Americans for Prosperity softens its usually harsh tone with an ad that features former Obama supporters explaining why they are disappointed with the president’s performance. However, the ad still features several misleading statements that echo common attacks on President Obama’s record from AFP and other conservative groups.
Read more after the jump.In an ad titled “Another Month,” Restore Our Future mashes up news headlines and video clips of President Obama to paint a misleading picture of the economy. In reality, the private sector has gained 4.5 million jobs over the last 29 consecutive months of growth, including 172,000 in July. While the continuing decline in government employment has slowed the recovery, the economic situation has improved significantly since Obama inherited an economy that was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month in early 2009. That turnaround was aided by the Recovery Act, which helped stave off a deeper collapse, created jobs, and cut taxes for millions of working Americans.
Read more after the jump.American Future Fund (AFF) is trying to convince New Mexico voters that Rep. Martin Heinrich is responsible for the effects of the Great Recession, which started wreaking havoc on the economy well before Heinrich took office in January 2009. In the process, AFF throws out a misleading statistic on New Mexico’s unemployment and criticizes Heinrich over his support for the stimulus, which prevented an even greater economic catastrophe, created American jobs, and cut taxes for millions.
Read more after the jump.An ad from Americans for Prosperity features a flurry of TV news clips about rising debt in the past few years and connects them to President Obama’s statement in February 2009 that “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” However, recent deficits have been fueled by Bush policies and the recession, and the ad takes the president’s words completely out of context. In fact, Obama was talking about whether efforts to rescue the economy would lead to economic progress. Since that interview, massive monthly job losses have turned into steady private-sector growth, including 4.5 million new private-sector jobs in the last 29 months.
Read more after the jump.Crossroads GPS attacks President Obama’s economic record with a clip of a CBS News report stating that “this is the worst economic recovery America has ever had.” Blaming the president for high unemployment, the ad fails to acknowledge the severity of the Bush recession, which caused the economy to continue to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the first months of the Obama administration, and the GOP-favored public-sector downsizing that’s led to government layoffs. Far from ‘failing,’ the Recovery Act helped avert an even more severe economic collapse.
Read more after the jump.Amid a decades-long crusade against abortion rights and a more recent uproar over access to contraceptives, conservatives’ efforts to intrude upon women’s control over their own health care are well publicized. But the GOP of recent years has also demonstrated that women’s physical safety, economic security, and equal access to the workforce are increasingly low on the priority list. For the first time since its initial 1994 passage, the GOP has put up a fight against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. Republicans on both the state and national level have sneered at the need for laws that address the fact that women still earn only about 75 percent of what men do for performing the same jobs. Conservatives have rejected legislation to mandate paid parental leave – something every other economically advanced country in the world requires. They are skeptical about allowing women to serve in military combat roles despite an on-the-ground reality that already puts women in dangerous combat situations. And they are dismissive of an Equal Rights Amendment that would afford the same weight to sex-based discrimination that the 14th Amendment currently gives race-based discrimination.
The Violence Against Women Act, First Passed In 1994, Is A Multifaceted Effort To Address Violence Against Women. From the Urban Institute: “In 1994, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) as Title IV of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (P.L. 103-322). This event marked a turning point in federal recognition of the extent and seriousness of violence against women, and a commitment to address the problem from the federal vantage point. […] The resulting Violence Against Women Act for the first time recognizes the common barriers to legal protection faced by women victims of violent crimes. The four subtitles within the Act—the Safe Streets Act, Safe Homes for Women, Civil Rights for Women and Equal Justice for Women in the Courts, and Protections for Battered Immigrant Women and Children—target domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and protection against gender-motivated violence. The Act undertakes reform in legislation, rules of evidence, and the policies and procedures of law enforcement agencies and the courts. It creates new offenses and tougher penalties, mandates victim restitution, and begins system reforms that will, for example, shield victims during prosecution and increase consistency in sentencing. Recognizing that attitudinal change and knowledge are essential to practical implementation of legal reforms, VAWA authorizes support for prevention, education, and training and the development of systems for maintaining records on violent incidents and perpetrators and improving communication within the justice system.” [Urban.org, 3/1/96]
Read more after the jump.From the Heritage Foundation to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to purely political organizations like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, nearly the entire infrastructure of the right criticizes President Obama for the current state of our national debt. It is instructive to look back on these groups’ positions on the two primary drivers of both recent and future deficits: President Bush’s tax cuts and the expansion of the war on terror to Iraq. AEI, Heritage, and the Hoover Institution may be debt hawks now, but their roles in pushing the costly and misguided invasion of Iraq began almost before the wreckage was cleared at Ground Zero in New York City. And while it’s unremarkable that conservative institutions would support reducing taxes, the promises made in debate over the Bush tax cuts by Heritage, Americans for Tax Reform, and the like fly in the face of their current griping about our indebtedness.
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Heritage Foundation Decries Obama’s “Vision” Of “Deeper Deficits.” From the Heritage Foundation’s response to President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2013: “The Administration’s apparent vision is one of bigger government, more spending, higher taxes, and deeper deficits. At a time when runaway spending and swelling deficits must be reversed, President Obama increases both.” [Heritage.org, 2/28/12]
Read more after the jump.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.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.
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.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.
