Times reporters take a closer look at some of the statements made by the Republican presidential candidates in Wednesday night’s debate.
Romney and the Auto Bailout
Mitt Romney provided a more nuanced explanation of his opposition to the federal loan package that helped rescue the auto industry in 2008 and 2009, saying there was “no way” he would have let American car companies implode. But a bipartisan group of auto industry executives, government officials and financial experts have said that if General Motors and Chrysler had followed his advice at the time and gone into bankruptcy, implosion is exactly what would have happened.
The context is Mr. Romney’s 2008 New York Times Op-Ed, in which he argued that Chrysler and General Motors should not receive federal aid. “Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check,” he wrote.
But auto industry executives and people who were involved in the government-mandated reorganization of the auto companies have said that the managed bankruptcy was not an option at the time Mr. Romney wrote his article. Furthermore, they have said, following a path into bankruptcy then would have caused far more severe job losses and even liquidation.
Mike Jackson, a Romney supporter and chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country, said recently that Mr. Romney’s position on the auto bailout was a “circle that can’t be squared.”
To go through a managed bankruptcy, tens of billions of dollars in financing would have been necessary. Auto executives and government officials have said that the only entity at the time that could have provided that level of financing was the federal government. In late 2008 and early 2009, the credit markets seized up, making financing on that scale virtually impossible to come by.
Mr. Romney and others have argued that the markets would have provided that money if the government demurred. But even Mr. Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, declined to help General Motors when asked in 2009 to invest in the automaker’s European division, said one person with direct knowledge of the conversations.
The most problematic comment on the auto bailout, however, was made not by Mr. Romney but by Newt Gingrich, who said foreign automakers like Toyota and Nissan were doing “just fine” at the time the federal government bailed out domestic carmakers. Mr. Gingrich made the remarks in an attempt to draw a connection between the American auto companies’ high labor costs and their decline. But at that point, car manufacturers were doing poorly regardless of whether they were foreign or domestic.
In early 2009, Toyota reported its first loss in 70 years — $7.7 billion. Nissan was also in bad shape at that time, reporting $2.4 billion in losses. Honda, another Japanese automaker, also lost billions then.
– Jeremy W. PetersSantorum on Contraception
Rick Santorum had a hard time explaining his stance on contraception because he has made numerous statements that appear to be in conflict.
Did he clear it up Wednesday night? Not really. “I have a personal moral objection” to contraception, he said, “but I’ve voted for bills that included it too.”
This drew a big boo from the audience.
Last year, Mr. Santorum told an evangelical blog, “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country.”
He added: “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s O.K. Contraception’s O.K.’ It’s not O.K. because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
So, his position seems to be that while he personally opposes birth control, he would not ban it as president. But he did not spell it out clearly tonight. Then again, he successfully deflected Mr. Romney’s attempt to press him on the issue by bringing up Mr. Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts.
– Katharine Q. SeelyeSantorum Waffles on Title X
Mr. Santorum may have had a “I voted for it before I voted against it” moment Wednesday night.
In response to an assertion by Mr. Paul that he had voted to fund Planned Parenthood, Mr. Santorum said: “As Congressman Paul knows, I opposed Title X funding. I’ve always opposed Title X funding.” He quickly added, “But it’s included in a large appropriation bill that includes a whole host of other things.” Here the audience started to boo.
Technically, Mr. Santorum was saying that he opposed Title X funding — not that he voted against it — but he was implying that he had voted against it. Then when he said it was included in a larger bill, the audience cried foul.
Title X, by the way, is the major funding vehicle for family planning programs. It was signed into law in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who declared, “Contraception for all.”
Mr. Santorum said that because Title X “was always pushed through,” he countered by pushing for Title XX to provide funding for abstinence programs, saying they “actually work in keeping children from being sexually active instead of facilitating children from being sexually active.”
Finally, he got around to an admission: “Yes, I — I admit I voted for large appropriation bills and there were things in there I didn’t like.”
His bottom line, he said, is that as president, “I will defund Planned Parenthood; I will not sign any appropriation bill that funds Planned Parenthood.”
Mr. Santorum’s recent statements are likely to add to the confusion about his stance on the issue. Since 2006, he has cited his support for Title X to show that he is not opposed to funding for contraception.
As recently as last week, on “CBS This Morning,” Rick Santorum told the host, Charlie Rose, that he has no problems with federal funds for contraceptives, saying that he voted for Title X funds in the Senate.
– Katharine Q. SeelyeObama and Iran
Mr. Romney pressed his case that President Obama had practiced appeasement toward Iran, but he mischaracterized Mr. Obama’s position on potential military action. The president has repeatedly said that military action against Tehran remains on the table.
It is also not true that Mr. Obama agreed to Russia’s demand to give up missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe. He negotiated with Russia over the scale of the system, in an effort to win Moscow’s agreement to the Start arms reduction treaty. In his discussion of national security, Mr. Romney also said the administration wanted to cut the Pentagon’s budget by “roughly a trillion dollars,” which is twice what Mr. Obama has suggested.
Mr. Santorum is correct in saying that in 2009, the Obama administration cut funding for a United States-based group that documented human rights abuses in Iran. But the State Department continues to finance other groups that seek to block censorship of the Internet in Iran. Mr. Santorum also slightly misstated Mr. Obama’s decision to open an embassy in Syria. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus under President George W. Bush; Mr. Obama decided to send an envoy back to Syria before withdrawing him recently because of the civil strife.
– Mark LandlerExpanding E-Verify
When Mr. Romney spoke of Arizona as a model for fighting illegal immigration, he was referring to one of several laws Arizona passed in recent years that requires employers to confirm that new hires are legally authorized to work through a federal system called E-Verify.
The system, which is voluntary at the federal level, has been growing rapidly, with 288,000 employers now using it nationwide. It has proven to be a reasonably effective and efficient way for employers to avoid hiring illegal immigrants, and it discourages those immigrants from seeking jobs in companies known to use the system. There is bipartisan support in Congress for some kind of national system to verify the immigration status and work authorization of new hires.
However, there has been debate over proposals currently before Congress to expand the E-Verify system, making it mandatory for all employers nationwide. If that happened, all new hires — including Americans as well as immigrants — would have to provide documentation to verify their identity and eligibility to work. Some critics, including Republicans, have said that could become another costly and intrusive federal mandate.
E-Verify currently relies on data from the Social Security system, which has been shown to have errors that could be costly and time-consuming for Americans and legal immigrants to correct.
Also, farmers across the country are strongly opposed to making E-Verify mandatory nationwide without a new guest worker program to provide legal migrant labor for agriculture. So while the general idea that Mr. Romney proposes has support in theory, putting it into practice nationally is not easy — particularly for Republicans.
That said, all four of the candidates avoided the hot-button issue: what to do about 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the country.
– Julia PrestonGingrich and Earmarks
Earlier in the debate, three of the Republicans – Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney — jousted as they often do on the subject of earmarks, which are spending items that members of Congress insert in the annual appropriations bills to benefit a particular project or program backed by constituents or supporters. Mr. Romney has criticized both of his rivals for their use of earmarks when each was in Congress. As the moderator, CNN’s John King, indicated, earmarked spending has always been a minuscule piece of federal spending – typically less than 1 percent.
Mr. King asked Mr. Gingrich to respond to Mr. Romney’s criticism that Mr. Gingrich, as speaker of the House from 1995 through 1998, raised earmarking to an art form. Mr. Gingrich, rather than respond directly, recalled that the federal budget was balanced when he was speaker.
Mr. Gingrich, as speaker, did preside over a period in which the number and total cost of earmarks spiraled, and Republican leaders openly encouraged new members to seek earmarks to buttress their local standing. In 1992, when he was still in the minority, Representative Gingrich said, “I am committed to hunting down every appropriation … that is some politician taking care of himself.”
But in 1995, Mr. Gingrich’s first year as speaker, the new Republican-led Congress approved a record 1,430 earmarked projects worth $10 billion, according to the conservative group Citizens Against Government Waste. The totals escalated annually. Mr. Gingrich was forced to resign his office in late 1998 after a fraud scandal and Republican election losses. But Republicans remained in control of the House through 2006, when there were 9,963 earmarks worth $29 billion. Disgust among conservative voters with the trend, and scandals surrounding the earmarks, was a factor that year in Republicans’ election losses, which gave control of the House and Senate to Democrats.
Earmarks are still a part of the budget process, but Congress and the executive branch disclose them. And nonpartisan groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, with its annual “Pig Book,” continue to report on the spending.
– Jackie CalmesControlling the Federal Debt
The Republican debate opened with a question from the audience that allowed each of the four remaining candidates to claim that they would bring the mounting federal debt under control. But nonpartisan analysts have concluded otherwise for the proposals to date from Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum.
Another group will weigh in on Thursday: the U.S. Budget Watch project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a longstanding nonprofit group that includes former members of Congress, administration officials and budget experts of both major parties, will issue a report showing that all three Republicans would add to the projected debt. Each candidate has proposed deep spending cuts in coming years, but the reductions are exceeded by the additional tax cuts they propose.
– Jackie CalmesSantorum and Romney's Earmarks
In recent weeks, Mr. Santorum’s rivals – and Mr. Romney in particular – have hammered him over his use of earmarks while in Congress. John King, tonight’s debate moderator, asked Mr. Santorum about the topic directly. He asked if there were any earmarks Mr. Santorum regretted and, pointing out that Mr. Santorum has attacked Mr. Romney over earmarks he secured to help the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he asked if Mr. Santorum thought the Olympics were an improper use of earmarks.
In his answer, Mr. Santorum first defended his use of earmarks, as he has in the past. In multiple interviews, he has said that some are necessary, adding that there are “good earmarks and bad earmarks.”
Switching to the Salt Lake City Olympics, which Mr. Romney helped turn around, Mr. Santorum said that he no problem with the federal funding Mr. Romney secured – in fact, Mr. Santorum volunteered, he had even voted in favor of some of the earmarks – but that Mr. Romney was a hypocrite for attacking Mr. Santorum over earmarks after having used them to his own advantage. Mr. Romney, he added, asked for “tens of millions” in federal funds to help save the 2002 Olympics.
This is largely true. When Mr. Romney headed to Utah, he did so with the help of about $1.5 billion in federal funding, including $60 million for security. The Democratic National Committee has already made an issue of Mr. Romney’s own use of earmarks, including releasing a video that attacks him over the Olympics funds. .
In his answer, Mr. Santorum mentioned his specific use of earmarks. During his time in Congress, Mr. Santorum did request a lot of earmarks – Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, estimates that he requested more than $1 billion. In the defense appropriations bill for the 2006 fiscal year, for instance, the group says that Mr. Santorum helped secure 54 earmarks, costing $124 million in federal financing.
When it was Mr. Romney’s turn to respond, he accused Mr. Santorum, as he has in the past, of supporting the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a bridge in Alaska that cost almost $400 million and was intended to connect Ketchikan to a sparsely populated island with an airport. In 2005, Mr. Santorum did vote with the majority of the Senate in favor of a transportation bill that included the bridge, though the money for it (roughly $225 million) was a minuscule portion of the overall bill, which was nearly $300 billion.
Though earmarks are currently being demonized by both parties, there is nothing inherently wrong with a legislator requesting federal spending in his or her home district or state, or setting aside federal money for a state project.
– Ashley ParkerThe Auto Bailout and the U.A.W.
Several Republican candidates, especially Mr. Gingrich, charged that President Obama gave in to the autoworkers’ unions when his administration rescued the auto industry in early 2009, and Mr. Gingrich went so far as to say that Mr. Obama turned the companies over to the United Auto Workers.
The auto rescue of General Motors and Chrysler was worked out between the unions and management, with both sides making concessions they never had before as a condition for their federal loans, conditions set by the Obama administration’s team.
In contrast, a smaller rescue package in late 2008 from the Bush administration had no such conditions. Mr. Gingrich also cited a number of auto companies with operations in the United States that did not need bailouts, but he the ones he named are foreign-owned, like Toyota. The only major American company that did not take federal assistance was Ford, but Ford supported the rescue program because if G.M. and Chrysler had failed, that would have threatened the entire auto-manufacturing supply chain in the United States, which in turn would be a threat to Ford.
– Jackie CalmesRepealing Health Care Law
Mr. Santorum said repealing the health care insurance law that President Obama signed in 2010 would reduce the deficit. His rival Mr. Romney has repeatedly made the same claim in debates and repeatedly been judged incorrect.
– Jackie CalmesMr. Romney said repealing the law would save $95 billion a year. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the health care law would reduce deficits by $210 billion in the first decade from fiscal year 2012 through 2021 given taxes, fees and health cost reductions mandated by the law. Similarly, the office reported that legislation passed last year by the House Republican majority to repeal the law would increase deficits by the same amount.
While the budget office has declined to put an exact figure on projected savings of the health care law beyond the first decade, given the uncertainty of such long-range projections, it concluded that the savings would be in the range of half a percentage point of the nation’s gross domestic product, a substantial amount. The Obama administration has projected that the savings in the second decade will exceed $1 trillion.
In November, the nonpartisan fact-checking group PolitiFact said of Mr. Romney’s claim: “We rate his statement false.”
Romney and Massachusetts Taxes
Mr. Santorum, rebutting claims that he expanded government spending in Congress, just claimed that Mr. Romney “raised taxes and fees” by $750 million as governor of Massachusetts.
There is truth to that claim — though there is debate about the terminology. As governor, Mr. Romney raised more than $700 million in revenue through two major measures: first, he increased fees on a variety of government services, like the price of a commercial driving license; second, he closed dozens of corporate tax loopholes, requiring corporations to pay bigger tax bills.
Were those, technically, “tax” increases? Mr. Romney did not think so, perhaps unsurprisingly — he had run for governor on a “no new taxes” pledge. But many Massachusetts business leaders — and the prominent Washington anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform — said otherwise. They assailed the changes as tax increases by another name.
“They changed the laws and the rules to significantly raise taxes,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has said of Mr. Romney’s corporate tax loophole changes. “That is a tax increase.”
– Michael BarbaroGingrich and a Balanced Budget
Trip Gabriel previously looked at Mr. Gingrich’s claim that he helped balance the budget four years in a row:
– The New York TimesMr. Gingrich has made a campaign theme out of how the economy improved when he was last in office, as speaker of the House in the 1990s. In his first answer, challenged about his conservative credentials, Mr. Gingrich said he was responsible for four consecutive balanced budgets and paid down $400 billion on the national debt.
But in only two years when he was speaker was the budget balanced, in fiscal 1998 and 1999. Although the government remained in the black for two more years, Mr. Gingrich left office in January 1999 and had no role in those later budgets. The total surplus when he was speaker was $194.9 billion, not $400 billion.
And it takes two to tango — Mr. Gingrich didn’t mention that these years of government surpluses were the result of policies that fostered an economic boom, many worked out with President Bill Clinton. Mr. Gingrich opposed a 1993 tax increase widely credited with helping to begin reducing the deficit.
