Elizabeth Warren speech: Stirring, or a stretch of the facts?

Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the US Senate from Massachusetts, got the Democratic convention crowd excited Wednesday. But fact checkers found some points to dispute.?

By Peter Grier,?Staff writer / September 6, 2012

Elizabeth Warren, US Senate candidate from Massachusetts, waves to delegates after her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

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Elizabeth Warren gave a stirring populist speech to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night. Currently much pundit discussion is focused on Bill Clinton?s defense of President Obama, and rightly so, but Ms. Warren ? the warmup act ? got some of the biggest cheers of the evening by attacking Wall Street and positioning herself as a champion of a beleaguered middle class.

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Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

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The bio of the Senate hopeful from Massachusetts, which includes a stint waiting tables at 13 and marriage at 19, gave her credibility with delegates on this issue. She talked about the middle class being hammered, and that people ?feel like the system is rigged against them.?

Then Warren chided Mitt Romney for saying ?corporations are people, my friend.? She brought the crowd to its feet by adding her own twist to this much-used Democratic attack.

?No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people,? said Warren. ?People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die.?

The last words of those lines were drowned out in the hall, inaudible over the roar of the audience.

But did Warren stretch some facts to make her charges? That?s what some independent fact checkers say. In particular, they?ve focused on her flat assertion that Romney?s economic plan raises taxes on middle-income earners.

Here?s the way Warren put it Wednesday night: Romney ?wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. But for middle class families who are hanging by their fingernails? His plans will hammer them with a new tax hike of up to $2,000 dollars.?

She?s not the only Democrat who?s said this from the podium this week. Keynote speaker San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro said pretty much the same thing, for instance. The only problem is that strictly speaking it is not true, according to FactCheck.org.

?Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn?t necessarily lead to that conclusion,? says the FactCheck.org site.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Txce1ZLMlCU/Elizabeth-Warren-speech-Stirring-or-a-stretch-of-the-facts

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