WPost Fact-Checker shreds Obama auto recovery claims
President Obama's claims to have saved the U.S. auto industry with government bailouts, takeovers and buyouts in 2009 don't quite square with the facts.
Actually, according to The Washington Post's Fact Checker by Glenn Kessler, Obama's claims are "one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan."
Obama routinely claims these days that U.S. taxpayers have received back more than the $8.5 billion loaned to Chrysler by the current occupant of the Oval Office. But, as Fact Checker points out, that doesn't include $4 billion from the government under President Bush.
"This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan," Fact Checker's Kessler points out.
"A more honest presentation would combine the two figures to say U.S. taxpayers got back 90 percent of what they invested. In fact, that is how the Treasury and other administration officials frequently portray it; it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy," Kessler said.
There is more, much more, in Kessler's analysis, which you can read in full here.
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