WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty Republican presidential debates later, the head-scratching claims kept coming.

Did Mitt Romney really cut taxes as Massachusetts governor, as he asserted yet again? Or did he raise them by hundreds of millions of dollars, as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum alleged? And how could Newt Gingrich have given the nation four balanced budgets when he was only in Congress for two of them?

There was something old, something new, in the misstatements of the candidates Wednesday in what was possibly the last GOP debate.

A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the facts:

ROMNEY to Santorum: “You voted to raise the debt ceiling five times without compensating cuts in spending.”

THE FACTS: Maybe so, but increases in the debt ceiling were not politically charged in the past as they are now. They just allow the government to pay bills run up by previous Congresses. To not pay them would be like deciding to stop paying a car loan or mortgage. In fact, President Ronald Reagan, an icon to most conservatives, supported increases in the debt limit 12 times over his two terms. The idea of insisting on offsetting spending cuts when raising the debt ceiling is relatively new.

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ROMNEY: “They finally realized I was right.” — On the government ushering the auto industry into and out of bankruptcy.

THE FACTS: Romney did propose a bankruptcy process for the automakers before the government opted for that course. But there was a tremendous difference between the course he advocated and the one that was taken. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy on the strength of a massive bailout that Romney opposed. Neither Republican President George W. Bush nor Democratic President Barack Obama believed the automakers would have survived without that backup from taxpayers. Romney held out the possibility at the time of the government giving certain loan and warranty guarantees that would not have approached the nearly $85 billion bailout.

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SANTORUM: “Gov. Romney even today suggested raising taxes on the top 1 percent.”

THE FACTS: Romney’s new proposal actually would lower tax rates across the board. The rate for the wealthiest Americans would drop to 28 percent from 35 percent. However, Romney’s call for unspecified new limits on tax deductions for higher-income taxpayers makes it impossible, absent more details, to assess the impact on any individual.

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NEWT GINGRICH: “When I was speaker … we balanced the budget for four consecutive years.”

THE FACTS: Gingrich has made this misstatement many times before. He was speaker from January 1995 to January 1999. During budget years 1996 and 1997, when Gingrich was House speaker, the government ran deficits totaling nearly $130 billion. In budget year 1998, which ended Sept. 30, 1998, there was a surplus of $69 billion. And in budget year 1999, during which Gingrich was speaker part of the time, there was a surplus of $126 billion. Thus, Gingrich can only claim credit for contributing to two years of a balanced budget, at most.

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SANTORUM: “Gov. Romney raised $700 million in taxes and fees in Massachusetts.”

ROMNEY: “We cut taxes 19 times.”

THE FACTS: Romney largely held the line on tax increases but the record is mixed. Massachusetts raised business taxes by $140 million with measures mostly recommended by Romney. As well, the Republican governor and Democratic lawmakers raised hundreds of millions of dollars from higher fees and fines, another form of taxation. Romney himself proposed raising nearly $60 million by creating 33 new fees and increasing 57 others. Anti-tax advocates praised his support for income tax cuts while objecting to his course on business taxes and fees.

The woman, whose name has not been released, was pushing a stroller down a busy El Paso street when she was struck. Gregg Allen, El Paso’s chief of police, said the wound was caused by a “full metal jacket hard-nosed bullet” like those used in assault rifles.

Because of that, he said, the projectile caused a clean exit wound. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was treated and released.

Mayor John Cook (Photo: ElPasoTexas.gov)

El Paso Mayor John Cook asked residents to remain calm, saying there is “no way to prevent incidents like this from happening” and the odds of getting hit by a stray bullet are minimal.

Many people who were in the area at first didn’t realize what had happened.

“We didn’t hear anything. The first thing we heard was the firemen coming, but we didn’t know what was happening,” said Luis Gomez, a pedestrian who was shopping in the same area where the woman was hit.

She was struck at the same time Juarez police were battling alleged carjackers a few hundred feet from the U.S. border. Allen said reports indicate up to 50 shots were fired in that gunfight.

Police notified the public school district about the shooting and three El Paso schools were put on lockdown.

The bullet was sent to the Texas Department of Public Safety for ballistic analysis, but Allen said it is unlikely the owner of the gun will be found.

Since drug-related violence in Juarez spiked in 2008, bullets have struck El Paso buildings, including a local high school, City Hall and the University of Texas at El Paso. However, this is the first time a person has been hit.

Juarez and El Paso share a large metropolitan area. Their downtown areas are separated by the Rio Grande and the border fence. While El Paso has been dubbed one of the safest cities in the U.S., Juarez’s homicide rate put it among the most dangerous cities in the hemisphere.

“It’s not right and it needs to change,” he said.

Although most analysts agree that the corporate tax rate is too high, and that there are far too many loopholes, many disagree with the White House’s proposal.

The president said that he wants to lower the corporate tax rate from its current rate of 35 percent, the highest in the world after Japan, to 28 percent — 3 percent higher than the rate sought by congressional Republicans. He also said that manufacturers would “receive incentives so that their effective tax rate could be even lower,” according to the AP.

“It’s a framework that lowers the corporate tax rate and broadens the tax base in order to increase competitiveness for companies across the nation,” the president said in a statement.

Under the proposed plan, corporations with overseas operations would also face an unspecified minimum tax on their foreign earnings.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the president’s proposal would eliminate tax loopholes and subsidies that are “fundamentally unfair.”

Geithner also told a Senate committee that “dozens and dozens” of tax loopholes were being targeted for closure, although incentives for “creating and building stuff in the United States” would remain.

“Some will say these proposals are too tough on business, and others will say that they’re not tough enough,” Geithner said.

The president’s proposed plan is the next step in his effort to raise taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” while somehow maintaining current rates on individuals making $200,000 or less.

Republican reaction was less than enthusiastic.

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he “appreciated” the administration’s plan, though it set a corporate tax rate that is — as mentioned in the above — still higher than the Republican proposal of 25 percent. He faulted Obama, however, for not offering a wholesale overhaul of the entire tax system for businesses and individuals.

“While this is a good step by the administration, I will borrow from the president’s own words to Congress from just yesterday: ‘Don’t stop here. Keep going,’” Camp said in a statement.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), wasn’t as kind in his criticism. The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee dismissed the president’s plan as a “set of bullet points designed more for the campaign trail than an actual blueprint for fixing our tax code.”

An administration official promised the plan would not “add a dime to the deficit,” which would mean that some companies could benefit from the changes while others would find themselves paying for them, Wall St. Cheat Sheet reports.

In fact, many businesses that slip through loopholes or enjoy subsidies and pay an effective tax rate that is substantially less than the 35 percent corporate tax could end up paying more under the president’s plan.

It’s worth noting that reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent would reduce tax revenues by about $700 billion over the next decade, according to an estimate prepared in October by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

“That means lawmakers would have to find about $70 billion a year in tax increases to keep the package from adding to the budget deficit [emphasis added],” the AP reports.

Well, that’s — um — great news. What tax increases are we talking about here?

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh explains:

Obama…has announced what he’s claiming to be is a corporate tax cut.  His corporate tax cut will actually raise taxes on businesses by $250 billion.  He‘s cutting the rate to 28 percent but he’s making other changes that will actually result in businesses paying more money.

Limbaugh went on to cite a recent Wall Street Journal report:

“President Obama’s 2013 budget is the gift that keeps on giving—to government. One buried surprise is his proposal to triple the tax rate on corporate dividends, which believe it or not is higher than in his previous budgets.”

“Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6 percent that will kick in next year. Add in the planned phase-out of deductions and exemptions, and the rate hits 41 percent. Then add the 3.8 percent investment tax surcharge in Obamacare, and the new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8 percent…”

You know what it is today?  Fifteen.

Next year, if Obama’s budget were adopted and coupled with what happens with Obamacare, the dividend tax rate will jump to almost 45 percent.

Indeed, with rates that high it will more than make up for the tax revenue lost with the president’s supposed tax “cut.”

“This is an absolute disaster. This is absolutely purposeful,” Limbaugh said.

Geithner claimed that the president’s plan aims to “help U.S. businesses,” especially manufacturers who face strong international competition.

“Obama’s plan would lower the effective rate for manufacturers to 25 percent by offering other tax incentives that emphasize development of clean energy systems [emphasis added],” the AP reports.

Ah! There it is.

It should also be pointed out that although the president has been promoting various aspects of his economic agenda in personal appearances and speeches, he decided to leave the unveiling of his corporate tax plan to the Treasury Department.

Unsurprisingly, this has some critics claiming that the president isn’t entirely serious about real fiscal responsibility.

“For the second straight year, Obama has launched a major proposal while deliberately disregarding his own advisory panel’s recommendations,” writes Ed Morrissey of Hot Air.

He continues:

Now his new corporate tax proposal ignores the recommendations from the panel Obama created to much fanfare last year as part of his focus on job creation and economic growth. The obvious conclusion is that Obama has prioritized punitive tax changes on American business in order to fund his spending expansion over economic growth. Republicans need to emphasize that Obama’s job council turned out to be nothing more than a smoke screen, just the same as Simpson-Bowles, and that this corporate tax “reform” is anything but.

Over at the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll had stronger words for the president’:

Tax reform is boring and complicated, so I’ll summarize the corporate tax plan Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner released earlier today by quoting President Obama: We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends.

What does he mean by that?

Carroll begins by citing Page 4 of The President’s Framework for Business Tax Reform, which reads: “Currently, tax expenditures in the tax code vary dramatically by industry. … The result is a tax system that distorts investment decisions. By allocating capital inefficiently, this system lowers living standards now and could impede technological innovation.”

No argument there. As Carroll notes, the wise thing to do would be to close said loopholes and lower the corporate tax rate.

Seems like a good idea, right? Try telling that to the White House economic team.

“Instead, [the president] identifies industries he doesn’t like (e.g. ‘oil and gas’ ‘insurance industry’ ‘aircraft’) and takes away their loopholes, but leaves other industries alone,” Carroll writes. “This selective enforcement of tax simplification would be bad enough by itself, but then Obama makes it far worse by expanding other loopholes and creating brand new ones.”

And that’s not all.

“Obama also ‘Extends, consolidates, and enhances key tax incentives to encourage investment in clean energy,’” Carroll writes. “This will all be a boon for K Street as they fight to make sure their business qualifies as either a manufacturer, clean energy firm, or (like Solydra) possibly both!”

Echoing these sentiments, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute called the president’s plan “a total bust.”

“President Barack Obama…has the temerity to propose a corporate tax reform plan that would actually raise the tax burden on American business by $250 billion over a decade (and de facto on workers, too) without lowering rates to an internationally competitive level,”  Pethokoukis writes, adding that it’s a “terrible, terrible plan.”

Why?

Well, for starters, and as mentioned in the above, the president’s proposal would establish “a minimum tax” on multinational corporations’ foreign earnings.

“So instead of a carrot, Corporate America gets the stick. Instead of lowering the U.S. rate to a competitive level, Obama would raise the penalty on keeping profits overseas,” Pethokoukis writes. “Indeed, the United States is a huge outlier in that it taxes the foreign profits of multinational companies.”

But wait! There’s more!

Pethokoukis adds that, after state taxes, there is no way the effective manufacturing tax rate will stay at 25 percent. Furthermore, the president’s plan will waste scarce resources on “clean energy” subsidies.

“Obama had no experience in the private sector before becoming president. The free market is a sort of theoretical construct he learned about in college. But Geithner should know better,” Pethokoukis writes.

“He’s had lots of contact with all sorts of executives, both at Treasury and when he ran the New York Federal Reserve Bank. If he has any doubts about this plan, he should resign. And if he doesn’t, he never should have gotten the job in the first place,” he adds.

Of course, as mentioned earlier on The Blaze, there’s always the possibility that Geithner is well aware the plan is “a total bust” — he just doesn’t care.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“I want to make two quick points, John. The first is there is a legitimate question about the power of the government to impose on religion activities which any religion opposes. That’s legitimate. But I just want to point out, you did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide,” Gingrich said, to raucous applause.

Almost on cue, National Journal, which Gingrich might classify as part of the “elite media,” has produced an article fact-checking the statement. They differ with Gingrich, arguing that Obama voted only against a bill that would have granted human rights to fetuses, and did not support allowing live-born children to be killed, as there were already laws in place requiring medical treatment for such children on the books.

Moreover, the fact-checkers point out that CNN itself did devote coverage to the issue:

“Governor Romney even today suggested raising taxes on the top one percent, adopting the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric,” Santorum snapped at Romney.

This line of attack may surprise some, as Romney’s experience at Bane Capital in many ways makes him arguably the archetypal anti-Occupy candidate. In fact, in previous debates, Romney has accused candidates such as Newt Gingrich of the same thing. Still, Romney kept his cool against Santorum’s attack.

“There were so many misrepresentations in there it’s going to take me a little while,” Romney chuckled, before refuting the attack.

Having recently come under close scrutiny around the country — and fearing the consequences of a Republican in the White House — union leaders say they have little choice as they try to beat back GOP efforts to curb “collective bargaining rights” and limit their ability to collect dues.

“People are digging deeper,” said Larry Scanlon, political director of the country’s largest public workers union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). “If Republicans take over the presidency, Congress and enough state legislatures, unions will be out of business, pure and simple.”

By “digging deeper,” he means “collecting dues from workers who have no choice but to pay,” right?

This year, AFSCME is expected to spend at least $100 million or more on political action, including television advertising, phone banks and member canvassing. The effort is to help the president, Democrats running for the House and Senate, gubernatorial candidates, and key state lawmakers.

With increased spending planned by other labor groups, including the powerful Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, unions are likely to top the $400 million they spent to help elect Obama four years ago.

But not all union expenditures on political action are publicly disclosed, so some numbers are based on self-reporting. That is to say, some union leaders are operating on the “honor system.”

What could possibly go wrong?

Unions have long been known as one of the most reliable supporters of Democratic candidates and their efforts have increased with every election as the threats to organized labor grow. And by “threats,” we mean “efforts to curb their unsustainable spending.”

For instance, as mentioned earlier on The Blaze, unions spent more than $40 million last year to repeal an Ohio law that reformed “collective bargaining rights.” They are spending millions more in a bid to recall Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who sought to curb “collective bargaining rights” as a way to balance the state’s budget.

But some unions leaders claim they are being spread thin as they deal with a new wave of measures they say are designed to weaken their clout. Indiana, for example, passed a right-to-work measure earlier this month, and Republicans in New Hampshire are pushing a similar bill. Similarly, legislatures in Arizona and Utah are weighing measures to limit bargaining rights for their public employees.

“Part of the Republican strategy is to try to bleed us,” said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO. “There are certainly more union members now who understand the importance of political engagement and are willing to go door-to-door and make phone calls and do campaigns.”

Tim Phillips, president of the conservative anti-tax and anti-regulation group Americans for Prosperity, denied any grand strategy to weaken unions. His group, founded with the support of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, spends millions on anti-Obama and anti-union ads across the country.

“It‘s not accurate to say there’s some master plan to drain resources,” Phillips said. “These are genuine public policy efforts.”

Phillips also said that, for the first time, unions have to confront organized grassroots opposition in a number of states.

“And Americans for Prosperity is absolutely a key component in that,” Phillips said. “The unions have always had the advantage and we are now matching them.”

Back scratch fever.

AFSCME, the 1.6-million member union, started early this year, spending $1 million on television ads during Florida’s GOP presidential primary to weaken Mitt Romney, the candidate organized labor presumes will emerge as the Republican nominee.

The SEIU teamed up with Priorities USA Action, the major super PAC backing Obama, to buy ads in Florida and Nevada accusing Romney of flip-flopping on immigration policy. SEIU is the single largest contributor to Priorities USA after making a $500,000 contribution in December.

The 2.1 million-member union is expected to spend at least $85 million to help Obama win, similar to what it spent in 2008, spokeswoman Jennifer Farmer said.

The AFL-CIO is following a new strategy outlined last summer to contribute less money to specific candidates and spend more on building its infrastructure. The goal is to “lay a foundation for year-round mobilization that keeps going in the months following an election,” the AP reports. Competing for the union money are the various races, from president to state lawmaker.

“We have to use 2012 not just to win for its own sake, but to use as a springboard for 2014 when the governors in all these states are up,” Podhorzer said.

The new strategy is the result of some unions feeling that Democrats in Congress are not doing enough to stand up for labor’s agenda.

The AFL-CIO also started its own labor super PAC, which allows it to raise unlimited amounts of money and mobilize support beyond its traditional base. The new super PAC has already pulled in $3.7 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.