Fact-checking the GOP debate in New Hampshire

By Glenn Kessler
WashPost

That was some collection of facts and statistics during the GOP debate in New Hampshire on Monday night that aired on CNN.

We’re going to take an instant stab at some of them, and then perhaps come back later this week with a more extended look at other assertions. Depressingly, some of these we have heard before.

We will have to keep dinging the candidates till they get their facts right.

“The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has said that Obamacare will kill 800,000 jobs. What could the president be thinking by passing a bill like this, knowing full well it will kill 800,000 jobs?” — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

We hadn’t heard this yarn much since we debunked it four months ago with three Pinocchios. But here it has popped up again.

The Congressional Budget Office last August had estimated that the new health care law over the next decade would reduce the number of overall workers in the United States by one-half of one percent, which translates into 800,000 people. But that’s not the same as saying it would “kill” that many jobs.

(More here.)