in 2009, conservative columnist George Will in 2010, former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann in early 2011 and, most recently, from House Speaker John Boehner at the end of 2011.
Each time, we rated the claim Mostly False.
First, we have never found an instance of anyone in the administration making a public pledge to keep unemployment below 8 percent. The source for Romney's and the others' statements is a Jan. 9, 2009, report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" from Christina Romer, then chairwoman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economic adviser."
www.politifact.com
"Let's take the most egregious exaggeration: "the $700 billion bailout." That figure is grossly outdated. Bachmann is referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which President Bush signed into law in October 2008. As the CBO explained in a November 2010 report, the "authority for the Troubled Asset Relief Program was originally set at a maximum of $700 billion; however, that total was reduced to $475 billion in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." But the estimated net cost to taxpayers will be $25 billion after the government sells its stocks and the companies repay the money, as CBO estimated in its report."
www.factcheck.org
otrans.3cdn.net
Already posted yesterday:
www.drudge.com