http://www.bettorsworld.com/web/forums/showthread.php?7057-My-Worst-Sportsbetting-Blunder
I think I was stoned on 12/20/2000
This nails "it".
Don't cross Cruz off your list until you get to hear him. Then give what he says some thought. Mr Obama has devalued the Presidency with his blatant and repeated lies. Ted Cruz is authentic. What you see is what you get. Don't be dissuaded by those who would write specious articles like the one that led this thread. Let his opposition define why they consider him a "wacko". I think that you will find that they have much difficulty doing that. Noone has done it in this longassed thread yet. Ted Cruz is the real deal and he has a message that should be embraced by every American who loved the America that elevated the standard of living of the whole world, the America that our forefarthers had in mind when they wrote our founding documents.
If you are going to diss the man, do it with substance. I've been waiting this whole thread.
Ted Cruz’s Plan To Abolish the IRS Isn’t Stupid, It’s Plain Evil
http://thedailybanter.com/2015/03/ted-cruzs-plan-to-abolish-the-irs-isnt-stupid-its-plain-evil/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evil? Squeal much, little piggies?
http://thedailybanter.com/2015/03/ted-cruzs-plan-to-abolish-the-irs-isnt-stupid-its-plain-evil/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evil? Squeal much, little piggies?
"But he has yet to discuss what kind of agency would replace the IRS to actually review, process, and enforce compliance with the new system. That’s intentional. He doesn’t want one; he’s fundamentally opposed to the entire notion of progressive taxation itself."
"No IRS means no enforcement capability and thus massive tax fraud. No IRS means a dramatic collapse in federal revenue. No IRS even dooms his own proposed tax reform, since no one will be around to actually implement it. These are all also intentional."
"These are features, not flaws. If rich right-wingers are better able to successfully break more tax laws with even less scrutiny, then they’re just job creators struggling under the yoke of socialist oppression. If federal tax revenues collapse, then that’ll just give Congress an excuse to finally cut off all those parasitic welfare programs and privatize more services. If no IRS means the federal government can’t actually set up or implement his radically retrogressive tax plan, then whatever. It’s just intended as presenteeism anyways."
"Cruz is aggressively advancing the Republican agenda set by Grover Norquist back in 2001: to reduce the federal government to “the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Never mind that this agenda is, well, manifestly evil, designed to entrench a ruling plutocratic elite and further reduce the power of the powerless."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cry me a river.
Oh well, I guess this is one of those unintended consequences of electing an unvetted community agitating tyrant who thought turning the IRS into the KGB would be a great idea. When traditionally trusted American institutions are no longer trusted; when the Fedzilla's agencies are used and abused by radicals to "punish political enemies"; when accountability becomes a thing of the past from the top down...unthinkable ideas once thought of as 'radical' (at least in the mind of 'progressives') become more and more mainstream and palatable.
Abolish the IRS? Hey, why not? They're just the enforcement arm of the Democrat Party...at least this is what more and more Republicans believe.
Hopey Changey ("fundamental transformation") - reap what you sow, commies!
:bigfinger
"No IRS means no enforcement capability and thus massive tax fraud. No IRS means a dramatic collapse in federal revenue. No IRS even dooms his own proposed tax reform, since no one will be around to actually implement it. These are all also intentional."
"These are features, not flaws. If rich right-wingers are better able to successfully break more tax laws with even less scrutiny, then they’re just job creators struggling under the yoke of socialist oppression. If federal tax revenues collapse, then that’ll just give Congress an excuse to finally cut off all those parasitic welfare programs and privatize more services. If no IRS means the federal government can’t actually set up or implement his radically retrogressive tax plan, then whatever. It’s just intended as presenteeism anyways."
"Cruz is aggressively advancing the Republican agenda set by Grover Norquist back in 2001: to reduce the federal government to “the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Never mind that this agenda is, well, manifestly evil, designed to entrench a ruling plutocratic elite and further reduce the power of the powerless."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cry me a river.
Oh well, I guess this is one of those unintended consequences of electing an unvetted community agitating tyrant who thought turning the IRS into the KGB would be a great idea. When traditionally trusted American institutions are no longer trusted; when the Fedzilla's agencies are used and abused by radicals to "punish political enemies"; when accountability becomes a thing of the past from the top down...unthinkable ideas once thought of as 'radical' (at least in the mind of 'progressives') become more and more mainstream and palatable.
Abolish the IRS? Hey, why not? They're just the enforcement arm of the Democrat Party...at least this is what more and more Republicans believe.
Hopey Changey ("fundamental transformation") - reap what you sow, commies!
:bigfinger
Ted has been dissed with substance the whole thread, starting with this in post 1: Cruz’s Politifact track record for publicly-asserted falsehoods is the second-highest among front-runners, totaling 56 percent of all statements they’ve looked at.
I realize you like the guy, but facts are facts. The main gist of this thread anyway is that he has zero chance to be the nominee and/or the President, and as a smart, sane guy you know that.
Electability is definitely in question. Unelectable? I don't believe that. I believe in his message. I believe it is the message that backboned our country since it's founding. The problem is, like many have said, that the message is pablum in the mouths of most politicians from either side of the aisle. But not with Cruz. He will define conservative values and the message for a healthy, successful America. He will articulate it like few can because it is not bullshit spin to him. It is what his soul believes. And I believe that most Americans still believe in the conservative message. We just need an articulate spokesman. Ted Cruz is that man.
As for Politifact, I have no idea who they are or what their agenda is. I know BS when I hear it and lies when I hear them. I have been following Cruz for some time now. I have not heard any lies and I don't expect to hear any or my enthusiasm for Cruz will evaporate.
56% of his statements are falsehoods? That's a crazy, inaccurate statement. What are these false statements? Bring them here for discussion. One, or two or three will do.
"56% of his statements are falsehoods." Wow. You bring garbage like that here and expect intelligent people to just accept that? C'mon man.
As for Politifact, I have no idea who they are or what their agenda is. I know BS when I hear it and lies when I hear them. I have been following Cruz for some time now. I have not heard any lies and I don't expect to hear any or my enthusiasm for Cruz will evaporate.
56% of his statements are falsehoods? That's a crazy, inaccurate statement. What are these false statements? Bring them here for discussion. One, or two or three will do.
"56% of his statements are falsehoods." Wow. You bring garbage like that here and expect intelligent people to just accept that? C'mon man.
They can't. Saying he's wacko is nothing more than a cheap defense mechanism...kind of like how grade schoolers who had a crush on a classmate would call them "gross" or pretend not to like them. You want me to list specifics of why the current administration is wacko? I could be here for hours. Dims can't do that about Cruz. Deep down, they are scared shitless of him. A minority who had the audacity to put himself through school without a helping hand from big brother? Who the hell does he think he is?
You want to see some real racism from the Left? Just wait and see what they'll have to say about Cruz if his campaign is able to pick up some steam.
Establishment Republicans don't like Cruz because he is looking to get America back to what the founding fathers intended. RINOs are perfectly content selling their souls to maintain their place in the oasis, and Teddy ain't down with that. This quote sums up why:
“What is the promise of America? The idea that, the revolutionary idea, that this country was founded upon, which was our rights, they don’t come from man. They come from God Almighty. And it’s the purpose of the Constitution … to serve as chains, to bind the mischief of government.”
What an absolute bad ass.
Like I've said several times, Cruz has an uphill battle and will uniquely face opposition from both parties. If there was ever a time to cash in some divine intervention, now is it. God knows he may be the last hope for this country.
Progressives trying to define Cruz ("he's crazy and extreme!!") = Saul Alinsky 101
Good luck with that. This is a guy who memorized the Constitution at age 13.
Maybe the progressive establishment should tell Katie Couric to sit down with Cruz and sandbag him by asking him what he likes to read and stuff.
k:
Good luck with that. This is a guy who memorized the Constitution at age 13.
Maybe the progressive establishment should tell Katie Couric to sit down with Cruz and sandbag him by asking him what he likes to read and stuff.
k:
[h=1]The artifice and artificiality of Ted Cruz[/h]
By Scot LehighGlobe Columnist March 24, 2015
Ted Cruz, the 44-year-old Texas Republican who announced for president on Monday, is a politician who presents a set of unappealing alternatives.
In a Senate where professed “good friends” frequently disdain each other, he’s a particular object of scorn, a pariah even in his own party caucus. That’s because he has used his Tea Party popularity to pressure Republicans into budgetary brinkmanship without any plausible prospect for success. Witness the 2013 government shutdown that Cruz precipitated in an attempt to defund Obamacare, a gambit that left the government gasping and may have injured the economy, but otherwise accomplished nothing — just as his colleagues had warned.
So how to view that sort of senator? Cruz’s explanation is that he has stayed true to Texas and not allowed Washington to change him. The charitable perspective, then, is that Cruz is committed to his cause, but simply clueless as a political tactician.
The alternative view is that Cruz cared more about making himself a hero to Obama-loathing Tea Party Republicans than he worried about hurting the country or putting his GOP colleagues in a spot that they could extract themselves from only through an embarrassing retreat. That would speak to an egoism, ambition, and obliviousness enormous even by Washington’s monumental standards.
But let’s hold judgment in abeyance for a moment and consider Cruz in fuller frame.
Although he’s a polished political orator, the Texas senator admits to little or no complexity. He says the debate on climate change should follow science — and then ignores the strong scientific consensus. He calls for a flat tax to foster tax-filing simplicity and relieve burdens on struggling families, with no acknowledgment that such a scheme would either explode the deficit or shift the tax burden dramatically downward. For him, the Affordable Care Act is a simple usurpation of liberty rather than a complex attempt, replete with both winners and losers, to extend affordable health coverage to everyone.
He views the state-led Common Core endeavor to raise education standards as the federal government dictating school curriculum. He considers efforts to ban armor-piercing bullets an attempt to undermine Second Amendment rights. He declares that, when it comes to erosion of liberty, the United States is near the point of no return.
Here, again, an observer appraising Cruz is left with a choice.
Perhaps the conservative Texan is so much the ideologue, perhaps he sees the world in such black and white terms, perhaps he’s so unaware of fiscal, economic, and policy facts, that he truly believes all that. And yet, profiles of Cruz are full of accounts about his brilliance at Princeton University and Harvard Law School; about his range and dexterity as a debater; about the suppleness and originality of his arguments as an appellate lawyer.
And then one reads Cruz elaborating on his political and legal philosophy. “In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative,” he told The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin last year. “As [Chinese military strategist] Sun Tzu said, Every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.”
That doesn’t sound like either a political naif or a man with a simple, dichromatic view of things.
And then one listens to his rhetoric.
There’s something so overwrought about his tropes, so melodramatic about his warnings, so histrionic about his exhortations, that Cruz seems more like a soap-opera actor auditioning for a role in a new cable TV series about Washington than a finely honed intellect contemplating the issues of the day.
Put all the puzzle pieces together, and the picture that takes shape is of artifice and artificiality.
Now, it’s possible that Cruz could emerge as a force in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus contest. After all, Rick Santorum, a man whose political approach is not dissimilar, eked out a razor-thin victory over Mitt Romney there last time around. And Mike Huckabee, another silver-tongued southern orator, won there in 2008.
But Cruz is the kind of candidate who usually falls flat when the campaign moves to New Hampshire. His rhetoric is too humid, his message too simplistic, his thespianism too obvious to wear well in a state that likes things real.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.
Ted Cruz, the 44-year-old Texas Republican who announced for president on Monday, is a politician who presents a set of unappealing alternatives.
In a Senate where professed “good friends” frequently disdain each other, he’s a particular object of scorn, a pariah even in his own party caucus. That’s because he has used his Tea Party popularity to pressure Republicans into budgetary brinkmanship without any plausible prospect for success. Witness the 2013 government shutdown that Cruz precipitated in an attempt to defund Obamacare, a gambit that left the government gasping and may have injured the economy, but otherwise accomplished nothing — just as his colleagues had warned.
So how to view that sort of senator? Cruz’s explanation is that he has stayed true to Texas and not allowed Washington to change him. The charitable perspective, then, is that Cruz is committed to his cause, but simply clueless as a political tactician.
The alternative view is that Cruz cared more about making himself a hero to Obama-loathing Tea Party Republicans than he worried about hurting the country or putting his GOP colleagues in a spot that they could extract themselves from only through an embarrassing retreat. That would speak to an egoism, ambition, and obliviousness enormous even by Washington’s monumental standards.
But let’s hold judgment in abeyance for a moment and consider Cruz in fuller frame.
Although he’s a polished political orator, the Texas senator admits to little or no complexity. He says the debate on climate change should follow science — and then ignores the strong scientific consensus. He calls for a flat tax to foster tax-filing simplicity and relieve burdens on struggling families, with no acknowledgment that such a scheme would either explode the deficit or shift the tax burden dramatically downward. For him, the Affordable Care Act is a simple usurpation of liberty rather than a complex attempt, replete with both winners and losers, to extend affordable health coverage to everyone.
He views the state-led Common Core endeavor to raise education standards as the federal government dictating school curriculum. He considers efforts to ban armor-piercing bullets an attempt to undermine Second Amendment rights. He declares that, when it comes to erosion of liberty, the United States is near the point of no return.
Here, again, an observer appraising Cruz is left with a choice.
Perhaps the conservative Texan is so much the ideologue, perhaps he sees the world in such black and white terms, perhaps he’s so unaware of fiscal, economic, and policy facts, that he truly believes all that. And yet, profiles of Cruz are full of accounts about his brilliance at Princeton University and Harvard Law School; about his range and dexterity as a debater; about the suppleness and originality of his arguments as an appellate lawyer.
And then one reads Cruz elaborating on his political and legal philosophy. “In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative,” he told The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin last year. “As [Chinese military strategist] Sun Tzu said, Every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.”
That doesn’t sound like either a political naif or a man with a simple, dichromatic view of things.
And then one listens to his rhetoric.
There’s something so overwrought about his tropes, so melodramatic about his warnings, so histrionic about his exhortations, that Cruz seems more like a soap-opera actor auditioning for a role in a new cable TV series about Washington than a finely honed intellect contemplating the issues of the day.
Put all the puzzle pieces together, and the picture that takes shape is of artifice and artificiality.
Now, it’s possible that Cruz could emerge as a force in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus contest. After all, Rick Santorum, a man whose political approach is not dissimilar, eked out a razor-thin victory over Mitt Romney there last time around. And Mike Huckabee, another silver-tongued southern orator, won there in 2008.
But Cruz is the kind of candidate who usually falls flat when the campaign moves to New Hampshire. His rhetoric is too humid, his message too simplistic, his thespianism too obvious to wear well in a state that likes things real.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.
[h=1]FactChecking Ted Cruz[/h] [h=4][/h]
468
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the first major Republican candidate to declare himself officially in the 2016 presidential race. In announcing his presidential ambition, Cruz repeated a number of dubious claims we have heard before, and a few we haven’t.
Some highlights:
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 already bans armor-piercing ammunition with exemptions for ammunition it deems “primarily intended for sporting purposes.” On Feb. 13, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives proposed withdrawing an exemption it had granted in 1986 for the “M855 ‘green tip’ ammunition,” according to the agency’s public notice explaining the proposal and seeking comments. The National Rifle Association said the M855 is commonly used in AR-15 rifles.
Cruz was one of 53 senators who signed a March 9 letter to the ATF objecting to the bureau’s proposal for the M855. On March 10, the ATF announced it would postpone issuing a final decision, saying the “vast majority” of the 80,000 comments it had received to date were critical of the proposed change and required “further study.”
Cruz also made a pitch to repeal “every word of Obamacare,” and he claimed that as a result of the law “millions … have lost their health insurance.”
Cruz isn’t the first to make this claim, which stems from President Obama’s ill-fated promise, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” That was clearly proven false when, in the fall of 2013, several million people received cancellation notices for individual market plans that no longer met the law’s benefit requirements.
But to claim simply that millions lost their health insurance is misleading. Those individual market plans were discontinued, but policyholders weren’t denied coverage. Many upgraded to compliant plans (albeit at a higher cost, for some).
Moreover, there is evidence that far more have gained coverage than had their policies canceled. According to an Urban Institute report in March, the number of insured Americans rose by nearly 10 million between September 2013 and December 2014. Overall, the rate of uninsured in the U.S. fell during that period from 17.7 percent to 12.8 percent, the report said.
Cruz also claimed that the Affordable Care Act was hurting workers, saying “millions” were being “forced into part-time work.” There may have been some impact on the hours of part-time workers, but we couldn’t find any hard data that backs up Cruz’s claim of “millions,” or even approaches that figure.
In January, part of the employer mandate took effect, requiring businesses with 100 or more workers to offer health insurance to their full-time employees or pay a fine. Full-time, for purposes of the law, is defined as 30 hours or more per week. (The requirement will apply to businesses with 50 or more workers next year, with businesses below that staffing threshold remaining exempt.) This aspect of the law has led to anecdotal stories of employers cutting workers’ hours to keep them under 30 hours.
When we asked Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, about this issue, he told us that he didn’t think the law had had much of an impact on job growth. But “f there is an impact it is on the number of part-timers who would like to work full-time. This has declined since the recession, but remains high by historical standards. This probably still reflects the ill-effects of the recession, but it may also reflect the impact of Obamacare.”
One analysis, by FiveThirtyEight’s chief economics writer, Ben Casselman, found it was “likely” that the law had “led a few hundred thousand workers to see their hours cut or capped,” based partly on a small increase in the proportion of part-time employees working between 25 and 29 hours a week from 2009 to 2013 and a small drop in the proportion working between 31 and 34 hours. That’s based on the monthly Current Population Survey compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. An analysis by the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also used CPS data and found “a small increase in part-time work in 2014 beyond what would be expected at this point in the economic recovery.” But that increase affected those working between 30 and 34 hours a week, as well as those below 30 hours. The analysis said the increase in part-time work was “more likely due to a slower than normal recovery of full-time jobs following the Great Recession.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also has estimated that more than 2 million workers would cut their own hours — voluntarily — or retire earlier than they normally would have by 2021 because of the ACA. The reason? The law offers a secure option for purchasing individual insurance through the exchanges, and it provides more financial resources, in the form of subsidies, to those with low incomes.
In January, Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants (owner of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s), made the same claim as Cruz — that “millions” had moved from full-time to part-time jobs. But that number was speculation, based on Puzder’s conversations with other restaurant-chain CEOs, as our fact-checking colleagues at Politifact wrote.
Cruz also repeated several misleading claims that we have written about before:
In a video response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in January, Cruz claimed that “not a word was said about radical Islamic terrorism.” Obama didn’t use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” but he vowed to combat “violent extremism” and asked for congressional authority to use force against the Islamic State. Cruz also said Obama “could not bring himself even to bring” up the president’s executive action on immigration. But he did. Obama said he would veto legislation that attempts to undo it.
Cruz condemned Obama’s announcement that he would normalize relations with Cuba, calling the communist country “a leading state sponsor of terrorism.” That’s a stretch, to say the least. While Cuba – along with Iran, Syria and Sudan — is listed by the State Department as one of four “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” the department’s annual Country Report on Terrorism, published in April, provided little evidence of Cuba sponsoring terrorism, especially compared with the extensive portfolio of the others on that list.
One last thing for the record: While we noted that Cruz is the first major candidate to officially enter the 2016 presidential race, he is by no means the first. According to the Federal Elections Commission, 194 candidates, including 55 Republicans, beat Cruz to the punch.
– Robert Farley, Lori Robertson and Eugene Kiely
- Posted on March 23, 2015
468
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the first major Republican candidate to declare himself officially in the 2016 presidential race. In announcing his presidential ambition, Cruz repeated a number of dubious claims we have heard before, and a few we haven’t.
Some highlights:
- Cruz railed against a “government … that seeks to ban our ammunition.” The Obama administration sought to ban a certain type of armor-piercing bullet, not all types of ammunition. The proposal has since been postponed.
- Cruz claimed that as a result of the Affordable Care Act “millions … have lost their health insurance.” In fact, about 10 million people on net gained insurance between September 2013 and December 2014, according to the Urban Institute.
- Cruz also claimed that as a result of the law “millions [have been] forced into part-time work.” There’s no solid figure on how many may have had their hours cut to part time, but one analysis of monthly labor surveys said the number was “likely” a few hundred thousand.
The Liberty Speech
In his announcement speech, Cruz accused the Obama administration of seeking “to ban our ammunition.” The administration isn’t seeking to ban the public from buying ammunition, but it recently sought to ban a certain type of armor-piercing bullet.
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 already bans armor-piercing ammunition with exemptions for ammunition it deems “primarily intended for sporting purposes.” On Feb. 13, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives proposed withdrawing an exemption it had granted in 1986 for the “M855 ‘green tip’ ammunition,” according to the agency’s public notice explaining the proposal and seeking comments. The National Rifle Association said the M855 is commonly used in AR-15 rifles.
Cruz was one of 53 senators who signed a March 9 letter to the ATF objecting to the bureau’s proposal for the M855. On March 10, the ATF announced it would postpone issuing a final decision, saying the “vast majority” of the 80,000 comments it had received to date were critical of the proposed change and required “further study.”
Cruz also made a pitch to repeal “every word of Obamacare,” and he claimed that as a result of the law “millions … have lost their health insurance.”
Cruz isn’t the first to make this claim, which stems from President Obama’s ill-fated promise, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” That was clearly proven false when, in the fall of 2013, several million people received cancellation notices for individual market plans that no longer met the law’s benefit requirements.
But to claim simply that millions lost their health insurance is misleading. Those individual market plans were discontinued, but policyholders weren’t denied coverage. Many upgraded to compliant plans (albeit at a higher cost, for some).
Moreover, there is evidence that far more have gained coverage than had their policies canceled. According to an Urban Institute report in March, the number of insured Americans rose by nearly 10 million between September 2013 and December 2014. Overall, the rate of uninsured in the U.S. fell during that period from 17.7 percent to 12.8 percent, the report said.
Cruz also claimed that the Affordable Care Act was hurting workers, saying “millions” were being “forced into part-time work.” There may have been some impact on the hours of part-time workers, but we couldn’t find any hard data that backs up Cruz’s claim of “millions,” or even approaches that figure.
In January, part of the employer mandate took effect, requiring businesses with 100 or more workers to offer health insurance to their full-time employees or pay a fine. Full-time, for purposes of the law, is defined as 30 hours or more per week. (The requirement will apply to businesses with 50 or more workers next year, with businesses below that staffing threshold remaining exempt.) This aspect of the law has led to anecdotal stories of employers cutting workers’ hours to keep them under 30 hours.
When we asked Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, about this issue, he told us that he didn’t think the law had had much of an impact on job growth. But “f there is an impact it is on the number of part-timers who would like to work full-time. This has declined since the recession, but remains high by historical standards. This probably still reflects the ill-effects of the recession, but it may also reflect the impact of Obamacare.”
One analysis, by FiveThirtyEight’s chief economics writer, Ben Casselman, found it was “likely” that the law had “led a few hundred thousand workers to see their hours cut or capped,” based partly on a small increase in the proportion of part-time employees working between 25 and 29 hours a week from 2009 to 2013 and a small drop in the proportion working between 31 and 34 hours. That’s based on the monthly Current Population Survey compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. An analysis by the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also used CPS data and found “a small increase in part-time work in 2014 beyond what would be expected at this point in the economic recovery.” But that increase affected those working between 30 and 34 hours a week, as well as those below 30 hours. The analysis said the increase in part-time work was “more likely due to a slower than normal recovery of full-time jobs following the Great Recession.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also has estimated that more than 2 million workers would cut their own hours — voluntarily — or retire earlier than they normally would have by 2021 because of the ACA. The reason? The law offers a secure option for purchasing individual insurance through the exchanges, and it provides more financial resources, in the form of subsidies, to those with low incomes.
In January, Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants (owner of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s), made the same claim as Cruz — that “millions” had moved from full-time to part-time jobs. But that number was speculation, based on Puzder’s conversations with other restaurant-chain CEOs, as our fact-checking colleagues at Politifact wrote.
Cruz also repeated several misleading claims that we have written about before:
- Cruz vowed to repeal “every word of Common Core,” which he called an effort by the federal government to “dictate school curriculum.” As we have said before, the standards were developed by governors and state education officials and voluntarily adopted by states, and the curriculum is set by state and local school officials.
- Cruz also warned that the Affordable Care Act puts the government “between you and your doctor.” As we wrote when Cruz made a similar claim back in 2013, the law doesn’t create a government-run system. If anything, the law comes between you and your insurance company, forbidding them from capping your coverage or charging you more based on health status.
- Cruz blamed the law for “skyrocketing health insurance premiums.” But as we have written before, premiums for those who buy their own private insurance will go up or down, in some cases significantly, depending on individual circumstances. And premiums for employer-sponsored plans, where most Americans have coverage, have increased at a much slower rate than they did under President George W. Bush.
The Cruz File
A 30-second video announcing Cruz’s candidacy for president begins, “It’s a time for truth.” Here at FactCheck.org, we couldn’t agree more.
But as our archives show, Cruz is no stranger to FactCheck.org’s pages. We have checked more than a dozen dubious claims Cruz has made since entering the Senate in January 2013. And as we will do for all of the politicians who get into the presidential race, we’ll highlight some of the misleading claims that we have examined.
Immigration Claims
Cruz voted against and has been a vocal critic of a Senate-passed immigration bill, S. 744, which has stalled in the House. After a series of border security measures are met, the bill would have allowed a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally since at least Dec. 31, 2011. The earned path to citizenship included paying fines and back taxes, proving gainful employment, completing background checks, learning English and civics, and going to the back of the line of prospective immigrants. Cruz has called any path to citizenship “amnesty.”- Cruz claimed in November that the 2014 midterm elections were “a referendum on amnesty” and voters had sent a clear message opposing it. But Cruz was wrong. Election voters, by a margin of 57 percent to 39 percent, said those living in the U.S. illegally but working should be offered a chance to gain legal status, according to exit polling.
- Cruz has regularly drawn applause in recent speeches for his suggestion to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and put “every one of those 110,000 [IRS] agents … on our southern border.” But, as we have written, the IRS has nowhere near 110,000 employees, let alone that many agents. The number of IRS employees has been on the decline, and currently stands at about 82,000. Less than a quarter of them are revenue agents, special agents or revenue officers.
- On July 21, 2013, Cruz warned that if the Senate immigration bill became law, there will be “20 or 30 million” people living in the U.S. illegally “in another 10, 20 years.” That’s his opinion, but we wrote that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill, if enacted, will reduce future illegal immigration in 10 years by 33 percent to 50 percent compared with current law.
Health Care/Affordable Care Act
Cruz has been a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, regularly calling for its full repeal, as he did in his announcement speech. But Cruz’s criticisms of the health care law have not always been on the mark.- In a press conference on Oct. 16, 2013, Cruz claimed that “families of special needs children will face a new penalty for using savings” to pay for medical expenses. He was referring to a $2,500 cap on pre-tax contributions to flexible spending accounts. Actually, advocates for special needs children told us that provision hasn’t had much of an impact, and the new law “greatly benefits people with disabilities.”
- In September 2013, Cruz distorted the impact of the Affordable Care Act on premiums. He claimed that the Ohio Department of Insurance announced an 88 percent average increase for the individual market. It didn’t. The department estimated a 41 percent increase on average in a press release that called for the law’s repeal.
- In a TV ad, Cruz misconstrued the words of the health care law’s lead author. Claiming “there’s bipartisan agreement that Obamacare isn’t working,” Cruz said Max Baucus, a Democratic senator at the time, called the law “a huge train wreck.” But Baucus didn’t say “Obamacare isn’t working,” and he didn’t call it “a huge train wreck.” He was critical of the education and outreach efforts of the administration during implementation of the law, not the law itself.
- Cruz misrepresented union opposition to the health care law. Cruz claimed unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, want to “repeal” the health care law “because it is a nightmare.” Three unions used the word “nightmare” in a letter to Democratic leaders in Congress. But they asked that the law be fixed, not repealed.
- Cruz falsely claimed that the spouses of 15,000 UPS employees will be “left without health insurance” and forced into “an exchange with no employer subsidy.” UPS announced it was dropping coverage for spouses, but only if they can get insurance with their own employer.
- Cruz repeated the false claim that members of Congress are exempt from the health care law. As we have written numerous times, the law requires congressional members and their staffs to get insurance through the newly created exchanges, so they are not exempt. In fact, the law prevents them from getting insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, like other federal employees. However, the federal government will continue to make contributions toward the premiums of lawmakers and their staffs — just as most large employers do for their employees.
Miscellaneous
In a recent critique of NASA spending on earth and atmospheric sciences, Cruz claimed there has been a “disproportionate increase” since 2009 in funding of earth sciences. There has been an increase, but spending on earth sciences is lower now as a percentage of NASA’s budget than it was in fiscal 2000. And the increase reflects an effort to restore funding that had been cut. Cruz also suggested that NASA’s “core mission” does not include earth sciences. In fact, studying the Earth and atmosphere has been central to NASA’s mission since its creation in 1958.In a video response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in January, Cruz claimed that “not a word was said about radical Islamic terrorism.” Obama didn’t use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” but he vowed to combat “violent extremism” and asked for congressional authority to use force against the Islamic State. Cruz also said Obama “could not bring himself even to bring” up the president’s executive action on immigration. But he did. Obama said he would veto legislation that attempts to undo it.
Cruz condemned Obama’s announcement that he would normalize relations with Cuba, calling the communist country “a leading state sponsor of terrorism.” That’s a stretch, to say the least. While Cuba – along with Iran, Syria and Sudan — is listed by the State Department as one of four “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” the department’s annual Country Report on Terrorism, published in April, provided little evidence of Cuba sponsoring terrorism, especially compared with the extensive portfolio of the others on that list.
One last thing for the record: While we noted that Cruz is the first major candidate to officially enter the 2016 presidential race, he is by no means the first. According to the Federal Elections Commission, 194 candidates, including 55 Republicans, beat Cruz to the punch.
– Robert Farley, Lori Robertson and Eugene Kiely
