To cheers and standing ovations, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Wednesday night, but it was laced with untruths and economic inaccuracies, according to fact checkers like Politifact.com and Thinkprogress.org. Even foxnews.com – Sally Kohn – thought Ryan was “attempt(ing) to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”
Here are the more glaring untruths, according to fact checkers:
1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”
2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.
3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.
