FACT-CHECK

So Who Lied Last Night?

Obama spins, Romney cites bogus studies.

“As president you’re entitled to your own plane and your own house, but not your own facts,” Mitt Romney said during Wednesday night’s presidential debate. But both candidates put their own spin on the facts, and the tangle of clashing statistics meant fact-checkers had their work cut out for them. Obama said Romney wants to add $5 trillion in tax cuts to the deficit--not exactly true, since Romney contends he would make up that revenue elsewhere. But Mitt hasn’t explained how, and Obama cited a study that such massive tax cuts can’t be paid for except by raising taxes on the middle class. Romney then claimed there were five other studies that concluded his plan was revenue-neutral—all of which turn out to be conducted by people advising his campaign or by the notoriously math-challenged Wall Street Journal editorial page.