•  Campaign Videos (May 2012) « Obama for America
  

[Office Background Noise] Stephanie Cutter: Hi, I'm Stephanie Cutter, Deputy Campaign Manager at Obama for America.

Well, here we are again. Karl Rove's group, Crossroads, is spending $25 million from secret donors to tear down the president in a new ad out today.

Time to tear this thing apart.


First up -- the attack ad says the president has not helped people who face foreclosure. That is flat out wrong.

Because of President Obama's policies and the efforts he set in motion, over 5.9 million homeowners were able to modify their mortgages, avoid foreclosure, and stay in their homes. And the president is fighting to get Congress to go further -- to let responsible homeowners who pay their mortgages on time to refinance and save on their monthly payments, even if they are underwater. The president is doing this because he believes homeownership is critical to helping middle class families build for their future.

And don't forget: Mitt Romney's plan on this? Well I'll just let him speak for himself:

ROMNEY: 'Don't try and stop the foreclosure process, let it run its course and hit the bottom.'

I'd like to say that's unbelievable, but with Mitt Romney, it's really not.


Second, the ad says the president broke a promise to cut taxes on middle class Americans. They're wrong again. President Obama has cut taxes for all working Americans -- in fact tax levels are nearly the lowest they've been since the 1950s. So, when Karl Rove says the president broke his promise on middle class tax cuts, he's not telling you the truth.

But, If Mitt Romney wants to have this argument, we are happy to have it. Because when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, he promised to cut taxes too. But unlike the President, he actually did break that promise -- he hiked taxes and fees by $750 million per year on Massachusetts families and Massachusetts small businesses.


Third, the ads talks about health care. And you'll like this one because we've heard it before. It says that you won't be able to keep the insurance plan that you have. Now that's just flat out wrong. If you like your plan if you want to keep it -- you can. In fact, the president made that plan stronger.

You know what Mitt Romney says about Obamacare?

ROMNEY: 'If I'm President, I will repeal Obamacare and I'll kill it dead on it's first day.'

'Kill it dead' Affordable coverage? Gone. Protections against insurance companies? Gone. Kids with preexisting conditions getting coverage? Not anymore. Not under Mitt Romney.


Fourth up is an attack on the president's plan to cut the deficit. The President has already enacted $1 trillion in spending cuts to help reduce our deficit—and has a balanced plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Under Mitt Romney? The deficit would not just go up, it would go way up. Just like in Massachusetts, where he promised to reduce the debt, but actually increased it by 16 percent. As President, he'd add $5 trillion to the deficit because of a $250,000 tax cut for every millionaire and billionaire in this country that he's not paying for.


So -- another special interest attack ad, another set of outright distortions, and another time when I need to ask you to do what you do best: get the president's back. Karl Rove is relying on you doing nothing to call out his BS -- and I know you'll prove him wrong. Tweet this video to your friends, Facebook it so people you know see it, post it on your Tumblr -- and let's make sure people get the truth.

Thanks for helping us fight back.

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Notes: This video is a response to Crossroads GPS ad "Obama's Promise." 

Crossroads GPS in turn responded with a video of its own (i.e. a response to a response):

Steven Law: Hi, I'm Steven Law with Crossroads GPS.  The Obama folks are trying to push back against our most recent ad which holds President Obama accountable for a long list of broken promises.  In the end what they're really pushing back against is reality.  The reality that Obama made a lot of promises on the economy, on the national debt, on rescuing homeowners, and on unemployment, and virtually none of what he promised has been realized.   They're essentially frustrated with reality.

Let's start with Obama's broken promise to help folks who are under water on their mortgages.  Just last month, the New York Times said, "A fund to support homeowners...hit hardest by the collapse of the housing bubble has disbursed just 3 percent of its budget and aided only 30,640 homeowners—(out of 9 million promised)—in the two years since its creation according to a federal watchdog office.

The next broken promise is on taxes.  President Obama promised that if you're a family making less than $250,000 per year you will not see your taxes go up.  In a separate speech he said quote not any of your taxes would go up, period.  Here again you don't have to trust what we say.  A fact checking organization named PolitiFact calls this a broken promise.  That's because the Obamacare law imposed an individual mandate that the administration itself called a tax when arguing it in front of the United States Supreme Court.  Now if Stephanie Cutter wants to call Obama's own Supreme Court argument "B.S." she can do that, but somebody ought to let the justices know. 

Third is President Obama's broken promise on being able to keep your health care plan.  Obama said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan."  That's pretty clear.  First of all tell that to the 13 million seniors whose Medicare Advantage plans are being gutted because of Obamacare's draconian cuts to this important program.  Second, let's see what the Congressional Budget Office report has to say about the impact of Obamacare on families' employer provided health plans.  The CBO estimates that 3-5 million fewer people will obtain employer-based health coverage because of Obamacare, and it could rise to as many as 20 million.

Finally is the real boondoggle promise of them all where Obama promised he would quote cut the deficit we inherited by half at the end of my first term in office unquote.  The Obama folks actually tried to push back on this promise too, again demonstrating they live in a parallel universe where forward is the new backward and up is the new down. 

Here's a graph on the federal budget deficit.  This graph was actually taken from the White House's own website.  We'll provide a link to this table at the end of the video.  As you can see the deficit went from 1.4 trillion to 1.29 trillion to 1.3 trillion to 1.33 trillion this year.  Now I'm no math professor, but it's pretty easy to see that Obama's promise to cut the deficit in half is broken.  In fact not only is the deficit virtually unchanged on Obama's watch, but this president charged an unprecedented $5 trillion to the national debt in just four years.

So what do we have here?  We have a president who made a lot of promises about how he would turn around the economy, not raise taxes, cut the deficit and provide health care to everyone.  But four years later, none of it has worked.  It now looks like Mr. Obama doesn't know how to turn the economy around, and the new video makes it look like Stephanie Cutter and the Obama folks are angry at the reality that their policies haven't made things better and in some cases have made things much worse.

The good news is that there is a different way.  At Crossroads GPS we call it the New Majority Agenda, and for more on our roadmap to real recovery and growth visit NewMajorityAgenda.com  Thanks for watching and links to follow.  Oh, and one more thing.  Stay classy Chicago.  [winks; wink SFX]