Current Republican presidential candidate and former Canadian citizen until a few months ago, Ted Cruz, got a rude awakening when he visited his friends at Fox News and got called out by Chris Wallace on his lie that Obamacare is a job killer.
“The fact checkers say you’re wrong,” Wallace told Cruz. “Since that law went into effect, the unemployment rate fell from 9.9% to 5% as 13 million new jobs were created, and 16.3 million people who were previously uninsured now have coverage. There are plenty of problems with Obamacare, but more people have jobs and health insurance.”
Naturally, Cruz went on to claim that fact checkers are liberally biased.
“Fact checkers are not fair and impartial,” Cruz responded. “They are liberal editorial journalists. And they have made it their mission to defend Obamacare.”
“Wait,” Wallace shot back. “There’s certainly no question that more people have jobs and more people health insurance.”
“Yes, there is question,” Cruz replied. “The fact is from 2008 to today, we’ve seen economic growth of 1.2% on average.”
Notice how he said “from 2008 to today” – that’s important. Cruz is lumping in 2008 and 2009 which were horrible years for jobs because that’s when the Great Recession began. Naturally, when you factor in those two disastrous years it’s going to make the year-to-year job growth percentages under President Obama appear to be much worse than they are. Especially when you consider that Obama wasn’t even president in 2008.
Also, Cruz can say whatever he wants, but it’s indisputable that the unemployment rate is down to 5 percent, that we’ve created over 13 million new jobs and over 16 million people have gained access to health insurance. Those aren’t numbers that were made up by a “biased” fact checker, they’re facts – period.