Mitt Romney’s Five Biggest Lies of the First Half of the Presidential Debate

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 02:25 am

Mitt Romney is telling so many lies at the first presidential debate with Barack Obama that we had to take a half time break. Here are Romney’s 5 biggest lies of the first half of the debate.

1). Mitt Romney claims he is not cutting taxes for the wealthy

Romney actually began the debate completely reinventing his tax plan. Romney claimed that his tax plan isn’t a $5 trillion tax cut. However, yesterday his own running mate Paul Ryan touted Romney’s 20% tax cut across the board.

Ryan said, “And so what we’re saying is, we’re going to lower tax rates for everybody across the board by 20%, and we can pay for that without losing revenue by closing loopholes for people at the top end of the income scale. Everybody gets lower tax rates as a result. And you can keep these preferences for middle class taxpayers and have 20% lower tax rates.”

2). Romney claimed his tax plan doesn’t raise taxes on the middle class

Mitt Romney used some funny math to claim that his plan doesn’t raise taxes on middle class. However, the Tax Policy Center found that Romney’s plan, “The report by the centrist Tax Policy Center found that Romney’s tax cuts would boost after-tax income by an average of 4.1 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year, while reducing by an average of 1.2 percent the after-tax income of individuals earning less than $200,000.”

3). Romney claimed that Obama would increase taxes on the top 3% of “small businesses.”

Romney used some dubious statistics to claim that Obama would raise taxes on small businesses. What Romney didn’t tell the voters is that he and the Republican Party have a unique definition of small business. Washington Monthly explored the GOP definition of small business, “Many of those 750,000 small businesses aren’t small at all. Some, like Bechtel Corporation, are positively enormous. The Democratic and Republican figures come from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation. But numerous think tanks and government organizations have examined the data and come to similar conclusions: First, that letting the Bush tax cuts on the top two brackets of “small-business” income would impact a tiny percentage of those businesses; and second, that many of the “small businesses” that would be impacted are actually giant companies — which explains why such a tiny fraction of them can account for half of small business income.”

4). Romney says oil subsidies go to small companies

Romney tried to sell the subsidies for Big Oil as going to small natural gas and coal companies. The truth is that $2.8 billion in subsidies go to the five biggest oil companies. Bil Oil is also allowed to write off all of their drilling costs.

5). Romney said getting rid of the Bush tax cuts will kill jobs

Mitt Romney claimed that if the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, it will kill jobs. Forbes debunked this myth and concluded that, “But the GOP meme suggesting that tax cuts equals jobs while, conversely, tax increases on the so-called “job creators” mean less work for the rest of us, simply does not survive any reasonable scrutiny. Putting more money in the pockets of the wealthy may create a few jobs for the foreign bankers who get to count the extra money funneled into into the off-shore accounts of the rich, but there is nothing in the way of actual data to support the notion that putting more money into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans will inure to the benefit of those looking for work.”

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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