Say what you will about the political wisdom of making a $10,000 wager with one of your Republican rivals at a time of economic distress. As far as the fact checkers are concerned, Rick Perry would be writing Mitt Romney a check if he had taken him up on his wager on health care.
During the discussion of mandates in Saturday’s GOP presidential debate in Iowa, Perry made this charge: “I read your first book and it said in there that your mandate in Massachusetts should be the model for the country. And I know it came out of the reprint of the book. But, you know, I’m just sayin’, you were for individual mandates, my friend.”
Romney had heard this before and wasn’t happy to hear it again.
“You’ve raised that before, Rick. And you’re simply wrong,” he said.
“It was true then. It’s true now,” Perry snapped back.
And then the cringe-worthy moment: “I’ll tell you what: 10,000 bucks. $10,000 bet?” Romney offered. Perry declined.
Turns out, Romney would have cashed in.
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FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan site run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said Perry was mischaracterizing what was revised in Romney’s book.
On his state’s health care reform, Romney did originally write: “We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.” That phrase did not appear in the paperback version. But, the site explains, “the same thing” referred to the goals of the Massachusetts health reform, that insurance be “portable” and “affordable,” and not the individual mandate or the entire law.
“Romney saw the Massachusetts plan as a potential model for other states, if they so choose, but not as a federal mandate,” FactCheck.org writes.
The “Truth-O-Meter” at PolitiFact.com, run by the St. Petersburg Times, graded Perry’s claim as “mostly false.”
“Romney did support Massachusetts’ individual mandate. But we don’t see evidence in his hardcover book that he supported a federal one, much less that he removed such a reference from later editions,” PolitiFact wrote.