Ted Cruz Fights Absurd Attacks from Chris Wallace
Ted Cruz does an impressive job fighting hackish attacks from Chris Wallace. Watch:
I don’t watch Fox News any more and haven’t for years. This kind of nonsense is a good example of why I don’t.
Let’s take a moment to examine the various nonsensical claims made by Wallace. Here is the first set, summed up in Fox News’s graphic:
First of all, we have Wallace’s claim that the unemployment rate has fallen from 9.9% to 5%, and 13 million jobs have been created. Here is the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from Friday, January 8, 2016. Indeed, “the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent.” Score one for Chris Wallace! Except, wait! The same report also says:
The civilian labor force participation rate, at 62.6 percent, was little changed in December and has
shown little movement in recent months.
As CNSNews.com recently told us in October, when the labor force participation was at 62.4 percent:
The last time the labor force participation was as low as 62.4 percent was in October 1977.
So we are, even now, barely off historic lows in the labor force participation rate, which is almost unchanged from a 38-year low. The labor force participation rate is a far more honest figure than the “unemployment rate,” as it captures people who have taken themselves completely off the job market, because they are discouraged or what have you.
As for “13 million jobs created” — the point Cruz makes is: we could have done much better. Here are Wallace and Cruz’s respective arguments:
Chris Wallace says that, when Cruz claims ObamaCare has been a job killer and people have lost insurance due to ObamaCare, the “fact-checkers” say Cruz is wrong. According to Wallace: “more people have jobs and health insurance than before ObamaCare.” When Cruz tries to point out how media fact-checkers are “not fair and impartial” (duh), Wallace interrupts and says: “There’s certainly no question that more people have jobs and more people have health insurance coverage.” Cruz disputes that by pointing out the statistic I just mentioned: that we have the lowest percentage of Americans working today since 1977. At which point Wallace interrupts again and says: “But there have been 13 million jobs created, sir. That’s a fact!” Cruz points out that we have had anemic 1.2 percent economic growth since 2008, and Wallace sputters that Cruz is changing the subject.
Bullshit. Cruz is establishing a baseline. Yes, after a huge recession, there is always recovery. This is how dishonest historians try to tell us that FDR was successful during the Great Depression, because there was some economic expansion. The fact that unemployment was still historically high in 1937 and 1938 is of no moment! There was expansion! Left totally unexamined is the likelihood that expansion would have been far greater in the absence of insane government programs that frightened businessmen from expanding their businesses in the slightest, for fear of running afoul of the latest crazy FDR brainstorm dreamed up as he sat in his pajamas in bed.
Cruz notes that small businessmen constantly cite ObamaCare as hindering their efforts to grow their businesses. This is overwhelmingly corroborated by the evidence. The employer mandate hasn’t fully kicked in, because Obama is scared to death of what will happen when it does. But employers have already responded to the disincentives on the horizon. For example, see Gallup from 2013:
When asked if they had taken any of five specific actions in response to the ACA, 41% of small-business owners say they have held off on hiring new employees and 38% have pulled back on plans to grow their business. One in five (19%) have reduced their number of employees and essentially the same number (18%) have cut employee hours in response to the healthcare law.
Reuters also reported in 2013:
Executives at several staffing firms told Reuters that the law, which requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide healthcare coverage or incur penalties, was a frequently cited factor in requests for part-time workers. A decision to delay the mandate until 2015 has not made much of a difference in hiring decisions, they added.
“Us and other people are hiring part-time because we don’t know what the costs are going to be to hire full-time,” said Steven Raz, founder of Cornerstone Search Group, a staffing firm in Parsippany, New Jersey. “We are being cautious.”
Raz said his company started seeing a rise in part-time positions in late 2012 and the trend gathered steam early this year. He estimates his firm has seen an increase of between 10 percent and 15 percent compared with last year.
They further reported:
Obamacare appears to be having the most impact on hiring decisions by small- and medium-sized businesses. Although small businesses account for a smaller share of the jobs in the economy, they are an important source of new employment.
Some businesses are holding their headcount below 50 and others are cutting back the work week to under 30 hours to avoid providing health insurance for employees, according to the staffing and payroll executives.
Under Obamacare, any employee working 30 hours or more is considered full-time. An effort to trim hours might have helped push the average work week down to a six-month low in July.
I didn’t hear any of that from Chris Wallace!
But there is also the disincentive that massive subsidies cause for employees not to even want to work. Remember what CBO told us in 2014:
CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.
That was about 2.5 million jobs, per Mediaite. By the way, Mediaite cited a link to the CBO report that somehow is no longer operative.
Truth has an expiration date, you know.
Recall that, at the time, this was spun as AWESOME news by the Obama administration. People don’t have to work for their health insurance any more! Yay! Well, Casey Mulligan made short work of this view:
A job, Mr. Mulligan explains, “is a transaction between buyers and sellers. When a transaction doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. We know that it doesn’t matter on which side of the market you put the disincentives, the results are the same. . . . In this case you’re putting an implicit tax on work for households, and employers aren’t willing to compensate the households enough so they’ll still work.” Jobs can be destroyed by sellers (workers) as much as buyers (businesses).
He adds: “I can understand something like cigarettes and people believe that there’s too much smoking, so we put a tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that’s a good thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We’ve been complaining for six years now that there’s not enough work being done. . . . Even before the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a sudden we wake up and say we’re glad that people are working less? We’re pursuing our dreams?”
And as for Wallace citing the massive increase in people covered by health insurance, there’s this:
Health insurance enrollment data for 2014 shows that the number of Americans with health insurance increased by 9.25 million during the year. However, the vast majority of the increase was the result of 8.99 million individuals being added to the Medicaid rolls. While enrollment in private individual-market plans increased by almost 4.79 million, most of that gain was offset by a reduction of 4.53 million in the number of people with employment-based group coverage. Thus, the net increase in private health insurance in 2014 was just 260,000 people.
Medicaid has been described as a humanitarian catastrophe.
Patients on Medicare were 45% more likely to die than those with private insurance; the uninsured were 74% more likely; and Medicaid patients 93% more likely. That is to say, despite the fact that we will soon spend more than $500 billion a year on Medicaid, Medicaid beneficiaries, on average, fared worse than those with no insurance at all.
This is, simply put, the greatest scandal in America. Bigger than Madoff, bigger than the Wall Street bailout, bigger even than the plight of the uninsured.
Even the hacks at FactCheck.org can’t make a case for Medicaid improving people’s treatment of physical diseases; the best they can do is argue that it doesn’t make them worse.
I’ll stop here. Wallace goes on to argue that Cruz’s free market reforms wouldn’t change anything, but if you can’t tell that Chris Wallace is a total hack by now, more facts and evidence aren’t going to help you.
It is amazing how much this network is in the tank for Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. They absolutely despise Cruz.
Luckily, Cruz knows this. Remember this?
After a young staffer told Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz how “nice” a member of the media is, Cruz said he actually stopped the young man with a harsh reminder about the intentions of most reporters.
“I actually stopped him and I said, ‘You know what? No, she’s not [nice]. She wants to destroy you. Nothing would make her happier than to take your life and filet you on the front pages. And don’t think for a minute that because she smiles and is friendly to you, that it’s anything else,’” Cruz said, sharing the story on The Glenn Beck Program.
I love this man. He stands up for what’s right, and he has no illusions about the jackals who would try to tear him apart.
Good luck tonight, Senator. If our electorate has any sense at all, they will choose you over that poseur scumbag Donald Trump. Even if they don’t tonight, I can only hope that the people will figure this out in the long run, as they did with Reagan.
If they don’t, then may God have mercy on our souls.
Go Ted!
Patterico (86c8ed) — 2/1/2016 @ 1:36 amin spite of having zero interest rate training wheels on for his entire presidency
in spite of his trillion dollar “stimulus”
in spite of his vicious bloody and high-spirited regulatory rape of the economy
food stamp is the only president in history not to deliver a single year of 3% GDP growth
he sucks donkey balls and failmerica is much the worse for electing his trashy p.o.s. ass i think
happyfeet (831175) — 2/1/2016 @ 1:41 amWhy do you people pay to have fox in your house? Grow up and cut the cable.
I wish Ted would go after bill’s wife.
mg (31009b) — 2/1/2016 @ 3:08 amChris Wallace is a leftist, just like his father. He pretends to be fair and balanced but since Rupert Murdoch and his sons are full-on Open Borders supporters FOX NEWS has displayed an overt bias against GOP candidates, most visibly against Donald Trump in the debates.
It was only when Trump refused to participate in the last debate that FOX began to trun its ire against Ted Cruz. Now, we have the spectacle of watching Chris Wallace smear Cruz with fraudulent statistics.
It’s journalistic malpractice, both FOX NEWS and Chris Wallace are guilty.
ropelight (bbc6ad) — 2/1/2016 @ 3:45 amAll this is simply a diversion to entertain the masses:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-31/question-should-not-be-difficult-one-answer
Your democratic republic is an unmitigated, irremediable disaster.
DNF (755a85) — 2/1/2016 @ 4:25 amI just wish Cruz had replied something like….
“Chris, 13 million new jobs, right? 18 million new job seekers, based upon age, immigration, and the like. Five million short! We have new jobs but the job participation rate keep falling. You explain that, Chris!”
reff (40fcf0) — 2/1/2016 @ 4:35 amCruz should have questioned the 13 million new jobs. Assuming the statistic is accurate, which is an assumption that runs counter to everyday experience, how many of those new jobs were minimum wage, how many were filled by foreigners imported on H1 visas, how many of those new jobs are government featherbedding, how many of those new jobs were simply new individuals taking the place of people retiring or moving out of the work force for a variety of reasons, etc, etc, etc?
Don’t let leftists define the issue and make you explain their false construction.
ropelight (bbc6ad) — 2/1/2016 @ 5:51 amThe short answer in response to “13 million new jobs” would be to say: “You’re comparing 13 million to zero and concluding Obama hasn’t killed jobs, as though zero jobs created is normal. That’s a stupid comparison. The number of jobs would have been much higher if we had a normal recovery.”
Gerald A (5dca03) — 2/1/2016 @ 5:51 amWallace was part of Andrea Mitchell’s braintrust, who thought Reagan was treated too lightly by the press.
narciso (732bc0) — 2/1/2016 @ 6:36 amThey are in the tank for the administration in most significant respects.
narciso (732bc0) — 2/1/2016 @ 6:46 amIn the last debate, Wallace kept using a rather cowardly tactic of asking candidates to explain what was wrong with Cruz’s statements or records. Of course, this is what caused Cruz to ask Wallace for an opportunity to respond, to which Wallace defended the tactic because ‘it’s a debate’ (so candidates should be attacking eachother’s positions) and also Cruz is not allowed to respond to Wallace.
Wallace is one of those guys who knows he’s in the tank and also insists he’s objective.
Gerald is right! The economy naturally grows, and Wallace’s statistic shows stunted growth that should concern us. Surely Wallace knows that, but intends to misinform his viewers on basic facts, such as Obamacare slowing hiring. That’s the obvious case against it, and it’s too bad that instead of an interview on how to fix this problem, Cruz has to debate whether the problem exists.
A whole lot of voters in the general election will sincerely believe Obamacare did not have any impact on jobs. They really will not know such a basic fact that has impacted our entire country for years. Good job, media!
Dustin (2a8be7) — 2/1/2016 @ 6:56 amCruz needs to stop letting himself get pulled into the weeds of dueling statistics. It overshadows the real point he’s trying to make about that the big benevolent government policies coming out of Washington are robbing the people to keep the favor factory running.
crazy (cde091) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:00 amWell the fake statistics hide the damage to the economy.
narciso (732bc0) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:04 amChris Wallace’s questions about jobs are “shovel-ready.”
Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:14 amPatients on Medicare were 45% more likely to die than those with private insurance; the uninsured were 74% more likely; and Medicaid patients 93% more likely. That is to say, despite the fact that we will soon spend more than $500 billion a year on Medicaid, Medicaid beneficiaries, on average, fared worse than those with no insurance at all.
This is not at all convincing. These statistics can be entirely explained by other factors.
1) Medicare patients are all over 65 years of age. Private insurance patients are all under 65 years of age. Older people die more than young people.
2) The category “uninsured patients” includes quite a few young people. The category “Medicaid patients” includes mostly poor people. Poor people are generally exposed to more risk factors. Even if many of the uninsured belong to the same demographic groups as the Medicaid patients, adding some young people to the mix decreases the mortality of the overall group.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:22 amKevin M,
The idea that Medicaid patients are generally less healthy was emphasized by the Fact Check Dot Org people. That’s the main reason they concluded that Medicaid doesn’t actually hurt people. But, they couldn’t make the case that it helps people, except possibly with mental disease. Physical illnesses show no improvement with Medicaid. You wouldn’t know that listening to Wallace’s question touting the YUUUGE increase in the “insured.”
Patterico (86c8ed) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:27 amHeh. We were going by a Christian Science church and my daughter asked me what it was all about. When she wondered why people would go to a reading room rather than a doctor, I explained that when Christian Science was founded your chances of recovery were better if you did not go to a doctor. And I firmly believe that it’s true most of the time today also.
nk (dbc370) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:27 amI tried to be fair in my analysis and not just take right-wing analyses that say Medicaid hurts people; hence the inclusion of the Fact Check Dot Org link. The fact remains that ObamaCare’s YUUUGE success is, shall we say, overstated — while its harms are far understated and indeed have yet to fully reveal themselves.
Patterico (86c8ed) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:29 amKasich’s yuge push is why the times has endorsed him, it leave Ahia 6 billion in the hole so far.
narciso (732bc0) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:36 amAnd you doctors, who more executions have done
Milhouse (87c499) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:51 amWith powder and potion and bolus and pill
Than hangman with halter, or soldier with gun
Miser with famine or lawyer with quill
To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor
Till our bodies consume, and our faces grow pale
Let him mind you, who pleases, what cures all diseases
A plentiful glass of good Nottingham Ale.
Does an individual American actually benefit from Obamacare? Actually most don’t.
The monthly payments (even with the taxpayer funded subsidies) are steep and going higher every year. But the real rub comes when the individual needs medical treatment and finds he has 5 thousand or more in deductibles to pay out-of-pocket before his health insurance kicks in. In addition, he’s also subject to high co-pays whenever he sees a primary care doctor, has a prescription filled, or sees a specialist.
Those co-pays jump to astronomical levels if he needs medical equipment like a wheelchair, crutches, or and oxygen tank. And, of course hospital stays, out-patient surgical procedures, and ambulance rides are all carry hefty out-of pocket costs.
Obamacare only makes sense for people with already diagnosed serious medical conditions, and for the unfortunate few who are struck down out of the blue. Ordinary healthy people, especially young people under retirement age are on average way ahead skipping Obamacare and paying out-of-pocket as the need arises. Even further ahead if they can avoid paying Obama’s unconscionable fine for opting out.
ropelight (bbc6ad) — 2/1/2016 @ 7:56 amThat nectar, Ambrosia, on which Gods regale,
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:10 amExperience will show it, naught makes a good poet,
Like quantum sufficients of Nottingham Ale.
Yes, the CEO’s and officers of America’s insurance companies, politicians and of course lawyers.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:12 amWhat’s scary is that Fox News and Chris Wallace are generally not as super pro-Democrat-Party partisan and uber-liberal as other parts of the media are. That’s how ridiculously biased and unreliable the MSM is.
SMH.
Mark (f713e4) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:14 amhappyfeet (831175) — 2/1/2016 @ 1:41 am
What about Grover Cleveland’s second term?
Sammy Finkelman (dbec95) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:19 amI don’t think so. I recall reading recently that the insurers have been very disappointed that the expected bonanza didnt’ come through. And remember that they paid a heavy price in the expectation of this bonanza.
Milhouse (87c499) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:21 amPatterico,
Medicaid is probably not that effective for a variety of reasons.
1. Few doctors who actually take Medicaid
2. Poor coping skills making it hard to navigate #1.
3. Bad life choices (e.g. alcohol and drug abuse)
4. Other factors often coincident with being unable to provide for oneself (e.g. not giving a F)
As anyone who has actively tried to help people clearly in need will admit, there is a class of folks who will actively resist any help, or who will consume all resources offered without changing their circumstances a jot. These people really trash your statistics.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:29 amPatterico: I didn’t hear any of that from Chris Wallace!
You didn’t hear that much from Ted Cruz either. Just a little. He doesn’t really know hisstuff.
Ted Cruz, unlike Patterico, did not know how to pick apart the health insurance statistic. Maybe Dr. Carson would have done better – he doesn’t get asked questions that much, and he’s been studying.
He did get his answer in about the meaning of the jobs created number – 13 million is a low number, not a high number. Well, maybe it would sound high to anyone who falls for the lump of labor theory.
The labor force participation rate is down because more people are on disability. The disability procedures are such that people are strongly disincentized not to try to get off. There was also more early retirement on Social Security, although taking Social Security at age 62 is becoming almost standard.
Sammy Finkelman (dbec95) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:30 amThere are other pernicious effects of the ACA, btw. There are absolute dollar income caps on subsidy calculations. The oft-repeated claim that subsidies prevent people from spending more than a few percent of their income on medicine only holds for younger people. For 60-year-olds, however, there is a point where a $10,000 subsidy becomes no subsidy for an additional dollar of income. This makes folks reluctant to seek that extra income unless they can get well past that inflection point.
Result: lost productivity.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:54 am#16:
My real problem with those statistics is that there are so many co-factors that they are meaningless factoids and do not help the argument. The Medicare part of that is so transparent that it’s laughable. Since I have some formal training in statistics, I really dislike seeing such crappy use of of factoid numbers as though they mean something. Also see Disraeli on “lies.”
Kevin M (25bbee) — 2/1/2016 @ 8:58 amTo me the story about this interview isn’t about Wallace’s absurd attacks, rather it was how Cruz handled them. And it wasn’t deftly. Regardless of the fairness of the questions, Cruz lost this exchange, especially considering that Cruz is supposed to have the upper hand as a skilled and persuasive debater. He lost it with how he handled the substance (he didn’t have a good, easily understandable comebacks to take Wallace’s questions down), and with his facial expressions of contempt for Wallace as he became visibly more and more frustrated with Wallace. Cruz looked like a guy struggling to stay unflappable and the viewer witnessed that struggle.
I think the interview was a nice window into the world of the aspect of Ted Cruz’s personality that makes it difficult for him to get along with people. It wont affect too many opinions, except those that place an emphasis on a candidate’s ability to get something done, as opposed to an emphasis on a candidate’s principles and intentions.
School Marm (f96753) — 2/1/2016 @ 10:41 amRe the labor force participation statistic, is there an age cap/ age demographic adjustment built in? With baby boomers aging, that probably factors into the (non) growth if not.
Michael (48d854) — 2/1/2016 @ 1:09 pm#28 School Marm,
If Ted Cruz had merely played the Donnie Trump and called Chris Wallace a “bimbo,” or “a third rate journalist,” or maybe even a “jerk” or “loser,” then certainly that would have been a revealing display of someone who knows how to get along with other people.
Right?
Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 2/1/2016 @ 1:14 pmI’m in my early ’60s, just went on ACA last month. I was an early retiree and my former employer had been paying 30% of my Kaiser premium, which was $1100 a month last year. So I was paying almost $800 a month. Because I’m only receiving Social Security and tapping my savings, I qualified for a program that costs me $100 a month. $2200 deductible and then it’s 100% paid for. I had heard for 4 years how bad it was going to be, not for me, for some strange reason. I even kept the same doctor at Kaiser that I had been seeing the last 4 years.
I used to have a near platinum level plan at Kaiser, it was the only one my employer offered. ACA kicked in a bunch of money for me to drop to a silver plan, and because they were subsidizing it, it actually had better coverage and deductibles than the platinum plan I could have selected; which would have been almost $450 a month with higher deductibles. Needless to say, I wish I could of had this back in 2010 when they initially passed ACA.
dee (3305c2) — 2/1/2016 @ 2:17 pmYou are very fortunate, dee. I have friends who retired a few years ago. Like you, they have a plan at Kaiser, but a vastly different outcome. They received a letter stating that their plan was discontinued do to provisions of ACA. The new plans they were offered cost more, had different doctors, and they got no subsidy. They are staunch Democrats who could not believe what happened to them.
felipe (56556d) — 2/1/2016 @ 2:26 pmFelipe, I’m a staunch conservative, so this was one hell of a good surprise. I thought the terms of the silver plan I got were some kind of mistake; too good to believe. So I called up Kaiser to confirm they were legit. Usually the only luck I have is bad luck, so I’m waiting for the letter telling me it’s all a mistake and I’m going into a plan like your lefty friends.
dee (3305c2) — 2/1/2016 @ 5:10 pm