More than just facts: Convention speeches feature poetic license, omissions, flaws

News outlets check the facts offered in the Thursday night convention speeches by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

The New York Times: Checkpoint: A Night Of Speeches Under A Magnifying Glass
Mr. Biden criticized the Romney campaign on Medicare, saying, "What they didn't tell you is what they're proposing would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016." But the actions he described would not end Medicare in four years. At issue is the Medicare trust fund ... and what would happen to it if President Obama's health care law were to be repealed, as the Republicans have vowed to do. ... The solvency of the trust fund has long been in question. Mr. Obama's health care law extended its solvency by curbing the growth of projected spending -; the $716 billion Medicare cut that has been debated in the campaign -; and by raising some revenues. As the 2011 annual report of the Medicare trustees put it, the financial status of the "trust fund is substantially improved by the lower expenditures and additional tax revenues instituted by the Affordable Care Act." Absent those savings, the trust fund will be exhausted sooner. What would happen then?  (Cooper, 9/6).

The Washington Post's The Fact Checker: Fact Checking Obama's And Biden's Speeches At The Democratic Convention In Charlotte
In their defense of the administration's policies Thursday night, President Obama and Vice President Biden sometimes took license with the facts or left out important information. Here are some highlights (Kessler, 9/7).

The Hill: Fact-Checkers Find A Few Flaws In Clinton's Health Care Claims
The biggest criticism centers around [Bill] Clinton's claim that healthcare costs aren't rising as quickly as they did in the past. ... That's true. But, as multiple fact-checkers -; and Republicans -; noted, the slower growth is not a result of the Affordable Care Act. Glenn Kessler, of theWashington Post, and the nonpartisan site FactCheck.org both noted that independent analyses have attributed the lower increases to the economy, rather than the healthcare law. FactCheck.org said, "with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out." The claim about slower healthcare cost increases was "the worst we could fault him for," the site said (Baker, 9/6).