Issues: Recession

Crossroads GPS: “Suffered”

adcheck •

Crossroads GPS attempts to link “three years of crushing unemployment” to President Obama’s “failed” investments in clean energy through the Recovery Act. In addition to misrepresenting the program that provided loans for Solyndra and other companies, Crossroads GPS conveniently overlooks what really ‘crushed’ the job market: a historically devastating recession that was destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs per month when Obama was inaugurated. Since then, the avalanche of job losses has turned into steady growth, with the private sector gaining 4.5 million jobs over the last 29 months. The ad also blames Obama for the rising debt without noting the disastrous fiscal impact of Bush policies, such as tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and the recession.

Read more after the jump.

Divorced From Reality: The Right’s Alternate History Of The Financial Crisis

research •

From its intellectuals to its political leaders, the American conservative movement has fully endorsed an interpretation of the Bush-era housing bubble and Wall Street collapse that cannot be reconciled with reality. The political right insists that government policy encouraging homeownership among low-to-moderate-income families is the primary – or even the only – cause of the crisis. But data on the home loan industry shows this argument is false. In fact, the subprime boom was driven by private firms who were exempt from the much-vilified Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, not by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The government’s contribution to the crisis was its failure to regulate Wall Street, not its efforts to expand homeownership.

Right-Wing Rationale: It Was The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) And Government Lenders

GOP Presidential Candidates Blamed Government Policy For Housing Crisis. From Bloomberg: “The Republicans say the federal government pressed banks to make risky housing loans under a 1977 law called the Community Reinvestment Act, helping inflate home prices and ultimately sparking the crash. ‘The reason we have the housing crises we have is that the federal government played too heavy a role in our markets,’ Romney said in a Nov. 9 Republican debate. ‘The federal government came in with Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd told banks they had to give loans to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back.’ Gingrich has suggested jailing Frank, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Dodd, who headed the Senate Banking Committee until his retirement this year.” [Bloomberg, 12/21/11]

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Tried”

adcheck •

A Crossroads GPS ad attacking President Obama wrongly suggests several consequences of the recession are the result of the president’s economic policies. In fact, it’s Bush-era policies that drove up the federal debt, while the private sector has added jobs in each of 28 consecutive months for a total of 4.5 million new jobs since March 2010.

Read more after the jump.

American Crossroads: “Obama’s War On Women”

adcheck •

In a minute-long web video, American Crossroads triumphantly throws out every statistic it can find about the recession’s impact on women, claiming that higher poverty and unemployment among women add up to evidence of a “war on women” that’s “being waged in our economy.” But video clips of sad women looking out windows don’t make this line of attack any more valid than conservative groups’ standard attempt to blame overall recession-driven job losses on President Obama, who inherited an economy already hemorrhaging millions of jobs. In fact, while the recession impacted men and women differently by virtue of the fact that male-dominated industries like manufacturing were hit first, with jobs in which women are more heavily represented impacted later, men suffered the heaviest job losses in the recession. They also started earlier on the road to recovery, as Republican-favored trimming of the public sector continues to disproportionately impact women.

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Ants”

adcheck •

Crossroads GPS labels Virginia Senate candidate and former governor Tim Kaine “a cheerleader for massive spending” based on his support for the Recovery Act and time as DNC chairman. The ad relies on tired misinformation about the stimulus package, which created millions of jobs, and the cherry-picked projects Crossroads holds up as evidence the bill was wasteful are misrepresentations of the law’s allocation of funds.

Read more after the jump.

American Future Fund: “Better Or Worse”

adcheck •

A video from the American Future Fund rattles off a laundry list of deceptive claims about President Obama’s record, starting with the old falsehood that the president made the economy “worse.” But that’s nonsense: Obama inherited an economy that was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, and while we still haven’t fully recovered from the crushing Bush recession, the private sector has created more than 4 million jobs in the past 29 months of growth. Those gains are due in part to the Obama administration’s Recovery Act and rescue of the auto industry, both of which, along with the health care law, AFF completely misrepresents.

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Excuses”

adcheck •

An ad from Crossroads GPS ridicules President Obama for making “excuses for the bad economy,” using footage of the president speaking about global challenges that have affected the recovery. But while the ad suggests that Obama’s “wild spending and skyrocketing debt” are the real problem, those are legacies of the Bush years and the crushing recession that Obama inherited, and Republicans have consistently opposed Obama’s efforts to bring down the deficit.

Read more after the jump.

American Commitment: “Stands”

adcheck •

In an ad attacking New Mexico Senate candidate Rep. Martin Heinrich (D), the conservative group American Commitment calls the Affordable Care Act “a massive tax increase on the middle class” and absurdly claims the health care law “gives Washington bureaucrats control over our health care decisions.” The ad also alleges that Heinrich “refuses to stop another tax hike,” presumably on the basis of his support for ending wasteful tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Read more after the jump.

American Commitment: “Cheating”

adcheck •

An ad from the conservative group American Commitment accuses Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) of voting to put thousands of Wisconsin paper industry jobs at risk. The ad cites Baldwin’s vote against a Republican proposal to overturn an EPA rule that will save thousands of lives and ignores her support for giving Wisconsin paper companies additional time to comply. American Commitment also suggests that Baldwin’s votes in favor of the Recovery Act and the Affordable Care Act are inconsistent with her criticism of China because, the ad alleges, “We’ll have to borrow money from China to pay for those.” In fact, the Recovery Act helped prevent an even worse economic collapse – which would have driven the country deeper into debt – and the health care reform law reduces the deficit.

Read more after the jump.

American Commitment: “Best”

adcheck •

In an ad suggesting that Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) does not know what is “best for Ohio,” the conservative group American Commitment cites three of the senator’s votes and misrepresents each one. The “failed stimulus” created jobs and cut taxes during the worst of the recession; the environmental rule the ad refers to will save thousands of lives at a minimal cost to consumers; and Brown was not the “deciding vote” for the Affordable Care Act.

Read more after the jump.