Advertisement

Biden missteps on health care, international rig counts

|
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 7:49 PM

Vice President Joe Biden resurrected years-old, Democratic talking points on the Affordable Care Act and oil production during a recent speech in New Hampshire. Biden said the ACA would reduce U.S. debt by "another $1 trillion over the next 10 years."

That's a Democratic estimate for 10 years starting in 2022 or 2023, not the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects the law would reduce the deficit by $109 billion over the 2013-2022 period, but said beyond that it is "very difficult to predict."

Biden also said North America has "more gas and oil rigs . pumping today than all the rest of the world combined." It's true North America had 2,051 rigs operating in January, nearly 800 more than the "international rig count" of 1,258, according to industry data. But the international data do not include China and Russia, two top oil-producing countries.

Lee goes off on Internet ruling

The Federal Communications Commission just approved a proposal reclassifying Internet service as a telecommunications utility, claiming that it will preserve the concept of net neutrality."

This is essentially a massive tax increase on the middle class being passed in the dead of night without the American public really being made aware of what is going on," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wrote in an email through the anti-FCC regulation group Protect Internet Freedom.

Net neutrality is complicated. In general, it's the idea that Internet service providers (like Comcast) should not be able give preferential treatment to one website over another. Many experts say consumers can expect additional fees. The Internet Tax Freedom Act bans taxes, but not fees. Fee revenue is set aside specifically for, in this case, a telecom-related service. Taxes, in contrast, raise general revenue. They're legally different, but functionally the same from the consumer's perspective. Literally, there won't be any new taxes as a result of the FCC changes, but there will likely be additional fees. There's a wide range of estimates - anywhere from zero to $11 billion a year. Lee's comment doesn't account for the fact that the impact on consumers' service bills is far from certain, and a telecom policy analyst said it's an overstatement to call the potential increases "massive."

Potential GOP candidates are politicking

A parade of potential Republican presidential candidates took turns at delivering speeches and answering questions at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. They boasted of their accomplishments and voiced their opinions, but along the way there were some distortions of facts.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said "all" of the legal immigration in the U.S. was "based on whether or not you have a family member here." Nearly two-thirds of the inflow of legal permanent residents in 2013 was based on family-sponsored immigration.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry claimed that the cost of government regulation "hits American families for $15,000 a year." That figure comes from a conservative group's admitted "back-of-the-envelope" calculation of estimated regulatory costs that does not include any potential savings. Perry mixed and matched jobs data to embellish Texas' record on job creation. He claimed Texas created 1.4 million jobs in the last seven years, while the rest of the country lost 250,000. In fact, Texas created 1.3 million jobs and the rest of the country added 987,900 jobs.

Rubio and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal overstated the federal government's role in Common Core State Standards, which Rubio described as a "national curriculum" and Jindal said imposes "content standards." State leaders developed the standards, and local school officials set the curriculum.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said his state's ACT scores rank second in the country. That's second out of 30 states, and the composite score hasn't changed during Walker's tenure.

Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Websites used: www.factcheck.org, www.politifact.com

Advertisement