It's Been One Week Since The Debate. How Many Lies Has Romney Told Since?

It's been one week since the debate. How many lies has Mitt Romney and his campaign told since? Let's tally it up.

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1. Pre-Existing Conditions: Within minutes of the debate's conclusion last week, a Romney campaign spokesman tried to explain his candidate's assertion, in response to the question with what he would replace ObamaCare, that "pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan," clearly inferring that he would not alter that provision of ObamaCare.

Afterwards the spokesman said, "what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage." [1] But that position does not expand coverage for the uninsured with pre-existing conditions, as ObamaCare does. By continuing to try to blur the distinction between the two plans, the campaign continues to lie.

2. Abortion: Romney told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday that "there’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda." [2]

In fact, he previously stated his support for legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks [3]. That doesn't even get into the "non-legislation" he supports that would restrict or ban abortion [2] by executive order or judicial nomination.

3. "More Teachers." In debate after President Obama said, "let’s hire another 100,000 math and science teachers ... Governor Romney doesn’t think we need more teachers. I do," Romney responded, "I reject the idea that I don’t believe in great teachers or more teachers. Every school district, every state should make that decision on their own." No indication of disagreement. Romney knows full well that Obama's proposals to help recruit and train teachers don't dictate hiring decisions to states [4], so his caveat displays no daylight.

Yet days later, again to the Register, Romney slammed Obama's position: [5] "He wants another stimulus. Those stimulus dollars go overwhelmingly to government. Government plays an important role but that's not going to help farms right here and get people to work. He wants to hire more school teachers. We all like school teachers. It’s a wonderful thing. Typically, school teachers are hired by states and localities, not by the federal government. Typically, school teachers are hired by states and localities, not by the federal government. But hiring school teachers is not going to raise the growth of the U.S. economy over the next three-to-four years."

So Romney still wants more teachers. He just has no plan how to get more teachers.

4. Taxes on the Rich: In the debate and after, Romney has deployed a weasel word to mask his desire to cut taxes for the rich, saying, "I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people." Of course, when you implement an across-the-board 20% tax cut, as he proposes, the "share" of the total tax burden paid by the wealthy stays the same even though the wealthy receive vastly more money than would middle-class taxpayers.

George W. Bush made similar arguments to sell his tax cut, and we've seen the results.

But on CNN Tuesday, Wolf Blitzer pressed him to clarify what he meant, asking [6], "so they will pay exactly the same, even though you're going to lower the -- the income tax rates for people making, let's say, more than $250,000 a year, but you're going to eliminate some loopholes and deductions, expectations, tax credits. Is that what I'm hearing?"

And Romney said, "That's right."

As the Tax Policy Center has already shown, that's mathematically impossible. [7]

5. "47%." When video was discovered of Romney disparaging the 47% of Americans who pay no net federal income tax as lacking personal responsibility, Romney did not back away from the statement, merely characterizing it as "inelegantly stated."

But after the debate, suddenly that statement is now "just completely wrong." [8]

Though he still hasn't been forced to explain why he said it in the first place and what exactly does he now think is wrong about it.

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Five. The answer is five in seven days. Impressive.