Subject: Rubio’s lies about money
From: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
To: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2015 20:19:47 +0000

During the last debate, Marco Rubio was questioned about his troubled history managing finances, including intermingling campaign money with personal money, facing foreclosure on a second home, and liquidating a $68,000 retirement fund that cost him thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties. He avoided the question of whether he is capable of leading our economy, and he inaccurately dismissed the moderator’s claims.

When asked about his tax plan’s negative repercussions on the middle class, Rubio again dismissed the question without basis.

On Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough called out Marco Rubio and the rest of the GOP field for lying during the debate when they were asked serious questions: “They asked some very valid questions that the candidates just lied about. . . in Marco’s case, [he] was just very slippery and got out of it.”

If Rubio can’t manage finances, or at least tell the truth about his own tax plan, how does he expect to be trusted to lead the country? Here’s what people are saying, including those who know him best from Florida:

WATCH<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyn8071Xmao>:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyn8071Xmao>

Politifact Florida (Joshua Gillin)<http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/politifact-florida-marco-rubios-financial-missteps/2252200>

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio waved off a question about his economic smarts during the latest Republican presidential debate, saying stories about his personal financial decisions weren't worth discussing.
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"Sen. Rubio, you yourself have said that you've had issues. You have a lack of bookkeeping skills," Quick said. "You accidentally intermingled campaign money with your personal money. You faced foreclosure on a second home that you bought. And just last year, you liquidated a $68,000 retirement fund. That's something that cost you thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties.
"In terms of all of that, it raises the question whether you have the maturity and the wisdom to lead this $17 trillion economy. What do you say?" she asked.

Rubio's response was to dismiss all of Quick's examples as partisan smear tactics.
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The response made us pause, because we wondered what had been "discredited" about Rubio's widely reported financial mishaps. In this context, "discredited" means the things Quick said are not true or accurate.
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All of these events happened and have been well-documented. It's not accurate for Rubio to refer to the issues as "discredited," whether his opponents have used them to attack him or not. We rate Rubio's statement False.

Orlando Sentinel (Scott Maxwell)<http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-marco-rubio-president-scott-maxwell-20151031-column.html>
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Moderator Becky Quick asked Rubio to explain a litany of well-documented financial problems from his past.

Said Quick: "You accidentally intermingled campaign money with your personal money. You faced foreclosure on a second home that you bought. And just last year, you liquidated a $68,000 retirement fund … that cost you thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties" — all to ask whether Rubio had the ability to handle the nation's finances.

Rubio refused to answer, describing the question as "a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents."

That's simply not true. Rubio has a string of financial messes, personal and political. And anyone who watched his record in Florida knows it. He was mired in debt, even while living a life of limo rides and travel and telling others to live within their means. Don't take it from me. Take it from court documents. And investigative reports.

Heck, take it from conservative commentator Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida who has offered hearty defenses of Rubio in the past. After the debate, Scarborough was incredulous.

"Marco just flat-out lied to the American people there," Scarborough said, going on to ridicule the audience cheering his denials. "Everybody's going, 'Oh, Marco was great.' No, Marco lied about his financials."

The facts are all there.

Washington Examiner (Byron York)<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/john-harwood-marco-rubio-and-the-tax-question/article/2575390>

Actually, Harwood's assertion — that the Tax Foundation estimates that Rubio's tax plan would "give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top 1 percent as to the people in the middle of the income scale" — was correct.
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It appears both Harwood and Rubio were using figures from the dynamic side of the table. Under those estimates, Americans in the top 1 percent would see a 27.9 percent increase in their after-tax income. The middle income brackets would see much less: a 17.2 percent increase for the 30%-40% decile of income, a 15.7 percent increase for the 40%-50% decile, a 15.3 percent increase for the 50%-60% decile, a 15.0 percent increase for the 60%-70% decile. Combine those groups into a broad middle, and the average increase is 15.8 percent. Just include the groups smack in the middle, and the average is a bit lower.
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By the way, if one looks at the Tax Foundation's static estimates, Harwood's question is not only accurate but understated. For example, the after-tax income gain of the top 1 percent is more than six times that of the 50%-60% decile. Part of the controversy might owe to the way Rubio quite skillfully changed the premise of the question.

New Republic (Brian Beutler)<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123280/gops-grotesque-festival-lies>
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Here’s how Harwood described Rubio’s tax plan: “The Tax Foundation, which was alluded to earlier, scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top one percent as to people in the middle of the income scale." [Emphasis added] This is both 100 percent correct and generous to Rubio at the same time. The Tax Foundation—an advocate for supply side tax policy—dubiously assumed the regressiveness of Rubio’s plan would be diminished by its ability to grow the economy and increase people’s pre-tax incomes, and Harwood granted them the assumption.

Rather than defend his plan on the merits, though, Rubio simply claimed Harwood was wrong, and conservatives applauded with great fanfare.
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This answer contains a lie, an apples-oranges nonsequitur, and another lie. Harwood’s question wasn’t about the very poor. It was about why Rubio’s plan gave so much more back to the very rich than to the middle class. And he was right.

Rubio went on to note that, “five percent of a million is a lot more than five percent of a thousand. So yeah, someone who makes more money, numerically it’s going to be higher.”

This was either intentionally deceptive, or betrayed a basic misunderstanding of percentages. Harwood’s point was that Rubio is proposing to give the rich not just more dollars, but a larger percentage of dollars per income. Five percent for a thousand, ten percent for a million. Harwood was right again.