Fact Checking the GOP Response

Ryan and Bachmann made two new false claims, and repeated other talking points, in their responses to the president's State of the Union address.

FactCheck.org
January 27, 2011

We fact-checked President Obama’s State of the Union address, but what about the Republican response speeches? We found two new claims that we haven’t covered before:

* In the official response, Rep. Paul Ryan said that "trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high." He’s wrong on both counts. Trust has been lower, and government has been larger, in the past.

* In her own rebuttal to Obama, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that the bailout cost "$700 billion." The net cost actually is estimated to be much less — $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In addition, the two Republicans repeated several false and misleading charges we’ve already written about. Our readers will be familiar with many of them, such as claims that the stimulus didn’t create jobs (it did), that the health care law hurts job growth (experts say the impact will be small), and that "16,500 IRS agents" will enforce that law (that’s based on a flawed, partisan analysis).

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin gave the official Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 25. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota also gave a response speech that night to Tea Party Express activists. We found factual issues with both of their remarks.

(More here.)