President Obama delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday night, and since then many media outlets have fact-checked what he told the nation.
Most sources found that Obama did quite a bit of cherry picking and provided some doctored numbers in his annual speech.
Let’s look at one of his first claims of the evening: “After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs.”
An Associated Press article reports that 6.1 million private sector jobs have been added since February 2010, but when his full time in office is factored in that number shrinks to 1.2 million.
Furthermore, since the recession began, the U.S. is still behind 3.2 million jobs. I realize that politicians are supposed to pat themselves on the back, but I expect them to use the whole truth when doing so.
More job numbers that Obama claims to have responsibility for are the 500,000 manufacturing jobs over the past three years. For some reason, Obama again decided to forget part of his term, which, if included, would put this number at a loss of 600,000.
Obama trumpeted the health care act he is trying to force on Americans by claiming that the law was reducing the growth of health care costs.
Interestingly, every study conducted holds that the Affordable Care Act will either raise costs or have little impact. It is far too early to make such a claim considering less than half of the bill is in effect.
Moving into gun control, Obama claims that the overwhelming majority of Americans support “common-sense reform,” which is the equivalent of saying, “People agree that murder is wrong.”
Common sense is a vague term with both sides claiming to be the possessors. In fact, the issue that he brings up — background checking — is already enacted in law in some form.
On the topic of violence, Obama has been criticized for his use of drone strikes.
Speaking on this, he said, “We have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts,” which has been rated as false by most outlets.
Many congressmen have claimed that they have been kept completely in the dark about Obama’s plan for oversight of these strikes.
The State of the Union is one of the most important speeches that the president makes each year.
Most Americans hear what Obama says and trust it because he is the president. What they fail to realize is that Obama is really doing nothing more than trying to make himself sound like a succeeding president.
In the end, though, I cannot say that I am surprised that Obama chose to use misinformation in his speech. After all, he did the same thing in his last State of the Union. And the one before that. And the one before that. You get the picture.
