Rating the State of the Union January 28, 2010
Posted by Matt in Barack Obama, politics.Tags: campaign promises, false, Obama, politifact, Sate of the Union, truth
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President Obama had a good bit to say last night, both in statements of past successes and promises for the future, but since this is politics, the question must be asked: how truthful was the president being?
The nonpartisan website politifact.com ran through some of the president’s statements, rating them as true, false, or somewhere in between. Below are a few of the site’s findings:
Some of his statements were found to be true or mostly true, including:
“We cut taxes for 95% of working families.”
“At the beginning of the last decade … America had a budget surplus of over $200B. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1T and projected deficits of $8T over the next decade.”
“For the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online.”
Some of them were exaggerated:
“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – the spend without limit in our elections.”
“The pay-as-you-go law … was a big reason why we had record surpluses in the 1990′s.”
At least one was found to be false:
“We’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.”
And one showed a full flip-flop:
The idea of a government spending freeze which he opposed when it was brought up by John McCain in the election.
In all, it was probably on par with other SOTU speeches.
Also, if you are interested in knowing how Obama’s past promises are holding up, the site has rated 503 of them. So, far the scoring stands:
Promises kept: 91
Compromise: 33
Promises broken: 15
Stalled: 87
In the works: 275
Not yet rated: 2
