Master Debaters: Fact-Checking the First Obama-Romney Presidential Debate

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QUOTE, ROMNEY: "[Obamacare] puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea."

FACT-CHECK: Romney's talking about the Independent Payment Advisory Board. It's a panel of experts that can force medicare cuts, if the cost gets too high (and Congress doesn't react to those costs, and raise the budget). But...

COUNTERPOINT: ...all they can actually do is force cuts (they're not even allowed to ration them). And they definitely can't tell doctors what treatments to go with or not. Remember the whole "Death Panel" scare? This is that, again. In other words, if breast augmentation surgery were ever covered by Medicare—which, for the record, it isn't—Obama could not deny your girl bigger boobs, B. Vaya con tetas.

VERDICT: LIES.

QUOTE, OBAMA: "[It's important to] take some of the money that we're saving, as we wind down two wars, to rebuild America."

FACT-CHECK: We borrowed a bunch of money to pay for those wars. Just because you're not borrowing more money doesn't mean you're saving it. Derp?

COUNTERPOINT: No counter-point, here. That's just pretending like we're stupid. Given that the country he runs let his predecessor borrow all that money to fight two very expensive wars most Americans now hate, it may be a fair assumption. But still: Wrong.

VERDICT: ALL DERP EVERYTHING.

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "Fifty percent of college graduates this year can't find work."

FACT-CHECK: Romney's was citing an Associated Press report from April that explained how "1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed."

COUNTERPOINT: The report was about new college graduates, and new college graduates who are unemployed or underemployed. In other words, jobs that might not be using the "skills" they acquired in college, or jobs that might not be full-time. Does life for half of all college graduates after college suck? Yes, yes it does. But also, it always has. The Real World!

VERDICT: MORE SKETCH THAN TRUE.

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "We can help, but it's going to take a different path, not the one we've been on, not the one the president describes as a top-down, cut taxes for the rich. That's not what I'm going to do."

FACT-CHECK: Romney wants to cut marginal tax rates, which, long story short, is basically relief for the biggest earners in the country. Or as the Tax Policy Center put it on August 1st, Romney's plans would "provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle-and/or lower-income taxpayers."

COUNTERPOINT: Sometimes, different things produce different results. Possibly even math-defying results. Basic math has never been defied in the history of the universe, but when there's a will, there might be a way. Maybe? 

VERDICT: THE SHADIEST, PRETTY MUCH EVER. [ED. THIS SHOULD MAKE THE POCKETS, WALLETS, AND ANY OTHER ORIFICES MOST COMPLEX READERS CAN HIDE STACKS IN CLENCH UP THROUGH 2016.]

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300." 

FACT-CHECK: Research estimates note median household income in 2009 when President Obama took office at $55,198. As of August 2012, it was $50,678, which is indeed $4,520 less.

COUNTER-POINT: For one thing, those are estimates, and for another, that's the median-income, not the mean (in other words: the middle number, not the average). See how Romney used the words "middle-income" instead of "middle class"? Those are two different things when you're in a presidential debate. On the other hand, as drunk London School of Economics students and Shawn Corey Carters everywhere would have it: Men lie, women lie, numbers don't.

VERDICT: TRUE, PLUS $220.

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "Gasoline prices have doubled under the president."

FACT-CHECK: You could get a gallon of gas for $1.61 when Obama took office. Right now, you're looking at a $3.78 gallon.

COUNTERPOINT: Gas experts—literally, guys who sit around monitoring gas prices—don't think any president has ever really had all that much to do with gas prices. US News quoted GasBuddy's senior petroleum analyst who explained that it was because of a "plummeting economy, deep speculation on crude oil and an extremely weak U.S. dollar." Not Barack Obama.

VERDICT: MORE SKETCH THAN TRUE.

QUOTE, OBAMA: "When Mitt Romney tells a student 'you should borrow money from your parents to go to college,' that indicates the degree to which [Romney might not care that some people] just don't have that option." 

FACT-CHECK: Did Mitt Romney tell Americans to borrow money from their parents to go to college? Last April: "Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents. Start a business.” 

COUNTERPOINT: "The Romney campaign later said the governor’s reference to borrowing from parents referred to starting a business, not paying for college." - Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times

VERDICT: TRUE (UNTIL ROMNEY CALLED IT A LIE).

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "We've gone from 32 million [people] on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps."

FACT-CHECK: It was 31.9 million when Obama took office. It was 46.6 million people in June. He rounded up, but the numbers are more or less true (and depressing).

COUNTERPOINT: Mitt Romney was trying to make a point about how broke everyone in this country is, but he's previously said the food stamp problem is because Obama is taking the "work out of the food stamps requirement." Actually, Congress did that in a 2008 bill that President George W. Bush tried to veto. 

VERDICT: MORE TRUE THAN SKETCH.

QUOTE, ROMNEY: "I'm going to stop [government funding] to PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep spending money on things, borrowing money from China to pay for it."

COUNTERPOINT: As the Museum of Natural History's celebrity astrophysicist and Cosmos revival host Neil DeGrasse Tyson put it: "Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive."

FACT-CHECK: Let's say you're Big Bird. You just got your chain snatched by Mitt Romney. Do you think he loves you?

VERDICT: LIES.