Hillary Clinton falsely claimed she is “the only candidate” in the presidential campaign “on either side” who has been attacked in advertising funded by “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers.” Actually, several candidates have been the target of ads funded in part by those in the financial industry.

In fact, by Clinton’s logic, real estate developer Donald Trump seems to be the favorite target of “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers” — not Clinton.

Clinton made her remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 3. Host Chuck Todd showed a video clip of Bernie Sanders urging Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid speeches to business groups. Asked for her response, Clinton said Sanders was “misrepresenting my record when it comes to being tough on Wall Street,” adding that Wall Street financiers oppose her candidacy.

Clinton, April 3: I’m the only candidate in the Democratic primary, or actually on either side, who Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers are actually running ads against.

That’s not remotely true.

The Clinton campaign referred us to an Oct. 28, 2015, USA Today news article about Future45, a super PAC that has received funding from well-known Republican donors. In the story, which is headlined “New Republican super PAC takes aim at Hillary Clinton,” USA Today‘s Fredreka Schouten wrote: “The super PAC has received financial support from Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, the billionaire founders of hedge funds, along with some members of TD Ameritrade founder J. Joe Ricketts’ family.”

It’s true that Singer and Griffin have donated to Future45. It is also true that Future45 has spent about $500,000 on ads attacking Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ opensecrets.org.

But Singer and Griffin also gave to other outside groups that have spent millions on TV ads attacking Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

Singer, who gave $250,000 to Future45, donated $1 million to Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump super PAC, and $5 million to Conservative Solutions PAC, which supported Marco Rubio, according to opensecrets.org. Our Principles has spent $14.8 million attacking Trump, while Conservative Solutions has run $16.7 million in attack ads against Trump, Cruz, Christie, Bush and Kasich.

Likewise, Kenneth Griffin has given $250,000 to Future45, but he also has given $5.1 million to Conservative Solutions, according to opensecrets.org.

And, of course, Singer and Griffin aren’t the only ones in the financial industry who contributed to outside groups seeking to influence the presidential election.

For example, Keep the Promise I — a pro-Cruz super PAC — was formed with an $11 million donation from Robert Mercer, the co-chief executive officer of Renaissance Technologies, a $25 billion private hedge fund firm. Keep the Promise I has spent nearly $9.5 million on ads, including $2.2 million against Marco Rubio and about $900,000 against Trump. By contrast, the group spent just $80,000 against Clinton.

Who’s the top target of “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers”? It appears to be Trump, by a landslide.

We cannot know for sure exactly how much outside groups spend on attack ads, because of the way the groups report ad buys to the Federal Election Commission.

Here’s how it works: The groups must file reports on their “independent expenditures,” which is the FEC’s term for “a communication expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.” In those reports, the groups must identify the candidate who is either being “supported” or “opposed” in the ad. That’s a judgment call that causes inconsistencies in the reporting.

For example, Right to Rise USA — a super PAC that supported Jeb Bush — spent $81 million on TV ads, by far the most of any outside group to date, according to opensecrets.org. However, Right to Rise USA reported that a whopping $78.4 million of that money was spent on ads supporting Bush, while only $2.8 million was spent on ads opposing other Republican candidates, mostly Marco Rubio (nearly $1.9 million). That’s simply not accurate.

Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, a service that tracks political ads and estimates how much groups spend to buy airtime for the ads, told us that Right to Rise USA spent more on negative ads ($14 million) and contrast ads (about $19 million) than it did on solely pro-Bush positive ads ($31 million). “We assign political ads one of three different types of ‘tone’ – positive, negative, or contrast. In the case of [Right to Rise USA], a positive ad would only mention Bush; a negative ad would only mention one or more of his opponents; and a contrast ad would mention both Bush and one or more of his opponents,” Andrew Fitzgerald, Kantar Media’s senior political and environmental media analyst, told us.

“I suspect that the PAC counts any ad that mentions Bush as ‘supporting Bush’ even if in the process it attacks other candidates,” Fitzgerald said.

Nevertheless, we attempted to quantify the top target of “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers,” based on opensecrets.org’s analyses of the independent expenditure reports filed by the outside groups.

We looked at the 10 outside groups that so far have spent the most on independent expenditures. Each spent at least $5 million. Seven of the top 10 received at least $1 million in donations from those in the securities and investment and commercial banking industries — which is how opensecrets.org defines “Wall Street” donations. We focused our analysis on those seven groups.

(Note: The $1 million threshold eliminated two groups — Club for Growth and American Future Fund — that may have received more than $1 million from the financial sector, but we don’t know because they have formed 501(c) organizations under IRS regulations and don’t have to disclose their donors. Club for Growth, and its super PAC, Club for Growth Action, is actively opposed to Trump.)

The seven remaining groups from the top 10 list combined to spend nearly $196 million on independent expenditures and received at least $91.7 million in contributions from the securities and investment and commercial banking industries. They spent nearly $21 million against Trump — led by the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC. That dwarfs what was spent against the other candidates, which in order were: Cruz, $4.6 million; Rubio, $4.1 million; Christie, $3.6 million; Bush, $3.1 million; and Kasich, $2.3 million. Five other candidates — including Clinton — were the target of less than $100,000 in ads total from those seven groups. (See our list here.)

Future45 ranks 40th on opensecrets.org’s list of top spending outside groups, having spent less than $600,000 to date. In addition to spending $508,000 on multiple ads attacking Clinton, Future45 spent about $45,000 on a single ad attacking Sanders for proposing to raise taxes to pay for free college tuition and health care during a “weak economy.”

So Clinton is not, as she says, “the only candidate” in the presidential campaign “on either side” who has been attacked in advertising funded by “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers.” She is not even the top target.

Josh Schwerin, a Clinton campaign spokesman, told us that the Future45 ad attacking Sanders was actually a pro-Sanders ad in disguise. He cited a liberal blogger who wrote that the ad “touts Sanders’ support for tuition-free college, single-payer health care, and higher taxes on the ‘super-rich.’ ” Fair enough. But Singer, Griffin and other “Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers” gave millions more to PACs that attacked Trump and other Republican candidates. Schwerin did not address that. We asked him if Clinton misspoke, but Schwerin did not respond to that question.

The post Clinton Wrong About Wall Street Attacks appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A pro-Jeb Bush super PAC says John Kasich “voted with Nancy Pelosi to cut troop levels and military funding.” That’s true. But those votes in the early to mid-1990s came at a time in U.S. history — post Cold War — when the debate on Capitol Hill was not whether to reduce troops or cut defense spending, but by how many and how much.

In fact, under President George H.W. Bush, active duty military personnel declined by about 425,000, a nearly 20 percent reduction. The Pentagon budget, meanwhile, dipped by about 15 percent. All with Bush’s blessing.

One could certainly argue that Kasich wanted to cut troop levels and defense spending deeper than Bush and many of his fellow Republicans in the House — though the ad doesn’t make such an argument — but we’ll get to that later.

The Bush campaign and Right to Rise, a super PAC supporting him, have made Kasich’s support for defense spending cuts a centerpiece of their attack in South Carolina, as aides told Politico there is concern that Kasich’s voters are siphoning off what could otherwise be votes for Bush.

The ad, titled “Which Candidate,” ties Kasich to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The ad begins with the narrator asking, “Which presidential candidate voted with Nancy Pelosi to cut troop levels and military funding? And supported expanding Obamacare? If you guessed Bernie Sanders, you’re half right. It’s also John Kasich. Kasich even had the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat.”

We’ve written previously about the claim that Kasich “had the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat.” That’s based on an analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute of Ohio’s general revenue fund spending, but we noted that the rating relies on data from a nonpartisan group that warned the figures for Ohio were skewed, for state comparison purposes, due to accounting methods employed by the state for Medicaid expenditures.

As for the claim that Kasich supported “expanding Obamacare,” Kasich supported the Medicaid expansion made possible by the Affordable Care Act. But Ohio declined to establish its own state exchange, and Kasich has said he opposes the Affordable Care Act.

In this item, we’ll focus on the claim that Kasich “voted with Nancy Pelosi to cut troop levels and military funding.”

Votes on Troop Levels and Military Funding

The small print in the ad cites two votes. The first was Kasich’s vote on June 3, 1992, for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that sought to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe from 235,700 to 100,000 by fiscal year 1995.

The amendment passed 241 to 162. Pelosi and Sanders, then a House member, also voted for it. And Kasich bucked the majority of Republicans, who voted 120 to 34 against the amendment. Two days later, Kasich and Sanders voted for the overall NDAA bill, which passed 198-168 (Pelosi did not vote). A majority of Republicans also voted against it.

Then President George H.W. Bush vehemently opposed the version of the NDAA passed by the House because it called for cutting his own proposed defense budget by $10.5 billion. Bush also opposed such deep troop cuts in Europe.

But Bush’s own budget plan called for reducing defense spending. And he proposed reducing the armed forces by 138,000 in 1992 and by 99,000 the following year.

At a debate against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992, Bush explained his opposition to drastic troop reductions in Europe, even as he boasted about his success in cutting troop levels and defense spending.

George H.W. Bush, Oct. 11, 1992: We have reduced the number of troops that are deployed and going to be deployed. I have cut defense spending. And the reason we could do that is because of our fantastic success in winning the Cold War. We never would have got there if we’d gone for the nuclear-freeze crowd; never would have got there if we’d listened to those that wanted to cut defense spending. I think it is important that the United States stay in Europe and continue to guarantee the peace. We simply cannot pull back.

Now, when anybody has a spending program they want to spend money on at home, they say, well, let’s cut money out of the Defense Department. I will accept and have accepted the recommendations of two proven leaders, General Colin Powell and Dick, Secretary Dick Cheney. They feel that the levels we’re operating at and the reductions that I have proposed are proper.

In that sense, the Right to Rise ad ignores some of the historical and geopolitical context of the time. From 1989 to 1993, the Bush administration was making ongoing cuts to the overall defense budget and the size of the military force in response to the end of the Cold War, Gordon Adams, professor emeritus at the American University and an expert in U.S. defense budgets, told us in a phone interview.

Colin Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush and Clinton, boasted in 2011, “When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and Mr. [Richard] Cheney was secretary of defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent, and we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers.”

In fact, U.S. inflation-adjusted military spending fell by one-third in the 1990s, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition, the number of active duty military personnel dropped by 16 percent between 1992 and 1995, according to data from the Department of Defense.

“It was the end of the Cold War and nobody was in growth mode,” said Adams, who served as associate director for national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1997.

Adams remembers Kasich as a budget hawk, “and as with many budget hawks, he wanted defense spending to be disciplined like anything else.”

The second vote cited in the ad was a failed amendment proposed by Kasich in 1995 to reduce the Air Force aircraft procurement appropriation by $493 million to prevent further funding for new production of B-2 stealth bombers. Pelosi and Sanders both voted for it, but the amendment failed 210 to 213, with a majority of Republicans opposing it.

Kasich, then chairman of the House Budget Committee, was among those who believed the bomber was, as the Columbus Dispatch put it after the vote, “too expensive, doesn’t evade radar detection like it’s intended to, was designed for a now-obsolete mission of attacking the Soviet Union and is no longer wanted by the Pentagon.”

As the New York Times noted at the time, even the military opposed building new B-2 bombers.

New York Times, Sept. 8, 1995: Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. William A. Owens, the Vice Chairman, summed up the military’s position in a letter to Mr. Kasich before the House vote in June.

“The service chiefs and combatant commanders have been consulted on this issue,” the letter said, “and with us unanimously support the Secretary of Defense’s position that there are more pressing requirements than the marginal increases in capability offered by procuring additional B-2 bombers.”

Indeed, Bush years earlier had opposed building more B-2 bombers, and he explained why in his 1992 State of the Union address.

George H.W. Bush, Jan. 28, 1992: Two years ago, I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era. But now, this year, with imperial communism gone, that process can be accelerated. Tonight I can tell you of dramatic changes in our strategic nuclear force. These are actions we are taking on our own because they are the right thing to do. After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bombers.

Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House at the time of the 1995 vote (and voted against Kasich’s amendment), told Politico on Feb. 12 that efforts by Right to Rise to paint Kasich as anti-defense are “simply false.”

“I served with him for 16 years and he consistently fought for a better, more effective military,” said Gingrich, who has not endorsed anyone in the presidential race.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Kasich has advocated for increasing military spending. His campaign website states that Kasich has “called for $102 billion in increased defense spending over the next eight years to improve our conventional capabilities and create new cyber defense resources to better safeguard our security.”

We’ll leave it up to our readers to decide the merit of Kasich’s positions as a congressman — and the votes cited in the ad came with significant Republican opposition in the House. But broadly criticizing Kasich for votes to “cut troop levels and military funding” ignores the context that most everyone was proposing some cuts to troop levels and defense spending post-Cold War — even Jeb Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush.

The post Kasich’s Post-Cold War Defense Cuts appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

The ninth GOP debate featured the top six remaining candidates for the party’s presidential nomination. They repeated several false and misleading claims, and made some new ones, too.

• Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that “we have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year.” That’s wrong. Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988, an election year.
• Businessman Donald Trump called Cruz the “single biggest liar” for saying Trump “supports federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.” But Trump did leave open the possibility of funding some aspects before later saying he wouldn’t support funding as long as the group performed abortions.
• Sen. Marco Rubio said that illegal immigration “is worse today than it was three years ago, which is worse than it was five years ago.” The estimated number of immigrants in the country illegally has remained stable over that time.
• Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson attributed a quote to Joseph Stalin that experts say didn’t come from the Soviet dictator.
• Trump falsely claimed that a failed eminent domain case to benefit a Trump casino project in 1998 “wasn’t for a parking lot.” It was.
• Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush conflated two Trump quotes in claiming Trump called Sen. John McCain a “loser because he was a P.O.W.” Trump said he was a loser, because he lost the 2008 presidential election.
• Trump claimed that the nation’s economy “didn’t grow” in the last quarter. It did grow, by a small amount.
• Trump repeated his claim that he is a self-funded candidate. Not entirely. His money makes up 66 percent of his campaign’s money through the end of 2015. The rest comes from individual donors.

And there were several other repeated claims we’ve fact-checked before on jobs, taxes, immigration and regulation.

Analysis

The debate was held in Greenville, South Carolina, and moderated by John Dickerson of CBS News. Participating were: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and businessman Donald Trump. It was the first Republican debate since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina ended their presidential campaigns.

An Election-Year Supreme Court Confirmation

Dickerson asked the candidates if, given the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, President Obama should use his constitutional authority to name a replacement justice this year.

Cruz claimed that “we have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year.” That’s wrong.

President Ronald Reagan nominated Justice Anthony Kennedy to the high court on Nov. 30, 1987, and Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 3, 1988, by a vote of 97-0. That was the same year that George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed Reagan as president.

Kennedy was actually Reagan’s third nominee to replace retiring Justice Lewis Powell. Robert Bork, who Reagan nominated on July 1, 1987, was rejected by a vote of 42-58 on Oct. 23, 1987. And Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his name from consideration in early November 1987, after acknowledging that he had smoked marijuana several times.

When Dickerson pointed out that Kennedy was confirmed in 1988, Cruz said, “No, Kennedy was confirmed in ’87.” But Dickerson was right and Cruz was wrong.

That also makes Rubio’s claim that “it has been over 80 years since a lame duck president has appointed a Supreme Court justice” problematic.

If Rubio considers Obama to be a “lame duck president,” meaning his time as president will soon be over, the same could be said of Reagan, who nominated a replacement justice well into his second and final term as president.

Trump’s Position on Planned Parenthood

When Cruz said Trump “supports federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood,” Trump responded that Cruz was the “single biggest liar.” Trump said in August that he didn’t support funding abortions performed by Planned Parenthood but he left open the possibility of funding other aspects of the group’s work on women’s health.

In early September, however, Trump said, “I wouldn’t do any funding as long as they are performing abortions.”

Here’s part of the disagreement between the two candidates in the debate:

Trump: Where did I support?

Cruz: You supported it when we were battling over defunding Planned Parenthood. You went on…

Trump: That’s a lot of lies.

Cruz: You said, “Planned Parenthood does wonderful things and we should not defund it.”

Trump: It does do wonderful things but not as it relates to abortion.

Cruz: So I’ll tell you what…

Trump: Excuse me. Excuse me, there are wonderful things having to do with women’s health.

Cruz: You see you and I…

Trump: But not when it comes to abortion.

In an Aug. 11, 2015, interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Trump said, “Well, the biggest problem I have with Planned Parenthood is the abortion situation. It’s like an abortion factory frankly. You can’t have it and it shouldn’t be funding and that should not be funded by the government. I feel strongly about that.”

He went on to say, “What I would do is look at the individual things that they do and maybe some of the things are good, I know a lot of things are bad. But certainly the abortion aspect of it should not be funded by government.”

Cuomo followed up, asking, “So you would take a look at it before you defund it. That’s what is being asked for right now. Many in your party are doing the opposite. They are saying defund it and then look at it. You’d say look at it first.”

Trump responded: “I would look at the good aspects of it. I would also look as I’m sure they do some things properly and good and good for women. I would look at that. I would look at other aspects also, but we have to take care of women. We have to absolutely take care of women. The abortion aspect of Planned Parenthood should not be funded.”

So, Trump did not say he supported cutting off all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, as other Republicans, including Cruz, have done. He did say that abortions performed by Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be funded. (For the record, federal funding for abortion is restricted by the Hyde Amendment to only abortion cases involving rape, incest or endangerment to the life of the mother.)

But, as CNN wrote in a headline on the Trump interview, he has waffled on this issue. A week earlier, on Aug. 4, 2015, radio host Hugh Hewitt asked whether Trump would support shutting down the government in an attempt to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Trump responded: “I would.”

Trump has made other conflicting statements. Also on Aug. 11, in an interview with Fox News when asked whether taxpayers should give Planned Parenthood a penny since it performs abortions, Trump said that abortion services was a small part of what the group did and that it provided important services to women (starting at the 5:50 mark).

Trump, Aug. 11, Fox News: Let’s say there’s two Planned Parenthoods in a way. You have it as an abortion clinic. Now that’s actually a fairly small part of what they do, but it’s a brutal part and I’m totally against it and I wouldn’t do that. They also however service women. …

We have to help women. A lot of women are helped. We have to look at the positives, also, for Planned Parenthood.

Trump left open the possibility of cutting off funding unless the group stops performing abortions, saying, “Maybe unless they stop with the abortions, we don’t do the funding for the stuff that we want. There are many ways you can do that.”

But then in another Fox News interview on Sept. 8 with Bill O’Reilly, Trump took a harder line and denied that he supported funding the group: “No, I mean a lot of people say it’s an abortion clinic. I’m opposed to that. And I wouldn’t do any funding as long as they are performing abortions. And they are performing abortions. So I would be opposed to funding — I would be totally opposed to funding,” Trump said.

Rubio Wrong on Illegal Immigration

Rubio said that illegal immigration “is worse today than it was three years ago, which is worse than it was five years ago.” It has remained pretty flat in that time.

There were 11.3 million people living in the U.S. illegally in 2014. That’s the most recent estimate from the Pew Research Center. That is lower than the 11.5 million the center estimated were living in the U.S. illegally three years earlier in 2011, and the same as the 11.3 million in 2009.

Overall, “[t]his population has remained essentially stable for five years after nearly two decades of changes,” Pew said in its July 2015 report.

Stalin Didn’t Say That

In his closing statement, Carson attributed a quote to Joseph Stalin that experts say didn’t come from the Soviet dictator.

“Joseph Stalin said if you want to bring America down you, have to undermine three things: our spiritual life, our patriotism and our morality,” Carson said. “We, the people, can stop that decline, starting right here in South Carolina.”

The Internet myth-busters at Snopes.com looked into the quote when it made the rounds as a Facebook meme (the exact quote attributed to Stalin then was, “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”). Snopes searched collections of Stalin’s speeches, writings, interviews and other statements and was unable to turn up any reference to that quote. Snopes also noted that none of the numerous citations on the Internet referenced a verifiable source for the quote.

After the debate, we reached out to David Brandenberger, an associate professor of history and international studies at the University of Richmond, who has written extensively about Stalin, and he told us the quote is bogus.

“Indeed, the only thing more remarkable than Carson quoting Stalin at the debate was that he attributed to him a made-up quotation,” Brandenberger told us via email. “Of course, Stalin is often credited with apocryphal statements (‘Death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem,’ etc.), but that doesn’t excuse Carson tonight.”

Stanford history professor Norman Naimark, who holds the Robert and Florence McDonnell Chair in East European History and wrote “Stalin’s Genocides,” told us he has never heard of that quote from Stalin either. “I suspect Carson made it up, but I don’t know for sure,” Naimark told us.

Trump/Bush on Eminent Domain

Trump and Bush once again argued over New Jersey’s failed attempts to use eminent domain to benefit a Trump casino project in Atlantic City. But, in defending himself, Trump misrepresented the case.

Trump falsely claimed that the eminent domain case “wasn’t for a parking lot,” but rather for “a very large tower” that would “employ thousands.” But the eminent domain case was for a parking lot. A “very large tower” was not part of the condemnation proceedings, but there was a proposed hotel renovation that would have been accomplished through a private sale.

Trump: When Jeb had said, “You used eminent domain privately for a parking lot.” It wasn’t for a parking lot. The state of New Jersey — too bad Chris Christie is not here, he could tell you — the state of New Jersey went to build a very large tower that was going to employ thousands of people. I mean, it was going to really do a big job in terms of economic development.

Here are the facts, as we have reported once before: The state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority attempted to condemn three parcels of land in Atlantic City as part of a $28.6 million hotel project proposed by Trump Plaza Associates. The properties were owned separately by three families with the last names Banin, Coking and Sabatini.

Here’s how a state court judge, in ruling against the state and Trump in 1998, described Trump’s proposal and the three properties that the state wanted to condemn to complete it:

Casino Reinvestment Development Authority v. Banin, July 20, 1998: Trump’s project called for the redevelopment of the city block abutting the boardwalk between the Trump Plaza Hotel-Casino and Caesars Hotel-Casino. The block was located in the Corridor Area which was an area previously identified by CRDA for redevelopment. The site was occupied by the former Holiday Inn Hotel, the rusting steel structure of the aborted Penthouse Hotel-Casino project, some undeveloped lots and a few private residences and small businesses. Included within the site were the properties of defendants Banin, Coking and Sabatini.

Trump’s project proposed creation of a 361-room hotel by rehabilitation of the Holiday Inn building; removal of the dilapidated Penthouse steel structure; construction of surface parking and a driveway bisecting the block from Missouri Avenue to the entrance of the Trump Plaza Hotel; and creation of a park or privately-owned landscaped area along Pacific Avenue. The project also called for construction of a two-story porte-cochere at the Trump Plaza entrance spanning Columbia Place, the public street between Trump Plaza and the site, as well as linkage of the renovated hotel to Trump Plaza by way of a sky bridge over Columbia Place near the Boardwalk.

Superior Court Judge Richard Williams wrote in his opinion that the “parcels in the area proposed for the driveway, surface parking, and the landscaped park area were held by other owners. Because Trump had previously been unable to acquire these privately-owned parcels, CRDA was requested to use its power of eminent domain for their acquisition.”

Williams wrote that under Trump’s plan “Coking’s property [would] be blacktopped and used for surface parking and Banin and Sabatini’s properties would be planted with grass and used for a park or green space.”

It was Vera Coking who was featured in a Cruz ad attacking Trump for seeking to bulldoze Coking’s home “for a limousine parking lot for his casino.” As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1998, Trump proposed “a limousine waiting area” on Coking’s property.

So, while Trump can make the argument that his project would have created jobs, he cannot say that the eminent domain case “wasn’t for a parking lot.” It was for a parking lot and public park to complete the project.

Did Trump Call McCain a ‘Loser’?

In a pointed exchange, Bush claimed Trump once called Sen. John McCain a “loser because he was a P.O.W.” Trump called McCain a loser, but not because he was a prisoner of war. He called him a “loser” because he lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama.

In the debate, Bush said, “And, it’s really weak to call John McCain a loser because he was a P.O.W.”

“I never called him — I don’t call him,” Trump responded.

“That is outrageous,” Bush continued. “The guy’s an American hero.”

There are two Trump quotes in question here. And Bush was conflating them.

At the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, in July, Trump said of McCain, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” In comments to the media after his speech, Trump seemed to walk that back a bit, saying, “If somebody’s a prisoner, I consider them a war hero.”

In the same speech, Trump also took a shot at McCain for losing the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama.

“He lost,” Trump said. “He let us down. I never liked him as much after that because I don’t like losers.”

GDP Growth

Trump claimed that the nation’s economy “didn’t grow” in the last quarter. It did grow, although fourth-quarter growth was weak.

Trump: We have an economy that last quarter, GDP didn’t grow. It was flat. We have to make our economy grow again.

In a Jan. 29 press release, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said the nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015. For the year, the U.S. economy grew by 2.4 percent — the same as 2014, BEA said.

Not Entirely Self-Funded

Trump repeated his claim that he is a “self-funder” when it comes to funding his campaign. Not completely, he isn’t.

Trump’s presidential campaign received $19.4 million in 2015, according to Trump’s year-end filing with the Federal Election Commission in January. Trump loaned his campaign $12.6 million of that amount, and he made additional in-kind contributions of $219,000. So, nearly 66 percent of the campaign’s money has come from Trump. The other 34 percent, or $6.5 million, has come from individual donors.

We should also note that since Trump has loaned that money to his campaign, rather than donating it, he could potentially get it back. The individual donations that the campaign has received are enough to cover about half of the campaign’s $12.4 million in spending as of Dec. 31, 2015.

It’s Groundhog Day All Over Again

Groundhog Day was less than two weeks ago, but watching the Republican debate felt a bit like that for us at FactCheck.org — we have seen many of the same misleading claims crop up again and again. Here are some of the repeat claims we heard:

• Cruz: “The business flat tax that is in my tax plan is not a VAT [Value-Added Tax]. A VAT in Europe is a sales tax.” As we wrote when this came up during the sixth Republican debate, the nonpartisan, business-funded Tax Foundation has described the Cruz proposal as a “subtraction method value-added tax,” and the conservative National Review also describes it as a VAT.
• Bush: “The Cato Institute, which grades governors based on their spending, rank [Kasich] right at the bottom.” We wrote about this recently after ads from the pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise cited Cato Institute’s 2014 “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors,” in which it gave Kasich an overall “D” rating and rated him worst among all governors on spending. We noted that the rating is based on data about Ohio’s general revenue fund spending, but the nonpartisan group that published the data warned that the figures for Ohio were skewed, for state comparison purposes, due to accounting methods employed by the state for Medicaid expenditures.
• Bush: “We led the nation in job growth seven out of eight years” when he was governor of Florida. Bush has twisted jobs data a few different ways during the campaign, and this time his campaign says he is referring to the total number of jobs created in the last seven years of his governorship. As we noted last June, Florida gained more net jobs than any other state, regardless of size, in three of the eight years Bush was governor. But when it comes to the rate of job growth — which factors in the size of the state’s job market – Florida ranked fifth over the entire eight years of Bush’s two terms.
• Cruz: “Marco [Rubio] went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office.” As we explained when Cruz made a similar charge on two Sunday talk shows on Jan. 31, Rubio said he wouldn’t immediately revoke Obama’s 2012 order protecting so-called “Dreamers” — young people brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents — though he said it would have to end “at some point.” But Rubio has said he would revoke Obama’s 2014 executive action that protects as many as 5 million adults from deportation.
• Rubio: “And here is the truth, Ted Cruz supported legalizing people that were in this country illegally.” We’ve covered this one repeatedly, as it has come up in multiple debates. We covered the issue in detail after the fifth Republican debate, and the gist of it is that Cruz offered an amendment to a Senate immigration bill to strip it of a path to citizenship — although it would have left open the possibility of legalization. Cruz spoke many times in favor of his amendment, advocating its passage, but Cruz’s campaign says that was a political bluff to show that the real aim of the bill’s supporters was a path to citizenship, and that he never actually supported legalization.
• Carson: “You know, when you consider how much regulations cost us each year, you know? $2 trillion dollars per family, $24,000 per family.” We last wrote about this when then Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said in February 2015 that the cost of government regulation “hits American families for $15,000 a year.” That figure comes from a conservative group’s admitted “back-of-the-envelope” calculation of estimated regulatory costs that does not include any potential savings. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has released a newer version of the report cited by Perry, but the same shortcomings apply.
• Rubio: “Well, first of all, I think amnesty is the forgiveness of a wrongdoing without consequence and that — I’ve never supported that.” We wrote about Rubio’s evolution on immigration, as well as his evolving definition of amnesty back in 2013. In that story, we noted that in 2011, Rubio derided an “earned path to citizenship” as another word for “amnesty.”
• Kasich: “We have grown the number of jobs by 400,000 private-sector jobs since I’ve been governor.” As we wrote when Kasich made a similar boast in the seventh GOP debate, Ohio has, in fact, gained 400,700 private-sector jobs under Kasich. Still, Ohio’s private-sector job growth rate of 9.3 percent during Kasich’s tenure lags behind the national private-sector growth rate of 11.7 percent.

— by Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Lori Robertson and D’Angelo Gore

Sources

Senate Historical Office. Supreme Court Nominations, (1789-present). Accessed 13 Feb 2016.

Center for Responsive Politics. Donald Trump, Candidate Summary, 2016 Cycle. Accessed 13 Feb 2016.

Confessore, Nicholas, and Cohen, Sarah. “Donald Trump’s Campaign, Billed as Self-Funded, Risks Little of His Fortune.” New York Times. 5 Feb 2016.

Passel, Jeffrey, and Cohn, D’Vera. “Unauthorized immigrant population stable for half a decade.” Pew Research Center. 22 Jul 2015.

CNN. “New Day.” Transcript. 11 Aug 2015.

Fox News Network. “The O’Reilly Factor.” Transcript. 8 Sep 2015.

Fox News Network. “Donald Trump lays out plans for immigration, health reform.” Video clip from “Hannity.” 11 Aug 2015.

Diamond, Jeremy. “Donald Trump waffles on totally defunding Planned Parenthood.” CNN.com 12 Aug 2015.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Widow’s Home Wasn’t Bulldozed.” FactCheck.org. 25 Jan 2016.

Casino Reinvestment Development Authority v. Banin. Superior Court of the State of New Jersey. 20 Jul 1998.

Dyer, Eric. “Homeowner Tops Trump In Court A Judge Ruled The CRDA Has No Eminent Domain To Give Vera Coking’s A.c. Property To The Developer.” Philadelphia Inquirer. 21 Jul 1998.

“National Income and Product Accounts Gross Domestic Product: Fourth Quarter and Annual 2015 (Advance Estimate).” Press release. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 29 Jan 2016.

Snopes.com. “Healthy Body.” Last Updated 1 Feb 2016.

Schreckinger, Ben. “Trump attacks McCain: ‘I like people who weren’t captured.’ ” Politico. 18 Jul 2015.

Rucker, Philip. “Trump slams McCain for being ‘captured’ in Vietnam; other Republicans quickly condemn him.” Washington Post. 18 Jul 2015.

The post FactChecking the Ninth GOP Debate appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Pro-Jeb Bush ads rely on skewed data to falsely label Ohio Gov. John Kasich as having the “worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat.”

The rating is based on data about Ohio’s general revenue fund spending, but the nonpartisan group that published the data warned that the figures for Ohio were skewed, for state comparison purposes, due to accounting methods employed by the state for Medicaid expenditures.

The attack is particularly significant given that Kasich has made balancing the federal budget a central part of his campaign. Kasich, a former chairman of the House Budget Committee, has described himself as “one of the chief architects” of a successful effort to balance the budget in 1997 for the first time in decades.

As several candidates vie for the Republican establishment vote, the pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise came out with an ad in the New England area attacking Kasich’s record. The ad, called “Quiz,” claims Kasich “even had the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat.” That line also was in a Right to Rise ad that ran in Iowa asking viewers to compare the records of the three governors running for president if you “can’t stomach Trump or Cruz.”

Those ads, as well as one on the Bush campaign website, all cite a report from the libertarian Cato Institute, which gave Kasich an overall “D”rating in its 2014 “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors.”

The Cato report praised Kasich for enacting numerous tax cuts but said his “score was dragged down by his spending increases.” Indeed, Cato ranked Kasich dead last among governors on spending, based on large growth in general revenue fund spending in FY 2014, which was adjusted for population increases and inflation. (Interestingly, in 2006 Cato gave then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush a “C” grade, praising his tax cuts but noting that “[w]hat has finally caused his grade to drop to a C this term was explosive growth in state spending.”)

Cato particularly criticized Kasich’s push for Medicaid expansion made possible by the Affordable Care Act. Kasich has said he opposes the Affordable Care Act, but he supports the Medicaid expansion, which took effect Jan. 1, 2014.

Cato based its spending conclusions on data from a state expenditure report by the nonpartisan National Association of State Budget Officers. But that report carries a significant footnote for the data from Ohio.

The footnote, found on page 14, states that unlike most other states, Ohio’s accounting practices are such that most of the federal reimbursements for Medicaid expenditures are put into the general revenue fund. Other states list such federal reimbursements separately as federal expenditures. As a result, the footnote states, “This will tend to make Ohio’s GRF expenditures look higher and conversely make Ohio’s federal expenditures look lower relative to most other states that don’t follow this practice.”

The Kasich campaign argues that it makes more sense to look at all-funds spending, which includes state and federal (and other) spending. By that measure, Kasich’s record on spending is middle-of-the-pack — increases of about 2 percent a year. Those are the figures Kasich cited in an Aug. 2 interview on “Fox News Sunday,” when he dismissed the Cato report and claimed, “our budget overall is growing by about 2 percent or 3 percent.” When he says overall, he’s talking about the all-funds budget.

Kasich’s interview sparked a blog response from Nicole Kaeding, coauthor of the Cato report who now works for the pro-business Tax Foundation.

“By using the all-funds number, Kasich is trying to use federal spending to mask the quick increase in general fund spending,” Kaeding wrote. “Federal spending — besides Medicaid — is not increasing in Ohio that quickly. Kasich has little control over federal spending, but he is using it to hide how much Ohio’s state spending has grown during his tenure.”

“Our data is correct, and so is his,” Kaeding concluded. “Kasich seems to pick the dataset that shed the best light on him. Ohio spending has increased quickly when you look at the general fund.”

There are pros and cons to looking exclusively at either the general fund or all-funds budget when it comes to evaluating Ohio’s spending performance. And we won’t wade into the political debate about which way is best. But it is misleading to call Kasich the worst on spending based on general revenue fund spending data from NASBO. That ignores NASBO’s warning that an accounting peculiarity in Ohio regarding Medicaid expenditures makes its general fund look larger relative to other states that do their accounting differently.

We reached out to Chris Edwards of Cato, who was the other coauthor of the 2014 report card, and we asked him about NASBO’s footnote on Ohio spending.

He noted that between FY 2012, Kasich’s first year in office, and FY 2015, Ohio’s general revenue fund grew 16.8 percent and all funds grew 12.4 percent. For all states over the same period, general revenue funds grew 13.1 percent and all funds grew 13.2 percent. (We checked and confirmed these numbers independently.) These figures — which are not adjusted for inflation or population fluctuations — back up the Kasich campaign’s assertion that its all-funds spending was nearly in line with the national average over that period, even as its general fund appears to be well above the national average.

“So I would say looking now that Kasich’s spending increases over his first 3 years were roughly in line with the average for the 50 states,” Edwards said.

But Edwards then pointed to GRF-only data for 2016 released by NASBO (all-funds data is not yet available). That data show Ohio’s GRF “leaps by 13 percent compared to the 50-state average of 4.1 percent for that one year.”

That’s true, but again, back to those pesky footnotes. On page 41, a footnote provides an important caution when it comes to comparing the general revenue fund for Ohio with other states in FY 2016.

NASBO, Fall 2015: Medicaid expansion was not funded through the General Revenue Fund (GRF) in fiscal year 2015, but it is in fiscal 2016. This change is responsible for the majority of the fiscal 2016 growth. In addition, federal reimbursements for Medicaid expenditures funded from the GRF are deposited into the GRF. This will tend to make Ohio’s GRF expenditures look higher relative to most states that don’t follow this practice.

While Ohio had been funding federal reimbursements for Medicaid through the GRF prior to the ACA Medicaid expansion, it didn’t start funding those expansion funds specifically through the GRF until 2016.

That’s largely the reason why Ohio appears to have larger general revenue fund increases in 2016 relative to other states — many of which have also opted to expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies at NASBO.

The general fund figure “is definitely skewed for Ohio because of the way they do Medicaid,” Sigritz said. “It they weren’t a Medicaid expansion state, you wouldn’t see anything. But they are, and that’s mostly what’s leading to a big jump right now.”

In other words, it would be expected that as Medicaid funding increased — as it did in Ohio and 34 other states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — Ohio’s GRF would expand faster relative to other states based on the relatively unique way it does its accounting.

NASBO referred us to Ohio’s Department of Medicaid budget, which shows the GRF federal fund for Medicaid grew by nearly 29 percent from 2015 to 2016, while its GRF state Medicaid fund grew by only 1.2 percent. There was also a big drop in a separate federal fund group for Medicaid, outside the GRF, of 42 percent, showing that a shift had occurred in how Ohio categorized its Medicaid spending (see page 50 of the state’s FY 2016-2017 budget).

Edwards stood by the Cato rating, arguing that using the NASBO data is the fairest way to compare state spending.

“As an economist trying to be fair, I’ve almost always stuck with what NASBO reports,” Edwards said. “Over the years, I’ve noticed many discrepancies between NASBO data and what state specific budget documents show. But I’ve decided it is most fair to just use the NASBO-reported data. For one reason, state budget officers in the 50 states are the ones that provide the data to NASBO, and they know exactly what they are giving to NASBO. NASBO, to the extent it can, tries to get the states to report consistent data.”

“Kasich touts himself as a spending cutter, but it appears that he’s no more fiscally frugal than the average of all Democratic and Republican governors,” Edwards said. “Besides, his unilateral decision to expand Medicaid is a clear decision in favor of budget expansion over fiscal retrenchment.”

For the purposes of our fact-check, we would note that saying the spending increases over Kasich’s first three years were “average” is far different from the ads’ claim that Kasich was worse on spending than any other governor, Republican or Democrat.

Cato is entitled to its opinion on the Medicaid expansion, of course. But its comparison of state spending is based on a report that warns that Ohio’s general fund may appear larger than other states due to the way it accounts for Medicaid spending. And so it is misleading to conclude based on that data that Kasich has the “worst rating” on spending, as the ads claim.

The post Is Kasich ‘Worst’ on Spending? appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

The Republican presidential candidates debated in Iowa Jan. 28 and stretched the facts:

• Sen. Marco Rubio went too far in claiming that Hillary Clinton “wants to put Barack Obama on the Supreme Court.” An Iowa resident suggested such an appointment to Clinton, and she said she’d take it “under advisement.”
• Rubio also said that the White House “still refuses to acknowledge” that the shooting of a Philadelphia police officer on Jan. 7 “had anything to do with terror.” But a White House spokesman said that terrorism may have been the motivation and that the Philadelphia Police Department would make that determination.
• Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush exaggerated in saying that then-Sen. Obama killed the comprehensive immigration bill in 2007 that had the support of President George W. Bush.
• Ohio Gov. John Kasich credited the Medicaid expansion with a reduction in the prison recidivism rate in Ohio. But the rate isn’t as low as he claimed, and the latest figures are on inmates released well before the expansion.
• Sen. Ted Cruz claimed an amendment he offered to the 2013 immigration bill “didn’t say a word about legalization.” That’s technically true, but the effect of the amendment would have been to allow legalization of those in the country illegally.
• Rubio claimed that when he opposed a “path to citizenship” when running for the Senate in 2010, it was due to legislation to provide “almost an instant path with very little obstacles moving forward.” But a 2010 Senate bill provided the same types of obstacles as the bill Rubio later backed as a senator.
• Cruz claimed that “millions” had lost jobs and been forced into part-time work because of the Affordable Care Act. But the economy has added millions of jobs since the employer mandate, and fewer people are working part-time for economic reasons.
• Kasich boasted of 400,000 jobs gained in the state under his governorship. But the rate of growth is below the national average.

Analysis

The seventh debate among the Republican presidential contenders — and last before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses — featured seven of the top candidates on the main stage: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul. Businessman Donald Trump did not attend the debate, which was hosted by Fox News and Google and held in Des Moines, Iowa.

Obama, a Supreme Court Justice?

Rubio went too far in claiming that Clinton “wants to put Barack Obama on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.” Clinton only said that she would take an Iowa resident’s appointment suggestion “under advisement.”

Rubio: She wants to put Barack Obama on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. She said that here in Iowa just two days ago. That would be a disaster for this country.

Rubio was referring to a comment that Clinton made Tuesday in response to a voter question during a campaign rally in Decorah, Iowa. Here is the question and her response (around the 7:40 mark) courtesy of Live Satellite News:

Questioner, Jan. 26: The next president will probably appoint several members of the Supreme Court. Will you consider appointing Obama?

Clinton: Wow! What a great idea! … He may have a few other things to do. … I would certainly take [your suggestion] under advisement. I mean, he’s brilliant and he can set forth an argument, and he was a law professor, so he’s got all the credentials. Now, we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed.

Actually, in 2014, the New Yorker asked Obama whether he would consider serving as a judge after his presidency. It reported that Obama “sounded tempted,” but responded: “I don’t think I have the temperament to sit in a chamber and write opinions. … I think being a Justice is a little bit too monastic for me. Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more.”

Obama may have changed his mind since then. However, it is clear that while Clinton responded positively to the suggestion to put him on the Supreme Court, Rubio exaggerates by saying that she “wants” to do so.

Terrorism and the Philadelphia Shooting

Rubio said that the White House “still refuses to acknowledge” that Edward Archer’s shooting of a Philadelphia police officer on Jan. 7 “had anything to do with terror.” That’s not exactly right. A spokesman for the White House has said that terrorism may have been the motivation for the shooting, but that the Philadelphia Police Department would ultimately make that determination.

Rubio: Megyn, that’s the problem. Radical Muslims and radical Islam is not just hate talk. It’s hate action. They blow people up. Look what they did in San Bernardino.

Look at the attack they inspired in Philadelphia, that the White House still refuses to link to terror, where a guy basically shot a police officer three times.

He told the police, “I did it because I was inspired by ISIS,” and to this day, the White House still refuses to acknowledge it had anything to do with terror.

Rubio was referring to the Jan. 7 shooting of Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett by Archer, who reportedly told Philadelphia police that he shot Hartnett “in the name of Islam” and that he had pledged allegiance to terrorist group ISIS, or the Islamic State.

During his White House press briefing on Jan. 11, Press Secretary Josh Earnest, in response to a question about Archer’s reported confession, said that “we’re all wondering right now” if the shooting was an act of terrorism based on reports of Archer’s stated motivations. But Earnest said that the Philadelphia Police Department had not come to that conclusion.

Questioner: First, a quick follow-up to something on Friday, the attempted assassination of the police officer in Philadelphia. Does the White House consider that a terrorist attack?

Earnest: Jon, this is something that is still being investigated by the Philadelphia Police Department and they have not concluded that it actually is an act of terrorism. But given some of the circumstances of the event, obviously that is something that we’re all wondering right now. And I’m confident that as the Philadelphia Police Department investigates the shooting of one of their own this is something they will consider — that’s specifically the motivation of the individual who carried out this heinous act of violence.

When another reporter asked Earnest a follow-up question about it, he said that the shooting “could be an act of terrorism” and that investigators were still “trying to understand what may have motivated this individual to carry out this deplorable act of violence.”

Earnest: Well, Kevin, obviously those reports lead us to worry that this could be an act of terrorism. And I’m sure that’s part of the ongoing investigation that’s being led by the Philadelphia Police Department right now.

The FBI has been supporting that investigation and there obviously is keen interest in trying to understand what may have motivated this individual to carry out this deplorable act of violence. And it is relevant whether or not this individual was motivated by demons inside of his own mind, or by demons that he encountered through social media.

Earnest suggested that Archer may have been “motivated by demons inside of his own mind,” which could be based on reports that Archer’s mother, Valerie Holiday, said that her son was suspicious of the police and had been “hearing voices in his head” and “talking to himself.”

The FBI has been investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, but has not concluded that it was such. According to an Associated Press report, the FBI has at least ruled out that Archer was part of an organized terror cell.

Medicaid and Recidivism in Ohio

Kasich takes credit for using Medicaid expansion funds to help reduce the state’s prison recidivism to “less than 20 percent.” It’s actually 27.5 percent — much lower than the national average, but it is not less than 20 percent.

Also, the rate has been in a steady decline since 2000 — long before Kasich took office in January 2011.

Kasich made his remarks when he was asked about his decision to bypass the Legislature and accept federal funding to expand Medicaid in his state under the Affordable Care Act.

Kasich: It was our money, and we brought them back to tend to the mentally ill. Because I don’t think they ought to live in prison or live under a bridge; to treat the drug-addicted so they’re not in an in-and-out-of-the-door policy out of the prisons; and to help the working poor so they don’t live in emergency rooms.

How has it worked? Well, we have treated the drug-addicted in our prisons and we released them in to the community, and our recidivism rate is less than 20 percent. That’s basically bordering on a miracle because of our great prison director.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction defines recidivism “as the first return to a DRC institution within 3 years of release.”

The three-year recidivism rate was 39 percent for inmates released in 2000 and has been falling ever since, reaching a low of 27.1 percent for inmates released in 2010, according to a 2014 state corrections department report.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, in a March 2014 story, trumpeted the new low rate, saying it is “much lower” than the national average.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 6, 2014: The state prison system said Wednesday that Ohio’s recidivism rate is 27.1 percent for inmates released in 2010. That is better than the previous rate of 28.7 percent. It also is much lower than the national average of about 40 percent.

The recidivism rate — or the rate at which inmates return to prison over a span of three years — has been in a downward spiral since 2000, when the rate was 39 percent in Ohio, according to prison records. The recent report marks the lowest rate in years.

That 27.1 percent figure is listed in the department’s annual report for fiscal year 2014. But the most recent annual report for fiscal 2015 says the three-year rate for inmates released in 2011 was 27.5 percent — up slightly from the previous year.

So, the state’s rate is relatively low. Is Kasich’s decision to accept Medicaid the reason?

Well, the most recent three-year recidivism rate published in the fiscal 2015 report is based on inmates who were released in 2011. The Medicaid expansion did not start in Ohio until 2014.

Bush: Obama’s ‘Poison Pill’ Amendments

Bush accused Obama of killing the comprehensive immigration bill that had the support of President George W. Bush, but failed to pass the Senate in 2007. But, as we have written before, that gives Obama too much blame or credit, depending on your point of view.

Bush: I have supported a consensus approach to solving this problem wherever it came up. and in 2007 it almost passed when my brother was president of the United States. A bipartisan approach got close. Barack Obama actually had the poison pill to stop it then.

We wrote about this “poison pill” claim when it was made in 2010 by Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, and in 2008, when it was made by Sen. John McCain, a supporter of the 2007 bill who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

The claim rests on five amendments that Obama supported and one that he sponsored, as the McCain campaign outlined in a press release during the 2008 presidential campaign. Only two of those measures passed:

• An amendment by Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman that reduced the annual visa quota for guest workers from 400,000 to 200,000. That passed easily, 74-24.
• An amendment sponsored by Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan and sponsored by labor unions that would have ended the temporary worker program after five years. That was more controversial and passed 49-48, meaning it would not have passed without Obama’s vote.

Gillespie cited the Dorgan amendment as the “poison pill” that killed the immigration bill. A day later, the immigration bill — with the Dorgan amendment — gained only 34 votes of the 60 votes it needed to end debate on the bill and bring it up for a vote.

No Republican voted for the cloture motion that would have cleared the bill for a final vote. One of them, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, called the Dorgan amendment a “poison pill.”

Senate Democratic leadership tried one last time to end the Republican-led filibuster, but the bill fell short by 14 votes on June 28, 2007 — which was welcome news to groups on the left (AFL-CIO) and right (the Heritage Foundation) that opposed it.

Who was to blame — or deserves credit — for the defeat? That’s hard to say.

After the bill’s defeat, not even McCain blamed any one person for it. He blamed his own party for its strong opposition.

“A lot of the Republican base was passionate about the issue, and they made their influence felt,” McCain told Congressional Quarterly in a June 29, 2007, story for the New York Times.

At the time, the Washington Times gave credit to three Republicans in particular for leading opposition to the bill: Sens. Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint and David Vitter.

The reality may be more complicated than that. The Washington Post wrote that the bill failed because it “was reviled by foes of illegal immigration, opposed by most labor unions and unloved by immigration advocates.”

In any event, it’s an exaggeration to say that Obama killed the bill.

Cruz’s Legalization Amendment

Pressed about an amendment he offered in 2013 to the “Gang of Eight” Senate immigration bill, Cruz claimed it said nothing about offering legalized status to immigrants living in the country illegally.

That’s true, but Cruz is being misleading about the effect of his amendment. It would have allowed legalization, a point he made very clear at the time.

“You know, the amendment you’re talking about is one sentence — it’s 38 words,” Cruz said during the debate. “Anyone can go online at tedcruz.org and read exactly what it said. In those 38 words, it said anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship. It didn’t say a word about legalization.”

Here’s the 38-word text of Cruz’s amendment: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person who is or has previously been willfully present in the United States while not in lawful status under the Immigration and Nationality Act shall be eligible for United States citizenship.”

Technically, there’s nothing in that language that mentions anything about legalization. But that was the effect of it. That’s because while Cruz’s amendment would have stripped out a proposal in S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, that provided a “path to citizenship” for those currently in the country illegally — which Cruz derided as “amnesty” — his amendment purposefully left intact the bill’s provisions to provide legal status for them.

Cruz made that all perfectly clear when he introduced the amendment.

Cruz, May 21, 2013: They would still be eligible for legal status and indeed, under the terms of the bill, they would be eligible for LPR [lawful permanent resident] status as well so that they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their principal objective, to provide a legal status for those who are here illegally to be out of the shadows. This amendment would allow that to happen, but what it would do is remove the pathway to citizenship so that there are real consequences that respect the rule of law and that treat legal immigrants with the fairness and respect they deserve.

Cruz went on to say that if his amendment were adopted, it would result in a bill that “does not unfairly treat legal immigrants by removing a path to citizenship but allowing as this legislation does a legal status for those who are here illegally.”

During the December debate, Cruz said unequivocally, “I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization.” In two debates, Rubio countered that if that’s true, Cruz has flipped his position since 2013.

But as we wrote after the December debate, and again in January when Rubio raised the issue during another debate, Cruz now claims that his amendment was a bluff. Cruz’s campaign told us the intent of the amendment was to expose that the real motivations of the bill’s supporters were to provide a path to citizenship. His campaign said supporters claimed the bill’s aim was to allow 11 million immigrants in the country illegally to come out of the shadows, so by offering a legalization option — which Cruz knew would fail — it would show that the actual intent of the bill’s supporters was to provide citizenship to those immigrants so they could become future voters. We reviewed this issue in detail in our Dec. 16 story, “Did Cruz Support Legalization?”

We noted that Cruz made numerous statements at the time in support of his amendment, but that ultimately it is up to readers to decide if Cruz once supported legalization as a political compromise, and now disavows it, or if he was merely employing a legislative ploy to expose the motivations of his opponents. Whatever one concludes about that, the fact is that the amendment Cruz proposed would have permitted a path to legalization.

Rubio’s Immigration Change

Rubio claimed that when he opposed a “path to citizenship” when running for the Senate in 2010, it was in the context of a Senate effort to provide “almost an instant path with very little obstacles moving forward.” But a 2010 Senate bill, which died in committee, provided the same types of obstacles as the bill Rubio later backed as a senator.

In fact, previous bills — a 2007 Senate immigration bill and a 2005 bill introduced by Sen. John McCain, a bill Rubio specifically said he opposed in 2010 — proposed a “path to citizenship” that included fines, payment of back taxes, probationary status, criminal background checks and proof of employment. Those measures are similar to those in the “gang of eight” immigration bill Rubio cosponsored in 2013.

In the debate, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly played clips of Rubio speaking against “amnesty” or a “path to citizenship” while he was running for the Senate in 2010. One clip, from an Oct. 24, 2010, debate, showed Rubio saying: “First of all, earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty. It’s what they call it. And, the reality of it is this … it is unfair to the people that have legally entered this country to create an alternative for individuals who entered illegally, and knowingly did so.”

Kelly asked Rubio about his apparent switch in positions: “Within two years of getting elected you were cosponsoring legislation to create a path to citizenship, in your words, amnesty,” she asked. “Haven’t you already proven that you cannot be trusted on this issue?”

Rubio responded that he doesn’t support “blanket amnesty,” but Kelly pointed out that “you said earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.” Rubio responded to that: “It absolutely has been, and at the time in the context of that was in 2009, and 2010, where the last effort for legalization was an effort done in the Senate. It was an effort led by several people that provided almost an instant path with very little obstacles moving forward.”

Rubio has made this argument before when questioned on his change of position from when he was a candidate for Senate, and took a harder line on immigration than his opponent, then-Gov. Charlie Crist. We looked at this issue in 2013 and found that he had indeed changed his position from 2010.

While campaigning for the Senate seat, Rubio also said that those in the country illegally should be required to return home and apply for citizenship — not be allowed to stay in the U.S. and pursue a path to citizenship. But the Senate bill he backed, S. 744 “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” would have allowed immigrants in the country illegally to eventually gain citizenship without returning to their home countries first.

The Senate bill he cosponsored would have required that several border security measures be achieved before those in the country illegally could begin to gain legal status. They would then need to “submit to and pass background checks, be fingerprinted, pay $2,000 in fines, pay taxes, prove gainful employment, prove they’ve had a physical presence in the U.S. since before 2012 and [go] to the back of the line, among other criteria,” according to a summary of the bill posted on Rubio’s Senate website.

Rubio said that the last effort in the Senate in 2009/2010 “provided almost an instant path with very little obstacles moving forward.” But a 2010 Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez, another member of the “Gang of Eight,” also delayed legalization procedures until border security measures were implemented, and it required immigrants in the U.S. illegally to register with the government, undergo background and security checks, pay fees and back taxes. The bill died in committee.

In his 2010 Senate race, however, Rubio specifically mentioned McCain’s 2005 bill, saying of his opponent Crist, “He would have voted for the McCain plan. I think that plan is wrong, and the reason why I think it’s wrong is that if you grant amnesty, as the governor proposes that we do, in any form, whether it’s back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America.”

The 2005 bill was the basis of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611), which was cosponsored by McCain. The legalization provisions required that those in the country illegally “would have had to establish employment for at least three years during the April 5, 2001-April 5, 2006, period and for at least six years after enactment, and would have had to establish payment of income taxes during that required employment period” to be granted lawful permanent residency status.

Cruz’s ‘Job Killer’ Claim

Cruz repeated an increasingly shopworn GOP claim that the Affordable Care Act has forced “millions” into unemployment and part-time work.

Cruz: It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket.

The facts are otherwise, as we’ve noted in 2011, 2012 and 2013. And the latest jobs statistics make it even more clear that what Cruz said is a partisan falsehood, no matter how many times it is repeated.

The fact is, the law hasn’t prevented the economy from adding millions of jobs, month after month. Furthermore, fewer people are being forced to work part-time, not more.

It’s true, as we’ve said, that independent, nonpartisan experts projected some negative effect on employment. That’s because some small employers may resist hiring new workers, or may cut back the hours of some current employees, to keep their total, full-time payroll under 50 — which is the point at which the law requires them to provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty.

But the experts characterized the negative effect as “small” or “minimal,” and one estimate put the total job loss at 150,000 to 300,000 — all of them low- or minimum-wage jobs — and far short of the “millions” claimed by Cruz.

The ACA’s employer mandate went into effect Jan. 1 last year, after being delayed for a year. Since then, the economy has added more than 2.4 million new jobs.

And during the same period, the number of people forced to work part-time for economic reasons (because full-time work wasn’t available, or because an employer cut back hours) has gone down — by 762,000.

As for Cruz’s claim that Americans “have lost their health insurance” because of Obamacare, the fact is that millions have gained coverage. The most recent quarterly report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that during the first six months of 2015, about 28.5 million people of all ages reported being without coverage at the time they were interviewed. That’s a reduction of 16.3 million uninsured since 2013, the year before the main provisions of the ACA took effect. (See Table 1.1a of the CDC’s previous report for historical annual figures.)

As Cruz himself said in another context during the debate, “Facts are stubborn things.” And with that we heartily agree — no matter how many times Cruz misstates them.

Kasich’s Jobs Boast

Kasich boasted that “we just found out we are up over 400,000 jobs since I took over as governor.” That’s pretty close, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which show Ohio gained 383,500 jobs between January 2011, the month Kasich took office, and December 2015, the latest figures available.

That may sound like a lot of jobs, but it reflects a growth rate of 7.6 percent. That lags behind the national growth rate of 9.5 percent over the same period. Compared with its neighbors, Ohio’s growth rate was better than West Virginia’s (0.4 percent) and Pennsylvania’s (3.4 percent), but worse than Indiana’s (8.8 percent), Michigan’s (10 percent) and Kentucky’s (8.6 percent).

Update, Jan. 29: The Kasich campaign told us he was referring only to private sector job growth, though he didn’t say so in the debate. By that measure, Ohio has gained 400,700 jobs. Still, Ohio’s private sector job growth rate of 9.3 percent during Kasich’s tenure lags behind the national private sector growth rate of 11.7 percent.

As for the unemployment rate, Ohio’s has mostly tracked the national trend, though Ohio’s rate of 9.2 percent in January 2011 was slightly above the national average of 9.1 percent. And at 4.7 percent in December, it was slightly below the national average of 5 percent.

We generally caution readers to be wary of governors citing employment gains or losses without considering the prevailing national trends. For example, in August, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie touted the creation of 192,000 private-sector jobs during his time as governor, we noted that the job growth rate in New Jersey was less than half the national average and at the time, the growth rate ranked the state 44th out of 50 states.

It is also very difficult to compare governors who served during different times, when the national economic climate may have been very different. The Washington Post compiled a nifty analysis measuring the performance of the governors running for president on a slew of economic indicators, and attempting to account for some of the different economic conditions at the time.

Correction, Feb. 18: We gave the wrong party affiliation for former Sen. Jeff Bingaman in the original version of this story. He is a Democrat. We thank the reader who brought this mistake to our attention.

— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, D’Angelo Gore and Raymond McCormack

Sources

“Barack Obama – A “Poison Pill” To Immigration Reform.” McCain-Palin 2008. Press release. 28 Jun 2008.

U.S. Senate. Senate Amendment 1169 to S. 1348. 23 May 2007.

U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 175. 23 May 2007.

U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 201. 6 Jun 2007.

U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 204. 7 Jun 2007.

Galloway, Jim. “Isakson, Chambliss: Now let’s talk about a border bill.” The Palm Beach Post. 28 Jun 2007.

U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 235. 28 Jun 2007.

Rosenblum, Ilene. “Issues and Influentials in the Immigration Reform Debate.” 28 Jun 2007.

“Feulner on the Senate Amnesty Bill.” Heritage Foundation. Press release. 27 Jun 2007.

Stables, Eleanor. “GOP’s Standing With Hispanics Faces ’08 Test in Wake of Immigration Debate.” Congressional Quarterly. 29 Jun 2007.

“Junior Senators Defeat Old Guard.” Washington Times. Editorial. 29 Jun 2007.

Toobin, Jeffrey. “The Obama Brief.” The New Yorker. 27 Oct 2014.

Live Satellite News. “Hillary Clinton Decorah Iowa 1/26/16.” 26 Jan 2016.

“About Governor Kasich.” Governor’s Office. State of Ohio. Undated. Accessed 29 Jan 2016.

Niquettte, Mark. “Kasich Wins Approval of Medicaid Plan That Bypasses Legislature.” Bloomberg Business. 21 Oct 2013.

“DRC Recidivism Rates.” Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Undated. Accessed 29 Jan 2016.

Caniglia, John. “Recidivism rate in Ohio prison system continues to drop: state report.” Cleveland Plain Dealer. 6 Mar 2014.

“2014 Annual Report.” Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Undated. Accessed 29 Jan 2016.

“2015 Annual Report.” Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Undated. Accessed 29 Jan 2016.

“Medicaid expanded in Ohio, spending lower than anticipated.” Healthinsurance.org. Undated. Accessed 29 Jan 2016.

White House. Press Briefing by the Press Secretary. 11 Jan 2016.

Haines Whack, Errin. “FBI: No Evidence Man Who Attacked Philadelphia Cop Part of Organized Cell.” Associated Press via WPVI-TV Philadelphia. 14 Jan 2016.

Philadelphia Inquirer. “Police: Gunman who shot cop pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.” 10 Jan 2016.

Schaefer, Mari A. and Shaw, Julie. “Mom: Shooting suspect has been ‘hearing voices.’ ” Philadelphia Inquirer. 10 Jan 2016.

Jackson, Brooks. “A Job-Killing Law?” FactCheck.org. 7 Jan 2011.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 29 Jan 2016.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Employment Level – Part-Time for Economic Reasons, All Industries.” Data extracted 29 Jan 2016.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; National Health Interview Survey. “Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2015.” Nov 2015.

Senate Judiciary Committee website. Cruz Amendment to S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. 21 May 2013.

Congress.gov. S.744 – Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. Introduced 16 Apr 2013.

Website for Sen. Ted Cruz. Sen. “Cruz Presents Amendments to Immigration Reform Bill.” 21 May 2013.

S. 3932: CIR Act of 2010. govtrack.us. Introduced 29 Sep 2010.

Wasem, Ruth Ellen. “Brief History of Comprehensive Immigration Reform Efforts in the 109th and 110th Congresses to Inform Policy Discussions in the 113th Congress.” Congressional Research Service. 27 Feb 2013.

Washington Post. “5th Republican debate transcript, annotated: Who said what and what it meant.” 15 Dec 2015.

Farley, Robert. “Did Cruz Support Legalization?” FactCheck.org. 16 Dec 2015.

FactCheck.org. “FactChecking the Sixth Republican Debate.” 15 Jan 2016.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Metro Area Employment, Hours, & Earnings.”

FactCheck.org. “FactChecking the GOP Candidate Forum.” 3 Aug 2015.

Tankersley, Jim, Guo, Jeff and Cameron, Darla. Wonkblog: “How well seven presidential candidates did as governor.” 22 Oct 2015.

The post FactChecking the Seventh GOP Debate appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Political leanings:

Spending target: Unknown

Right to Rise USA, a super PAC, was formed and registered with the Federal Election Commission in January 2015. Until Jeb Bush declared his candidacy on June 15, Right to Rise served as a make-shift “campaign-in-waiting,” paying “a series of staffers and vendors who ultimately took roles with the official campaign,” according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Veteran GOP media consultant Mike Murphy is the chief strategist for Right to Rise USA. Murphy has worked for, among others, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain.

In February, Bill Simon (a former chief executive of Wal-Mart) formed Right to Rise Policy Solutions, a 501 (c)(4) nonprofit organization that can raise unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose its donors, as the Washington Post reported.

As a super PAC, Right to Rise USA can “raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates,” as explained by the Center for Responsive Politics. But the PAC must disclose its donors.

“Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates, and their spending must not be coordinated with that of the candidates they benefit. Super PACs are required to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a monthly or semiannual basis – the super PAC’s choice – in off-years, and monthly in the year of an election,” the center writes.

According to Bloomberg, Paul Lindsay, the chief spokesman for the PAC Right to Rise USA and the policy group Right to Rise Policy Solutions, has stated that although the nonprofit and PAC may work together, they have “separate and distinct missions.” Bloomberg also indicated that Lindsay has declined to report how much Right to Rise Policy Solutions has raised or to identify specific donors.

Based on data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Right to Rise USA has received the most money of any super PAC for the 2016 cycle. According to its mid-year report, Right to Rise USA has, so far, raised $103.2 million and has spent $5.5 million, as of June 30, 2015. Politico explains that the super PAC’s fundraising has even eclipsed that of Bush’s campaign committee.

The largest donor to the super PAC, at least through June 30, 2015, was Miguel Fernandez, founder and chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners in Florida. He has made three donations totaling a little more than $3 million. Other top donors include Hushang Ansary, a former Iranian ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Shahla, who each donated $1 million. Texas oilman Ray Hunt and his wife, Nancy Ann, each gave $1 million. And Rooney Holdings Inc., a construction and real estate company, gave $1 million, while NextEra Energy, a Florida electric utility, contributed $1,025,000.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, several other political action committees have donated to Right to Rise USA for the 2016 cycle. Some large contributions have come from the International Association of Fire Fighters ($50,000), Chris Collins for Congress ($50,000), Florida East Coast Industries ($37,000) and Eastman Chemical ($30,000).

Fact-checking Right to Rise USA:

Bush Attacks Obama, With All Due Respect, Oct. 23, 2015

False Debate Claims Put in Ads, Dec. 22, 2015

Is Kasich ‘Worst’ on Spending? Feb. 12, 2016

The post Right to Rise USA/Right to Rise Policy Solutions appeared first on FactCheck.org.

This video from FlackCheck.org covers some of the conflicting claims on guns in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings and President Obama’s announced actions for tighter gun controls. The video is based on our Jan. 8 article “Sorting Out Obama’s Gun Proposal,” which includes fact-checks of statements made by Obama, Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio.

The post Video: Obama’s Gun Proposal appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Claims about President Obama’s executive actions on background checks are the subject of this week’s fact-checking collaboration with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

First, Obama made the claim that “a violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.” Federally licensed firearms dealers are already required to perform background checks on the gun purchaser. That’s whether they are operating online or anywhere else. And, besides, it’s illegal for a felon to purchase a gun, period. But Obama was referring to those who buy guns from individuals who purport to be “private” sellers, not licensed dealers, and therefore are not required to perform background checks.

Then, Jeb Bush, reacting to the president’s proposal, incorrectly claimed that it would take away the rights of someone “selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun” by requiring that person to perform background checks. Such “one-off” private gun sales would be unaffected by Obama’s proposals.

And Marco Rubio, in a TV ad, says Obama’s plan is to “take away our guns.” That isn’t true. No guns would be confiscated under Obama’s plan, and no law-abiding citizen would be denied the ability to purchase a gun.

For more on these claims and others about the president’s actions, read our Jan. 8 article “Sorting Out Obama’s Gun Proposal.”

The post Obama’s Executive Actions on Guns appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Politicians have offered confusing and conflicting information on guns in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings and President Obama’s announced plans for tighter gun controls:

• Jeb Bush said Obama’s plan would take away the rights of someone “selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun” by requiring that person to perform background checks. That’s not correct. Such “one-off” private gun sales would be unaffected by Obama’s proposals.
• In an ad, Marco Rubio says Obama’s plan is to “take away our guns.” The president’s plan would do no such thing. No guns would be confiscated under Obama’s plan, and no law-abiding citizen would be denied the ability to purchase a gun.
• In an interview, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s gun plan is “worse than Obama[‘s]” and that “she wants to take everyone’s gun away.” That’s not what Clinton is proposing either.
• Obama said that “historically, the NRA was in favor of background checks.” That’s misleading. The NRA opposed the Brady bill and offered an alternative background check provision that gun-control advocates saw as an attempt to kill the bill.

Obama’s Proposal

In an emotion-filled speech on Jan. 5, President Obama announced a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence. The most controversial was Obama’s plan to crack down on some unregulated Internet gun sales.

The plan does not include any new regulations, or an executive order. Rather, Obama has directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “clarify” that anyone “engaged in the business” of selling firearms — even if the seller operates over the Internet or at gun shows — must get a license and conduct background checks.

In other words, Obama said, “It’s not where you do it, but what you do.”

And, Obama warned, those who “engage in the business” of selling firearms via the Internet or at gun shows but do not obtain a license and subject buyers to background checks will be federally prosecuted. A person who “willfully engages in the business of dealing in firearms without the required license is subject to criminal prosecution and can be sentenced up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000,” the White House warned.

To back that up, Obama also announced that ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center that will track illegal online firearms trafficking, and Obama vowed that his 2017 budget proposal would include funding for an additional 200 ATF agents and investigators.

Obama’s plan also includes the hiring of 230 additional FBI staff members to help to more efficiently and effectively perform background checks, and $500 million to improve mental health services.

There has been some confusion about his proposals. For example, a number of our readers asked us to fact-check Obama’s claim that “some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.”

Many of those readers correctly noted that federally licensed firearms dealers — no matter where they operate, including the Internet — are already required to perform background checks on the gun purchaser. And, besides, it’s illegal for a felon to purchase a gun, period.

But that doesn’t mean Obama’s statement is wrong. Obama did not say violent felons are permitted to purchase guns over the Internet, only that some “can.” Obama was referring to those who buy guns from sellers who purport to be “private” sellers, not licensed dealers, and therefore are not required to perform background checks.

According to current law, those “engaged in the business” of firearms dealing are required to be federally licensed, and must then subject buyers to background checks. But the law exempts any person “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

In moving to crackdown on Internet sales, Obama is acting on the belief that too many sellers engaged in the business of selling firearms are purporting to be private sellers in order to avoid the need to be licensed (and in turn be required to obtain background checks).

That’s why, in an op-ed published by the New York Times on Jan. 8, Obama said the gun control steps he announced earlier in the week “include making sure that anybody engaged in the business of selling firearms conducts background checks.”

The key phrase in that statement is “making sure.”

Although Obama did not set a threshold number of sales to define who should be a licensed dealer, the White House noted that the “quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators.” The administration noted that “even a few transactions, when combined with other evidence, can be sufficient to establish that a person is ‘engaged in the business.’ For example, courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold or when only one or two transactions took place, when other factors also were present.” An Associated Press story said those other factors include business indicators such as “selling weapons in their original packaging and for a profit.”

Some have cautioned that Obama’s actions will have little real effect on gun violence. Carlisle Moody, an economics professor at William & Mary, told us Obama’s proposals “will almost certainly have no effect on violent crime” because licensed firearms dealers who do business over the Internet already do background checks. The guns are mailed to a local licensed dealer who performs the background check.

Existing law also requires that Internet sales between individuals in different states include background checks because guns cannot be legally mailed across state lines, per the Gun Control Act of 1968. In those cases, the gun is again mailed to a local licensed dealer.

The only possibility of avoiding background checks via the Internet is for the two individuals to meet in person, Moody said. “This is a tiny subset of all gun sales. The number of face-to-face gun sales between individuals in which the purchaser is a violent felon who then uses the firearm in the commission of a crime is even smaller.”

In addition, eight states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state — and Washington, D.C. — require background checks for all gun sales, even face-to-face private sales. Two other states — Maryland and Pennsylvania — have similar requirements for the purchase of handguns only.

We should also note that it is illegal for a seller, private or licensed, to knowingly sell a firearm to someone who is prohibited from owning a gun, such as a convicted violent felon. But the seller would have to know. And as we said, in legitimate private sales, background checks are not required.

Bush: Obama’s Actions Would ‘Burden’ Private Sellers

Reacting to Obama’s announced gun actions, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told ABC News that Obama’s plan would place an unnecessary burden on private sellers. But legitimate private sellers would not be required to do anything new.

“If someone is selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun, they’re not a dealer, which would require a license and already requires that, you’re taking that person’s right away,” Bush said. “It doesn’t make sense to add burdens on people where the problem isn’t — you’re not solving whatever problem he’s trying to solve.”

While Obama had the ATF clarify that a person engaged in the business of selling guns would need a license and to conduct background checks on buyers, regardless of where those sales take place, there is nothing in Obama’s actions that would affect the “one-off” gun seller that Bush describes.

In order to affect the private seller, Congress would have to pass a universal background check law. A bipartisan 2013 amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, would have gotten closer to universal checks, though it would have allowed sales to family, friends and neighbors without the need for background checks. It failed in a 54-46 vote.

In his speech on Jan. 5, Obama acknowledged that he could not institute universal background checks through executive order. “I want to be clear,” Obama said. “Congress still needs to act.”

Unless or until Congress passes a universal background check law, the “one-off” sales described by Bush will still be exempt from the need for background checks.

Taking Guns Away?

On the day that Obama made his speech, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio released an ad in which he says, “His [Obama’s] plan after the attack in San Bernardino? Take away our guns.”

In a Fox News interview the day after Obama’s speech, Republican front-runner Donald Trump criticized Obama’s plan and mischaracterized Hillary Clinton’s position on gun control, saying, “And you know, the Democrats generally, and Hillary Clinton is, I think worse than Obama on the issue, frankly. She wants to take everyone’s gun away.”

We’ll deal with these two claims together, since they are related.

Let’s start with Obama, who, in the speech outlining his plan, tried to get in front of such attacks.

Obama, Jan. 5: Contrary to claims of some presidential candidates, apparently, before this meeting, this is not a plot to take away everybody’s guns. You pass a background check; you purchase a firearm.

Nothing in Obama’s announced plan seeks to take away anyone’s gun. Nor would the plan prevent a law-abiding citizen from purchasing one.

“I believe in the Second Amendment,” Obama said. “It’s there written on the paper. It guarantees a right to bear arms. No matter how many times people try to twist my words around — I taught constitutional law, I know a little about this. I get it.”

After Obama’s gun speech, Clinton told an Iowa crowd that she was “very proud” of the president’s announced actions. “I was pleased because some of what he’d called for, I’d advocated for a couple months ago in the debates and in the campaign,” Clinton said.

The gun plan outlined by Clinton on her campaign website states that “any person attempting to sell a significant number of guns” over the Internet or at gun shows ought to be licensed and be required to get background checks from buyers. She also advocates “comprehensive federal background check legislation,” such as the Manchin-Toomey amendment. In addition, Clinton said she supports legislation barring the purchase of firearms by domestic abusers in dating relationships or convicted stalkers or by people involuntarily committed to outpatient mental health treatment. Finally, Clinton has called for an assault weapons ban, though she has not said that that would include confiscation of such weapons already owned by citizens.

Pitching his proposal to expand the use of background checks during CNN’s “Guns In America” town hall on Jan. 7, Obama claimed that background checks were once advocated by none other than the National Rifle Association.

Obama, Jan. 7: So why we should resist this [expanding background checks] — keep in mind that, historically, the NRA was in favor of background checks.

That’s misleading. The president is misrepresenting the NRA’s actions during the creation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

As we wrote in 2013, when Vice President Joe Biden made a similar claim, the NRA in 1991 was opposed to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which included a seven-day waiting period to allow law enforcement to conduct background checks on gun owners. In an essay on the history of the Brady law, Richard Aborn, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a board member of Handgun Control Inc., wrote that “the NRA tried a last-ditch effort” to block the Brady bill by working with Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska on an amendment to create an instant background check system. The bill failed to become law at that time.

The Brady bill didn’t become law until 1993. At the time, the law required a five-day waiting period until an instant background check system could be developed. The NRA unsuccessfully pushed for a sunset provision that would have ended the five-day waiting period after five years, even if the instant check system wasn’t yet developed. Despite that setback, the NRA was successful in inserting language so that background checks applied only to federally licensed firearm dealers. An NRA lobbyist at the time described attempts to expand background checks to all gun sales as “foolish.”

The NRA has been opposed to an expansion of background checks to any private sales ever since.

For a fuller account of the historical context of the NRA’s position on background checks, see our story, “Biden Revises NRA History on Background Checks.”

The post Sorting Out Obama’s Gun Proposal appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has said repeatedly that the National Rifle Association named him a “statesman of the year,” and that Charlton Heston gave him an award, or a rifle, about 10 years ago. His campaign now says he was mistaken on both counts.

Bush most recently made this claim on “Fox News Sunday” on Jan. 3. He boasted of his gun-rights record, saying that he was “proud of the fact I have perhaps the most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment record as a governor of any state in the country. It’s why I was statesman of the year of the NRA. I received an award from Charlton Heston about 10 years ago.”

The former Florida governor has made the same remark before, citing the “statesman of the year” award and the supposed award from Heston. In early October in South Carolina, Bush told reporters: “In Florida, when I was governor, I was the NRA statesman of the year. One year it was on my highlight reel where Charlton Heston gave me a gun on the stage in front of 15,000 people, that was pretty cool to be honest with you. ”

CNN reported that Bush told the same story four times in New Hampshire in December, and also once in Iowa in October. But the Bush camp now says the candidate was wrong. A spokesman told BuzzFeed.com on Jan. 4 that Bush “was mistaken and conflated multiple events unintentionally.”

Bush spokesman, Jan. 4 as told to BuzzFeed: In recounting the story, Jeb was mistaken and conflated multiple events unintentionally. Heston met with Jeb at that NRA convention and was the head of the NRA at the time, but it was Kayne Robinson who presented Jeb with the rifle for being keynote speaker. Heston had previously said he supported Jeb’s reelection at a 2002 campaign event. Jeb was lauded by the NRA on multiple occasions for his second amendment record, including signing legislation that the NRA dubbed the “Six Pack Of Freedom.” Jeb has a lifetime A+ rating from the NRA.

Bush did give a keynote address in April 2003 at an annual meeting of the NRA, and was presented with a rifle. But the Associated Press reported at the time that while “Heston was supposed to present Bush with the firearm,” the then-outgoing president of the NRA was suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer’s and only spoke a few sentences at the meeting. Instead, Kayne Robinson, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, took over for Heston and made the rifle presentation.

The Orlando Sentinel reported at the time that the flintlock rifle Bush received from Robinson was “a vintage weapon traditionally given to NRA keynote speakers.”

Bush’s 2003 address to the NRA makes no mention of him receiving an award, or any “statesman of the year” designation. We asked Bush’s campaign whether he had received such an award from a different group, but we have not yet received a response.

The post Bush Not Named ‘Statesman’ by NRA appeared first on FactCheck.org.