The team at FactCheck.org, a non-partisan group that monitors erroneous claims and B.S. uttered by politicians, broke down Tuesday's speeches and found several spin-heavy falsehoods, mostly centred around comments President Barack Obama made July 13 in Roanoke, Virginia, where he said:
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
Republicans have since coopted the line, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that," to suggest Obama doesn't care about and doesn't support small businesses and private entrepreneurship. Obama's "that" was referring to "roads and bridges" and other infrastructure.
The rhetoric was in full force Tuesday, as FactCheck points out. For example, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said:
"We need a president who will say to a small businesswoman: Congratulations, we applaud your success, you did make that happen, you did build that! Big government didn’t build America: You built America! Small businesses don’t come out of Washington D.C. pre-made on flat bed trucks. That coffee shop in Henrico. That florist in Virginia Beach. That bakery in Radford. They were all built by entrepreneurial Americans with big dreams, not a big spending government with a wide open wallet full of other people’s money!"
FactCheck also roots out bogus claims surrounding Medicare ($716 billion will not be stripped from Medicare for Obamacare; that money will materialize in Medicare growth reductions over the next 10 years) and a subject near and dear to our Canadian hearts: the cross-border Keystone XL pipeline.
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said Obama nixed the pipeline, when, in fact, the president has decided to hold his decision until after the November election.
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