(CNN) – President Barack Obama says the federal government is wasting money by paying banks to offer student loans, and wants to cut out what he calls "middlemen" who cost taxpayers billions, and to use the savings to expand other financial aid programs.

"It turns out that right now a lot of the student loan programs are still run through financial institutions and banks. So you got this middleman, and they get billions of dollars per year managing loans that are guaranteed by the federal government," Obama said at a New Hampshire event Tuesday. Obama said those middlemen "are essentially taking no risks, and yet they're still extracting these huge profits."

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked Holder last week to explain the decision to put AbdulMutallab before a judge rather than a military tribunal.

(CNN) - Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday tried to knock down Republican criticism of how the case of accused "Undiebomber" Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab was handled, pointing out that previous suspects went through civilian courts without GOP objections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, asked Holder last week to explain the decision to put AbdulMutallab before a judge rather than a military tribunal. In a Sunday appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" and a Wednesday speech to the Heritage Foundation, McConnell called the decision to try suspected terrorists before civilian courts a "mistake."

But in his response to McConnell, Holder told the GOP leader that similar procedures "were not criticized when employed by previous administrations."

"The decision to charge Mr. AbdulMutallab in federal court, and the methods used to interrogate him, are fully consistent with the long-established and publicly known policies and practices of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the United States government as a whole, as implemented for many years by administrations of both parties," Holder wrote, citing a series of Bush administration decisions to support his argument.

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(CNN) - President Obama declared on Wednesday that Democrats can be trusted on the budget because, "the last time the budget was balanced was under a Democratic president."

Fact Check: Who was president the last time the budget was balanced?

– The U.S. government suffered budget deficits every year from 1970 through 1997.
– Democrat Bill Clinton was president in 1998, when the government finally recorded a surplus.
– There also were budget surpluses in 1999, 2000 and in 2001. 2001 was the last year the Clinton administration proposed the budget.
– Republican George W. Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001. The United States had a budget deficit in 2002, and it has recorded budget deficits every year since. The deficit is projected to increase substantially this year under President Barack Obama.
– Republicans say they should get at least some of the credit for the balanced budgets during the Clinton administration, because Republican majorities controlled both the House and Senate.

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(CNN) - During Tuesday's town hall event in New Hampshire, President Barack Obama was asked to grade his administration's transparency. He declined to give himself a grade, but cited a new report that says his administration is "the most transparent administration that we have seen in a very, very long time, perhaps in the modern era."

The report - titled "A Report Card on the Obama Administration's Executive Branch Lobbying, Ethics and Transparency Reforms in 2009" - was released on January 11. It characterizes the Obama administration's reform efforts as "the strongest and most comprehensive lobbying, ethics, and transparency rules and policies ever established by an administration to govern its own activities."

This report stands in stark contrast to recent criticism the president has received for falling short on a promise to televise all health care negotiations on C-SPAN.

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Were there more cloture votes in the Senate last year than in all of the 1950s and 1960s combined? (Photo Credit: Getty Images/File)

(CNN) - President Barack Obama Wednesday accused Republicans of packing "20 years of obstruction into one." Speaking to Senate Democrats, he declared, "You had to cast more votes to break filibusters last year than in the entire 1950s and '60s combined."

Fact Check: Were there more cloture votes in the Senate last year than in all of the 1950s and 1960s combined?

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(CNN) - This week while making remarks about the budget, President Barack Obama said that the 2011 budget would include ideas from federal employees. The administration held a contest for ideas that could make government more efficient. "I'm proud to say that a number of these ideas, like allowing Social Security appointments to be made online, made it into our budget," he said.

Fact Check: How many employee ideas made it into the 2011 budget?

– The SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award program was launched in fall of 2009. Federal employees were asked to submit ideas to reduce government waste. More than 38,000 people submitted ideas and four finalists were chosen. The public then voted on a winner.
– The contest winner was Nancy Fichtner of Colorado. She proposed sending Veterans Affairs patients home with medicine they've been using, instead of throwing it away when the veterans leave. "Currently the inpatient medications such as ointment, inhalers, eye drops, and other bulk items are being disposed of upon patient discharge," she wrote.
– Another finalist idea is from Julie Fosbender in West Virginia. She says that when Forest Service workers at Monongahela National Forest collect money from the public, they must go through a complex process that results in sending the money to a bank in San Francisco, California. She said, "Why can't we just deposit our collections into a local bank?"
– Christie Dickson from Alabama suggested allowing Social Security appointments to be made online.
– Huston Prescott from Alaska suggested eliminating redundant inspections of subsidized housing units. Prescott was the last finalist.
– Ultimately, 15 employee proposals were included in the budget.

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Do pork projects and foreign aid each account for 1 percent of the federal budget?

(CNN) - At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire this week, President Barack Obama said, "If you ask a lot of folks what accounts for the federal budget, they'll say foreign aid and pork projects, and if you just eliminated foreign aid and pork projects, somehow we'd bring our deficit under control. Foreign aid accounts for about 1 percent of our federal budget. One percent. Not 25 percent, not 20 percent, 1 percent." The president also said that earmarks, known as pork projects, "amount to 1 percent of the budget as well."

Fact Check: Do pork projects and foreign aid each account for 1 percent of the federal budget?

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Editor's Note: PolitiFact.com is a project of the St. Petersburg Times that aims to help you find the truth in politics. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times examine statements by members of Congress, the president, etc. They research their statements and then rate the accuracy on their Truth-O-Meter.

Republican Party of Florida says Obama will "indoctrinate" schoolchildren with "socialist ideology"

Florida RNC Chairman Jim Greer appears on CNN September 07, 2009.

Schoolchildren across the nation "will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president."

-Republican Party of Florida on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 in a press release

The Truth-O-Meter says: PANTS ON FIRE

Read more: We didn't realize studying hard was socialist ideology

Did Obama really call for redistributing wealth?

The Statement

At a campaign event Thursday, October 30, in Defiance, Ohio, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain said, "So we finally learned what Senator Obama's goals are ... to spread the wealth. In a radio interview revealed this week, he said the same thing, that one of the - quote - tragedies of the civil rights movement is that it didn't bring about redistributive change. You see, Senator Obama believes in redistributing wealth and income, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs."

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The Statement
Speaking at a campaign event Sunday. Nov. 2, in Columbus, Ohio, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama criticized the rhetoric of his Republican opponents. "Despite what our opponents may claim, there are no real or fake parts of this country," he said. "There is no city or town that is more pro-America than anywhere else - we are one nation, all of us proud, all of us patriots."

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