The year's worst political deceptions, from both sides.
Posted on December 20, 2011
Summary
Despite what you may have heard in 2011:
- The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that).
- Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan).
- Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners.
- President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying.
And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.
