Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates

Mr. Romney did say during the primaries that he would veto the Dream Act, a measure supported mainly by Democrats that has long been stalled in Congress.  In June, Mr. Romney shifted his position to say he would support giving legal resident green cards to “illegal immigrants who served in our military” — one group who would be eligible under the Dream Act.

In a town hall meeting last month in Miami with Univision, the Spanish-language network, Mr. Romney said he would also consider giving green cards to “kids that get higher education,” echoing another part of the Dream Act. But Mr. Romney said he preferred the approach of Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who started work last spring on an alternative to the Democrats’ bill.

However, few details are known of Mr. Rubio’s proposal, because he never offered a written blueprint. In June, after President Obama announced he would give temporary reprieves from deportation to young immigrants — in part to upstage Mr. Rubio — the senator set aside his efforts.

Under the Dream Act, by independent estimates at least 1.2  million young undocumented immigrants could be eligible for legal status.

— Julia Preston

Mr. Romney’s campaign cites a newspaper account of a meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House in 2009 as evidence for Mr. Romney’s statement. In that account, published in The Washington Post, people at the meeting said Mr. Obama had said that “there was no space between us and Israel” during the George W. Bush administration, which he said had hurt the ability of the United States to influence Israeli actions or cajole Arab nations. “When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Obama as saying.

An Obama administration official said they did not know whether Mr. Obama made that statement during what was a private meeting.

The newspaper account did not quote Mr. Obama as explicitly stating that his goal was to put distance between the United States and Israel, as Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama’s intentions during a recent speech. Instead, the account indicates Mr. Obama was complaining that what he suggested was the Bush administration’s unwillingness to challenge the Israelis had reduced the American government’s leverage over Israel and hurt its reputation with Muslim countries. At the same time, a plain reading of the account would also suggest that Mr. Obama wanted for his administration to be seen as less of a rubber stamp for Israel than the Bush administration was.

Obama administration officials have said that there is no daylight whatsoever between the United States and Israel on the issue of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

A broader question is how much “daylight” there has been between the two countries since Mr. Obama took office. Mr. Obama angered some Israeli leaders, like Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, by publicly stating that Israel’s 1967 borders adjusted though land swaps should be the starting point for settlement negotiations with the Palestinians, and by pushing Israel to curb settlement construction in the West Bank.

But many experts are puzzled by the Romney camp’s claim that Mr. Obama has been weak on Israel, saying the opposite is actually true. Even Israel’s own defense minister – and former prime minister – Ehud Barak has repeatedly and enthusiastically praised Mr. Obama’s support, telling CNN in July: “I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing in regard to our security more than anything that I can remember in the past.” Other experts cite Mr. Obama’s extensive military aid to Israel, as well as his unwavering opposition at the United Nations to Palestinian statehood.

— Richard A. Oppel Jr.

President Obama said that Mitt Romney’s “main strategy” to curb illegal immigration would be to “encourage self-deportation.”

Mr. Romney has never precisely clarified what he would do about more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. During the Republican primaries he called for tough enforcement to pressure them to leave the country. Since June he has moderated that position, saying he could support some measures that would allow a limited group of illegal immigrants to remain here legally.

Mr. Romney says he opposes any amnesty. During a primary debate in January, he said he would seek a mandatory nationwide program to verify the legal status of all new hires, expanding an existing federal program known as E-Verify, which currently is voluntary. With that program in place, he said, illegal immigrants would soon discover they could not get jobs and “they’re going to self-deport.”

Mr. Romney was pressed for more details on the self-deportation strategy during a town hall meeting last month in Miami with Univision, the Spanish language network. But he did not provide them. “I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home,” he said.

But he said he would not favor “a mass deportation effort, rounding people up, 12 million people.” Mr. Romney said, “Our system is not to deport people.”

He has said he would support giving permanent resident green cards to illegal immigrants who serve in the military — probably a group numbering tens of thousands.  Mr. Romney has said he would “put in place a permanent solution” for illegal immigration, but he has not described what it would look like or how he would get around the roadblocks in Congress that stalled President Obama’s efforts to pass legislation. Most Republican lawmakers in Washington have rejected any legal status for illegal immigrants, calling it amnesty.

— Julia Preston

This is a tweak of a long-running attack line the Obama campaign has used against Mr. Romney, based on investments made by the private equity firm he founded, Bain Capital. This time Mr. Obama softened the blow by accusing Mr. Romney of merely investing in the companies, as opposed to being more directly involved in those outsourcing decisions.

Fact-checkers, including Politifact.com, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, had questioned the more direct line of attack on outsourcing, because most of the companies cited by the Obama campaign were investments that occurred after Mr. Romney had left day-to-day management of Bain in 1999 to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Mr. Romney was indisputably involved with at least one Bain-owned company that outsourced jobs overseas — to China, in particular — Holson Burnes Group, a picture frame and photo album manufacturer that Bain owned from 1987 to 1995.

But FactCheck.org, which examined the issue, pointed out that it was unclear whether the company’s outsourcing increased or decreased under Bain, or if the manufacturing overseas came at the expense of American jobs.

The question of whether Bain Capital ever invested in such companies, with Mr. Romney benefiting as an investor, is a much less controversial one. Several of Bain’s investments did have operations in China, although it would be a stretch to call them “pioneers” in the practice.

It is also important to point out that since 2002, when he was elected governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney’s investments have been managed through an independent trustee.

— Michael Luo

It is true that Mr. Romney has spoken favorably of Arizona’s police law, known as S.B. 1070. He defended the state’s decision to pass it and he criticized President Obama for bringing a lawsuit to try to stop it. But what Mr. Romney calls his model is a less controversial law that made it mandatory for Arizona employers to use a federal electronic verification system, known as E-Verify, to check the immigration status of new hires.

“What I like about the Arizona law was a measure that says we’re going to have an employment verification system so that employers know who they’re able to hire and who they’re not able to hire,” Mr. Romney said last month, speaking to a Latino audience in a televised town hall meeting in Miami.

President Obama is right that Mr. Romney embraced some immigration hard-liners early in the campaign. During the primaries Mr. Romney welcomed the endorsement of Kris Kobach, a conservative lawyer who is now secretary of state of Kansas, and who was an author of Arizona’s police law. He has also provided templates for tough immigration enforcement bills in many other states. Mr. Kobach’s law-and-order views are regarded as extreme by many Latino and immigrant rights groups. More recently Mr. Romney has played down the role of Mr. Kobach in his campaign.

By the way, President Obama also supports mandatory worker verification, but only as part of a package that includes legal status and work authorization for millions of illegal immigrants.

— Julia Preston

Churches were exempt from the requirement when the Obama administration announced it last year. Still, it provoked furious criticism from Roman Catholic institutions and other religious and conservative groups, who called the exemption too narrow.

In February, the administration offered what Mr. Obama described as ”an accommodation” for church-affiliated schools, universities, hospitals and charities that object to the requirement. Under that plan, which has yet to be finalized, such institutions would not have to “pay for, provide or facilitate the provision of” contraceptive coverage. But their female employees could get such coverage directly from their insurance companies at no cost.

Roman Catholic bishops and other conservatives were not appeased by the compromise proposal. One of their concerns is that some religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves. They also say it is impossible to guarantee that the premiums paid by objecting organizations for their employees’ overall medical coverage would not help finance birth control.

Mr. Romney supported a Republican effort, known as the Blunt amendment, that would have let any employer or insurance company deny coverage for contraceptives and other items they objected to on religious or moral grounds. But the Senate in March narrowly voted to kill the effort.

Opponents have filed at least 35 lawsuits around the country seeking to have the contraception requirement overturned.

— Abby Goodnough

The United Steelworkers Union, an Obama political supporter, sought the action, and many economists criticized it as politically motivated.

A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the tariff protected at most 1,200 American jobs. But last year alone. the institute found, it cost American consumers $1.1 billion in higher-priced tires.

Moreover, China responded by imposing tariffs on imports of American chicken parts that cost American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion. Last month, the Obama administration quietly let the tire tariff expire. Critics say that it recognized the economic costs of the sanction were too great.

— Sharon LaFraniere

Two economists with the incoming administration, Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, ran some numbers estimating the job creation potential of a stimulus bill to arrest the economy’s free fall. They forecast that if such a bill were enacted, unemployment would never rise above 8 percent and would fall to about 5.4 percent by now.

But that was a projection made before economists really understood the severity of the recession, the historic plunge in output and huge job losses. Moreover, it was a projection by White House economists, not a promise Mr. Obama made.

— Annie Lowrey

Mr. Romney said Tuesday night that “I’m not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people” — which, as Mr. Obama noted, is a change from how he described his tax plans during the Republican primaries.

At a Republican primary debate this winter, when Rick Santorum charged that Mr. Romney might raise taxes on “the top 1 percent,” Mr. Romney countered, “We’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.”

Mr. Obama noted the change Tuesday night. “And when Governor Romney stands here, after a year of campaigning, when during a Republican primary he stood on stage and said, ‘I’m going to give tax cuts’ — he didn’t say tax rate cuts, he said ‘tax cuts to everybody,’ including the top 1 percent, you should believe him because that’s been his history,” Mr. Obama said.

You can see a video of some of Mr. Romney’s shifting tones here.

— Michael Cooper

The investment was actually made through a fund managed by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney founded and ran until 2001. Mr. Romney has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain Capital funds with sizable stakes in at least seven Chinese companies,including an electronics retailer accused of selling computers with pirated Microsoft software. He has millions more invested in Bain funds that control an auto parts company that is closing a United States factory and moving equipment and jobs to China.

Mr. Romney says his fortune is managed by a blind trust over which he has no control. However, the trust, managed by a law firm that also works for Bain Capital, would most likely not meet federal requirements for independent management should he become president because of the close relationship between the law firm, Mr. Romney and Bain.

— Michael McIntire

Mr. Romney said that Mr. Obama was hostile to coal and that the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had said that no future coal-burning plants would be built in the United States. In fact, the administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, proposed emissions standards for future coal-burning plants that would require them to be as clean as a plant using natural gas as a fuel. The technology to accomplish this does not yet exist, but utilities are swiftly shifting from coal to natural gas anyway because natural gas is now so plentiful and cheap.

Mr. Obama said that coal jobs and coal production were up during his administration, which is true, but the increases are modest and much of the additional coal production is being shipped overseas.

Mr. Obama also noted that as governor of Massachusetts Mr. Romney had cracked down on one coal-burning plant, saying that coal “kills people.” Mr. Romney did in fact accuse a utility of failing to live up to its promises to clean up emissions from one Massachusetts coal plant, saying, “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people. And that plant kills people and PG&E has been given a notice to have it cleaned up by 2004 and they have thumbed their nose at the people of Massachusetts and Salem Harbor by not cleaning it up on time. “

— John M. Broder

“I will not under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle class,” Mr. Romney promised at the debate, taking aim at Democratic arguments that he would raise taxes on working-class families to finance tax cuts for the rich.

But studies show that is a promise that might be hard for Mr. Romney to keep. Mr. Romney has said he wants to get rid of the alternative minimum tax and cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent, without widening the deficit. He would accomplish that goal by clearing out the underbrush of credits, loopholes and preferences in the code, though not those for investment and savings. He has also promised that his plan will be “distributionally neutral” – that he will not raise the tax burden on the poor or middle class.

But, according to a study by the respected Tax Policy Center, if you cut tax rates by 20 percent, you give the wealthy a multibillion-dollar tax break. Even if you take away all of their credits and loopholes and preferential rates, the gap is still about $86 billion in 2015. If the rich are paying less, then the poor and middle class must pay more if you’re going to raise the same amount of money.

In the debate, Mr. Romney said that he might put a cap on deductions — $25,000 per household, he suggested — to raise money to pay for the rate cuts. But tax economists said such a proposal still might not raise enough money from the wealthy and might result in an increased tax burden on the middle class or a bigger deficit.

— Annie Lowrey

Mr. Romney just warned, as he often does, that Mr. Obama’s plan to let the Bush-era income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans expire would hurt small businesses. But 97 percent of small businesses do not earn enough to be hit by the higher rates, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation of Congress.

Mr. Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts on income above $200,000 for individuals and income above $250,000 for households, raising the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now. Some small businesses, who file taxes as “S corporations,” would be hit by the higher rates, but the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that only 3 percent would earn enough to be hit by the new, higher top marginal rates. And not all of those businesses are exactly small: thousands of them would have receipts of more than $50 million a year, the committee found.

The Romney campaign noted that those few businesses play an important role and said that they should not be burdened with higher taxes.

Of the businesses that would be subjected to the higher rates, many are sole proprietors — a classification so amorphous it can include everyone from corporate executives who earn income on rental property to entertainers, hedge fund managers and investment bankers.

Pluralities of likely voters and independent voters have said in recent polls that they supported letting the Bush-era tax cuts on higher earners expire.

Would repealing those tax cuts kill jobs? Economists generally agree that raising taxes, and taking money that would otherwise cycle through the economy, can cost jobs; that is one of the reasons Mr. Obama’s stimulus plan included tax cuts. But it is worth noting that the rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were last seen during the Clinton administration — a time when the nation created 22.7 million jobs, as the Romney campaign itself has noted.

— Michael Cooper

But while those companies did ultimately file for bankruptcy, Mr. Romney’s claim ignores key facts about the automaker’s stability at the time.

Detroit was so fragile at the time that without the government assistance it received before heading into a court-supervised bankruptcy process, it could have collapsed.

At the time Mr. Romney wrote that article (he did not write the headline himself, but had to approve it per a New York Times policy allowing outside op-ed writers the chance to veto any editors’ changes), the financial markets had ground to a halt. It was November 2008, and there was little available liquidity for anyone seeking financing. There were certainly no financial institutions — not even Bain Capital, Mr. Romney’s private equity firm — looking to invest to the tune of the $80 billion the car companies needed at the time.

No private companies would come to the industry’s aid, and the only path through bankruptcy would have been Chapter 7 liquidation, not the more orderly Chapter 11 reorganization that the company ultimately followed, people inside and outside the car companies have said.

In fact, the task force asked Bain if it was interested in investing in General Motors’ European operations, according to one person with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Bain declined, this person said, speaking anonymously to discuss private negotiations.

— Jeremy W. Peters

Barely a minute into his first reply of the debate, Mr. Romney said, “I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing” a new position for him. In the first debate, he said, “I don’t have any plan to cut education funding and grants that go to people going to college,” and even that position came as a surprise to many analysts.

In its semiannual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. Moody’s Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that he expected the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected, under the assumption that whoever wins will “reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceiling without major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability.”

Mr. Romney’s camp may be suggesting that his policies would create 12 million jobs in excess of those already on track to be produced.

When asked by The Washington Post how the 12 million number was produced, the campaign cited three studies, all of which were problematic in this context.

One study finding that seven million jobs would be created by Mr. Romney’s tax plan refers to job creation over a decade, not four years.

Another apparently intended to support the claim that Mr. Romney’s energy policies would create three million jobs, but that number referred to an eight-year projection for policies largely already in place, not a four-year time frame for an alternative policy proposed by Mr. Romney.

Finally, Mr. Romney and his campaign have said that two million jobs could be created if the United States got tougher on China’s infringement of intellectual property rights. That number has been sourced to a May 2011 report from the International Trade Commission.

It did not specifically analyze a Romney proposal; it simulated what would happen if China enacted a “substantial improvement” in intellectual property rights so that intellectual property was about as protected in China as it is in the United States. It found that the United States would gain about 2.1 million full-time equivalent jobs, at least under the economic conditions the country faced in 2011. It is not clear how the United States could force China to effect this change, though.

— Catherine Rampell