Fact Check Org: Democratic Disinformation from Charlotte, Day One

By Susan Duclos

Fact Check Org. has a comprehensive list of inaccurate, misleading statements from the speakers at the Democratic Convention from the first night. Bulletins below, details on each individual bullet point can be found over at Fact Check Org.

We heard a number of dubious or misleading claims on the first night of the Democratic National Convention:

• The keynote speaker and others claimed the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would raise taxes on the “middle class.” He has promised he won’t. Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn’t necessarily lead to that conclusion.
• The keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, also said there have been 4.5 million “new jobs” under Obama. The fact is the economy has regained only 4 million of the 4.3 million jobs lost since Obama took office.
• Castro also insisted Romney and Ryan would “gut” Pell Grants for lower-income college students. Actually, the Ryan budget calls only for “limiting the growth” of spending for the program, and Ryan has said the maximum grant of $5,550 would not be decreased.
• A Democratic governor said Romney “left his state 47th out of 50 in job growth.” Actually, Massachusetts went from 50th in job creation during Romney’s first year to 28th in his final year.
• Two advocates of equal-pay legislation said women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn. That’s true on average, but the gap for women doing the same work as men is much less, and not entirely or even mostly the result of job discrimination.
• A union president accused Romney of seeking “a government bailout” for “his company.” Not really. In fact, Romney negotiated a favorable but routine settlement with bank regulators on behalf of a former company, the one he had left to form his own Bain Capital firm. No taxpayer funds were involved.
• Multiple speakers repeated a claim that the Ryan/Romney Medicare plan would cost seniors $6,400 a year. That’s a figure that applied to Ryan’s 2011 budget plan, but his current proposal (the one Romney embraces) is far more generous. The Congressional Budget Office says it “may” lead to higher costs for beneficiaries, but it can’t estimate how much.
• Rep. James Clyburn engaged in partisan myth-making when he said “Democrats created Social Security” while Republicans “cursed the darkness.” History records strong bipartisan support in both House and Senate for the measure President Roosevelt signed in 1935.

Note to Readers

Our managing editor, Lori Robertson, is on the scene in Charlotte at the convention center. This story was written with the help of the entire staff, based in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We are vetting the major speeches at this convention for factual accuracy, holding Democrats to the same standards we applied in last week’s coverage of the Republican convention.

Read the details provided from Fact Check Org. by clicking HERE.

This follows CNN fact checking the 4.5 million job growth number being touted by Democrats, discussed in a previous WuA piece HERE.