Truth took a punch or two at the first of two GOP debates before New Hampshire's critical presidential primary.
•Former Massachusetts governor Romney, talking about taxes, said federal, state and local government consume 37 percent of the economy today compared with only 27 percent when John F. Kennedy was president. In fact, taxes now consume only 27.4 percent of GDP.
•Texas Rep. Ron Paul blasted Gingrich for avoiding the draft during Vietnam, and Gingrich said Paul had a "long history" of inaccuracies. The truth is Gingrich was both a student and a father at the time, and probably would have failed the physical anyway, according to his stepfather, an Army man.
•Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said the term "middle class" implies class warfare and is one "I don't think we should be using as Republicans." The fact is his own campaign used it in an Iowa flyer, and he has used it in the past himself.
•Paul attacked Santorum as a "high-powered lobbyist." Santorum was never registered as a lobbyist, though he earned more than $200,000 working as a consultant for a lobbying firm and an energy company.
Candidates also recycled some false or doubtful claims we've gone over before. Romney repeated his misleading claim that his firm Bain Capital invested in businesses that "have now added over 100,000 jobs." Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman again claimed Utah was "No. 1" in job creation while he was governor, which isn't true according to the standard statistical measure for employment. And Santorum again put words in President Obama's mouth by claiming that the president "supported" the results of a disputed election in Iran.
And finally, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Santorum and Romney were all a bit confused about which sports teams were playing an important game on another network. Perhaps they had more important matters on their minds.
Analysis
The six remaining major GOP candidates debated the evening of Jan. 7 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. The debate was sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo! News and WMUR. The candidates slugged it out again 12 hours later on a special edition of NBC's "Meet the Press" on Jan. 8.
Romney's fast shuffle on tax figures
Romney gave some inaccurate and misleading figures to support his view that "taxes are too high."
Romney: Taxes are too high. Government at all levels during the days of John F. Kennedy consumed 27 percent of our economy, about a quarter. Today it consumes 37 percent of our economy. We're only inches away from no longer being a free economy. And our Democrat friends want us to just keep raising taxes 'just a little more; just give us a little more.'
But the fact is that federal, state and local government taxes are only slightly higher now than they were during Kennedy's time in office.
In 1961, 1962 and the first three quarters of 1963, total government receipts were never higher than 26.4 percent of gross domestic product, according to historical figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. And today, the figure is 27.4 percent, as of the most recent quarter on record, which ended Sept. 30.
A Romney spokesman said he was actually giving figures for spending. If so, Romney still was misleading his audience. He used the word "consumes." And he sandwiched the figures between references to taxes, never making clear that he had switched from talking about taxes to giving figures on spending and back to talking about taxes again.
Furthermore, total government expenditures never exceeded 24.7 percent of GDP in any quarter while Kennedy was president, and never were as high as Romney's 27 percent figure. Also, during the July to September quarter last year, spending was 35.7 percent, lower than Romney's 37 percent figure. (The figure did reach 36.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009, when the economy was shrinking. But that was then, not "today," as Romney claimed.)
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