My First Politifact Truth-O-Meter Criticism [Defending the Truth-O-Meter]

While I do support the hard work of fact checking sites such as FactCheck.org and Politifact.com, I do understand that the writers are human. As a result, they can and do make mistakes. As part of my "Defending the Truth-O-Meter" series of blog posts (defending non partisan fact checking sites against claims of Bias), I will occasionally post my own personal criticisms of various articles. This is to show that these sites do occasionally make mistakes, even if those mistakes have nothing to do with Bias.
Recently, Politifact posted an article checking a claim from President Obama about the potential effects of a failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, 2011. I took issue with their rating and wrote them an email:

Politifact,

I am a long time fan and promoter of fact checking sites like Politifact. However, I am not sure you gave a fair rating to Barrack Obama when he said “I cannot guarantee that those [social security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue, because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.” You interpreted his statement as saying “Social Security and other federal checks may not go out on Aug. 3 if the debt ceiling is not increased.” You gave him a “half true.” Now based on your interpretation of his statement, it looks as if your rating for this statement was a bit unfair.
For one, you correctly interpreted him as saying these checks MAY not go out. As you say at the end “While it's not a certainty that the Obama administration COULD prioritize cutting checks to seniors, there's a REASONABLE shot that the administration could do it.” I interpret this as you saying it’s probable, but not certain. If Obama had said “There is a small chance that those [social security] checks may not go out in August,” the statement would have warranted a “True.” “May” is not the same as “a small possibility,” but it’s hard to see how this difference is large enough to warrant a “Half True.” This should warrant a “Mostly True.”
Secondly, you checked whether they would go out in August. Obama specifically said August 3rd. A recent NPR article pointed out that the government is supposed to collect $12 Billion in taxes on August 2nd. However, former undersecretary of the Treasury Jay Powell noted that “$23 billion in Social Security payments are supposed to go out on Aug. 3. And there's a really good chance we don't have the cash to pay that." It may be probable these checks will go out sometime in August, but it sounds highly improbable they CAN go out on August 3rd. Seeing as how many of these people may risk late bill payments, this is no trivial matter.
Overall given the fact that Obama did NOT say it was certain Social Security checks would go out in August, he deserves a bit more credit than a “Half True” gives him. Given that he also specified “August 3rd” and not “August in general,” I believe the rating for this article should be upgraded to at least “Mostly True.”

Once again, thank you for the good work. You are a needed voice of reason among misleading political rhetoric.

Sincerely,

Eric

I will post updates as they come.