GOP 2016 hopefuls don't always get it right - again
WASHINGTON -- A winnowed Republican presidential field clashed Tuesday in Milwaukee, trading political barbs and pushing policies to present their campaigns in the best possible light.
The eight GOP contenders also let some misstatements, misrepresentations and falsehoods slip into the two-hour televised debate. Here are some examples:
Ben Carson on min wage
Carson said: "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. This is particularly a problem in the black community."
In the last 20 years, Congress has raised the minimum wage four times followed each time by job creation and job loss. When the minimum wage was raised to $5.15 an hour in 1997, it was followed by 12 consecutive months of job creation. After the wage was increased to $6.55 an hour in 2008 there were 12 straight months of loss.
Marco Rubio on min wage
Rubio said raising the minimum wage "would be a disaster" and cost jobs by making human workers "more expensive than a machine." Economists are split over the effect raising the minimum wage has on job growth. Some point to research showing a negative effect on jobs, and some say it does not make a significant difference either way.
Following a proposed minimum wage increase in 2014, looking at a bump to $9 or $10.10, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found such raises would "increase family income for many low-wage workers, moving some of them out of poverty." They also found such a move would also probably eliminate some jobs for low-wage workers.
Rand Paul on income inequality
Paul suggested income inequality, a widening gap between the richest Americans and everyone else, is the fault of Democrats and the Federal Reserve. It was an odd allegation since leading thinkers in both political parties acknowledge the trend has been building up since the mid 1970s, over Republican- and Democratic-led Congresses and presidencies.
Most academics lay much of the shift on globalization and the offshoring of good-paying manufacturing jobs, and technology that made clerical work redundant. Both trends hit the middle class.
Paul also suggested that the Federal Reserve is to blame for controversial bond purchases that have held borrowing costs down, and he said that encouraged banks to park money at the Fed to collect interest rather than lend it out. He said the policy has hurt savers, but he neglected to say the Fed is keeping interest rates unusually low to encourage home refinancing and car purchases. Car sales are on pace to surpass this year the record 17.4 million cars sold in 2000. This ripples across the economy.
Carson on Hillary Clinton
Carson picked up a page from Republican Sen. Rubio's talking points from the last GOP debate, claiming Clinton "lied" about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Like Rubio before him, Carson said Clinton, then secretary of State, claimed publicly at the time that the attacks -- which left four Americans dead -- were triggered by an anti-Muslim video.
He cited an email the night of the attacks to her daughter, Chelsea, made public during her recent testimony on Capitol Hill -- that they were caused by an "al-Qaida-like group." Scrutinizing Rubio's similar claim, The Washington Post Fact Checker found "little support" for his charge.
Carson and Republican scrutiny
Carson also claimed the Democrats receive less scrutiny than Republicans. That might be a hard case to make, given the relentless scrutiny Clinton has receive over Benghazi, the controversy over President Barack Obama's birth certificate and whether he was school by radical Muslims, as well as the Swift Boat attacks on Secretary of State John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004, when the decorated Vietnam veteran was attacked as "unfit to serve."
Vera Bergengruen, Tori Whitley, Grace Toohey, Ali Montag, Kevin G. Hall and Anita Kumar contributed.
This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "GOP 2016 hopefuls don't always get it right - again ."