Glenn "Pinocchio" Kessler attempts to fact check the Republican presidential debate.

On Santorum's claim that Obamacare adds to the deficit he wrote "the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it slightly reduced the deficit in the first 10 years, though much of the law was not fully implemented in the first four years. All bets are off in the next 10 years, however."

This "fact check" contains one highly misleading observation "though ... years." Since the CBO scored year by year. Kessler must know that the first four years contribute almost nothing to the total, since almost none of the new taxes are being collected.

The "All bets are off" claim, in contrast, is totally false. The CBO scored the Senate budget committee draft bill for the next ten years and reported huge gigantic massive deficit reduction. Kessler might not believe the CBO (which he cites as authoritative in the preceding sentence". He can't however argue that all bets are off because the final bill is different from the draft the CBO scored. The changes have a lot to do with the timing of new taxes (having the cadillac insurance tax start later) and so imply larger deficit reductions in the second 10 years out.

The claim that "All bets are off" could only be true if there were not extensive calculations of the numbers which Kessler denies have been calculated at all. His assertion is simply grossly false. It is also highly inflamatory and on a very important pattern.

I award Glenn Kessler four Pinocchios.

I wrote the above and went back to check more checking

“The 12 years I was in the United States Senate, we went from — the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is now over a hundred percent — when I came to the Senate, it was 68 percent of GDP. When I left the Senate, it was 64 percent of GDP. So government as a size of the economy went down when I was in the United States Senate.”

— Santorum

[skip]

Santorum has spending going down as a percentage of the economy

No he doesn't you illiterate. Santorum made a claim about debt not spending. No one who confuses deficits and debt has any place attempting to check facts, but anyone who confuses debt and spending had better enroll in remedial elementary school.

I award Glenn Kessler a dictionary.

I am not going to debt any more of my almost valueless time reading the crap which Kessler writes. Just by reading this far, I feel I have paid my spending to society.