Maybe presidential candidates aren’t morning people. Those sharp-eyed folks over at FactCheck.org uncovered some particularly sloppy assertions by the Republican contenders during last Sunday’s “This Week” debate in Des Moines:
The Republican presidential candidates debated – and sounded some more false notes:
* Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney falsely claimed U.S. job growth had been nearly 17 times faster than Europe’s. Actually, European Union employment grew faster than that of the U.S. last year. Romney’s figures come from a source who told FactCheck.org that he would no longer use them.
* Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Democratic candidates of “appeasement” toward Islamic terrorists. In fact, leading Democratic candidates have spoken out strongly against terrorism.
* Sen. John McCain claimed American families spend $140 billion of their income preparing federal income tax returns. We find no support for that figure, which the Internal Revenue Service puts at $19 billion.
* Rep. Tom Tancredo claimed illegal immigrants “are taking a large part of our health care dollars.” But the independent Rand Corp. estimates that undocumented immigrants account for 1.5 percent of health care spending or less.