Fact-checking Obama's final arguments

We had more or less thought we were done fact checking this election cycle over the weekend, and then we saw the candidates’ "closing arguments" speeches.

So, one more time, here’s a round-up of their factually challenged assertions.

BARACK OBAMA

(Quotes are from his speech in Cincinnati, Nov. 4)

"Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs."

This is a cherry-picked figure, since it focuses only on the private sector - and then only since February 2010.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total job creation - public and private - during Obama’s presidency is only marginally positive or negative, depending on whether you start the count in January or February 2009. (The economy lost 818,000 jobs in January, though Obama only took office on the 20th.)

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"We’re less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in 20 years."

This is a trend that began before Obama became president - in 2005 - and it is also the result of declining consumption due to the the 2008 economic crisis, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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"After President Clinton, we had eight years in which we tried giving big tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. We tried giving insurance companies and oil companies and Wall Street a free license to do whatever they pleased. And what we got was falling incomes, and record deficits, and the slowest job growth in 50 years, and an economic crisis that we’re still cleaning our way out of."

This is an expansion of an assertion from one of Obama’s ads that we flagged for containing significant factual errors or contradictions. Clinton actually signed the laws that repealed the separation of commercial and investment banks and removed derivatives contracts from regulatory oversight.

Moreover, there is no evidence that the George W. Bush tax cuts led to the recession, but Obama here expands the critique to also include budget deficits, making it more accurate.

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"Another $5 trillion tax cut that favors the wealthy - not change."

As we have repeatedly noted, the Romney tax plan is supposed to be revenue neutral - and Romney says he will start by removing tax breaks for the wealthy. But he has not provided details on how he would do that, and nonpartisan studies say that math does not add up.

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"I won’t turn Medicare into a voucher just to pay for another millionaire’s tax cut."

Republicans have supported changing Medicare to a "premium support" model but the savings is not intended to be used for a tax cut, but rather to reduce rising costs.

Bonus quote:

"The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime."

This is an Obama quote from the second presidential debate. The White House objected to our fact check in which we said Obama did not call the attack on the U.S. mission an "terrorist attack" for at least 15 days and thus Romney’s broader point in the debate was accurate. We stood by that ruling after looking at the evidence again.

Now CBS has released the full transcript of a "60 Minutes" interview with Steve Kroft that was held shortly after that Rose Garden appearance.

KROFT: "Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word ’terrorism’ in connection with the Libya attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?"

OBAMA: "Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other."

It is up to media critics to determine whether CBS erred in not releasing this earlier. But this new information certainly confirms our initial ruling that there is a world of difference between "terrorist attack" and "act of terror."

In retrospect, Obama’s answer in the debate was even more disingenuous than we had originally suspected.