Ok, I can’t take it. Whenever I log onto Facebook now, I see people posting that 15-point list of President Obama’s alleged accomplishments. Some of them like “Got Osama bin Laden” and “Won a Nobel Peace Prize” are right. Others like “Fighting for Working Class Families” are at least open to interpretation. But a lot of them are wrong. And since skepticism seems to be at a premium on Facebook, I’ll fact check some right now:
FACT CHECKS:
THREE: “1.6 million jobs created with no GOP help”: Giving Obama sole credit for private sector job creation is dubious logic. But according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, there HAVE been over 100,000 jobs added…to the federal government since 2009.
FOUR: “22 months of job and economic growth”: Where’s the proof for that? The New York Times ran a piece on September 2 called “Zero Job Growth Latest Bleak Sign for U.S. Economy.”
FIVE: “Ended war in Iraq”: George W. Bush ended the war in Iraq. In 2008’s Status of Forces Agreement, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government agreed on a U.S. withdrawal date of December 31, 2011. Obama stuck to Bush’s timetable – for better or worse.
SEVEN: “Not one tax hike”: No thanks to Obama. He proposed a tax hike in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday! And one to support his “jobs bill” in September. And one to help cover the national debt in July. But none of those managed to pass Congress.
NINE: “Saved the auto industry which got GM back to #1 automaker in the world and created 1.5 million jobs”: Bush approved the $17 billion auto bailout in December ‘08. So, again, it was Bush’s plan. This list claims that Obama created “1.6 million jobs.” But if 1.5 million came from the auto bailout then, according to THIS LIST, Obama is responsible for just 100,000 jobs – the same number added to the federal government since 2009.
FOURTEEN: “First president since FDR to reform healthcare”: President Johnson signed Medicare into law 1965. But that’s neither here nor there. Obamacare is such a disaster that the president himself has called for repealing part of it, 54 percent of the public think that its insurance mandate is unconstitutional and 26 states are suing the government over that mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court in March.
Ok, so he “Repealed DADT” and “Assisted in Ousting Gaddafi” (“assisted,” BTW, is right). I don’t have a problem conceding that stuff. What bothers me is that people believe the rest of it – and pass it around on Facebook!