Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump have all wrongly attacked rival Ted Cruz for flip-flopping on birthright citizenship since his run for Senate in 2011. Cruz has consistently opposed the policy.

What has changed is that Cruz questioned the chances of a successful legal challenge to the 14th Amendment — which grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. That has been interpreted to apply to those born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally. Cruz now says Congress should pursue a legal challenge.

Interestingly, Cruz is being attacked by Republican opponents who have opposing views on what to do about birthright citizenship. Trump has said unequivocally that he wants to end it, while Rubio has said he is “not in favor of repealing the 14th Amendment, but I am open to exploring ways of not allowing people who are coming here deliberately for that purpose to acquire citizenship.”

Both say Cruz has flip-flopped on it.

In the Republican debate on Jan. 14, Rubio said to Cruz, “You used to say that you were in favor of birthright citizenship, now you say that you are against it.”

Trump has since taken up that line of attack, tweeting out on Jan. 19 that Cruz has given “conflicting stances on birthright citizenship.” The tweet links to a video from Real Americans 4 Real Presidents, which is not affiliated with the Trump campaign, highlighting two comments. The first is from an interview on Aug. 13, 2011, in which Cruz called it “a mistake for conservatives to be focusing on trying to fight what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship.” The second shows Cruz in an Aug. 22, 2015, interview saying, “I think we need to end birthright citizenship.”

Huckabee has also joined the fray, accusing Cruz of inconsistency on the issue. In a Jan. 19 interview on Fox News, Huckabee said Cruz has “changed his position on a number of things,” including birthright citizenship.

Huckabee, Jan. 19: I think people are beginning to see that, for the guy who bills himself as the consistent conservative, there’s not much consistency, whether it’s immigration, H-1B visa, whether it’s ethanol, whether it’s issues like birthright citizenship. The hits just keep coming.

But a closer examination of Cruz’s comments in 2011 as a Senate candidate and his comments in 2015 as a presidential candidate shows that while Cruz may have become more open to a legal challenge of the 14th Amendment — which states that all people born in the U.S. are citizens —  there is no evidence that he ever supported birthright citizenship, as Rubio claimed in the debate and in other interviews.

What Cruz Said Then

At the heart of the debate about Cruz’s position on birthright citizenship is an interview Cruz, then a candidate for the Senate, gave on Aug. 13, 2011, on the Duke Machado Show, in which he opined that the arguments against the 14th Amendment providing birthright citizenship, even if the parents are in the country illegally, “are not very good.” (The part of the 14^th Amendment in question reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”)

Cruz, Aug. 13, 2011: I have spent my professional career defending the Constitution. … The 14^th Amendment provides for birthright citizenship. I’ve looked at the legal arguments against it, and I will tell you, as a Supreme Court litigator, those arguments are not very good. As much as someone may dislike the policy of birthright citizenship, it’s in the U.S. Constitution. And I don’t like it when federal judges set aside the Constitution because their policy preferences are different. And so my view, I think it’s a mistake for conservatives to be focusing on trying to fight what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship. I think we are far better off focusing on securing the border, because birthright citizenship wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have people coming in illegally.

We scoured mainstream media articles and found only one other instance in which Cruz talked about birthright citizenship while running for the Senate. In an Oct. 17, 2011, report in the National Review, Cruz again dismissed the idea of legal efforts to reinterpret the 14th Amendment.

National Review, Oct. 17, 2011: He [Cruz] reminds opponents of illegal immigration to focus on border security, rather than hope that the Supreme Court will reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants. “I don’t think their argument is consistent with the Constitution, and so even if that outcome might be desirable as a policy outcome, I think we have an obligation to be faithful to the Constitution,” he reasons.

While we could find no other media references to Cruz’s position on birthright citizenship during his run for the Senate, the Cruz campaign did provide us with one critical piece of information — a questionnaire Cruz provided during his Senate run to Numbers USA, a nonprofit group that advocates for stricter limits on immigration. We also obtained a copy of the questionnaire directly from Numbers USA. One question asked, “Should Congress move the U.S. in line with most other nations and stop the policy of giving automatic citizenship at birth to children when both parents are illegal aliens?” Cruz’s response: “Yes.”

What Cruz Says Now

Cruz has been outspoken on the presidential campaign trail about birthright citizenship: He opposes it.

Here’s a fuller transcript of Cruz’s comments during an Aug. 22, 2015, interview with Curtis Coleman at Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream Summit, the one featured in the video tweeted by Trump.

Cruz, Aug. 22, 2015: Well, I think we need to end birthright citizenship. As a policy matter, it doesn’t make any sense that we should be incentivizing illegal immigration. There’s no reason that federal law should state that if someone is here illegally, that their children are automatically U.S. citizens. … I’ve had that position for many years, back in 2011 when I was running for the U.S. Senate, I said very explicitly then we should end birthright citizenship and I think that’s still the right position.

In a “Face the Nation” interview that aired on Aug. 23, 2015, Cruz reiterated his opposition to birthright citizenship.

Cruz, Aug. 23, 2015: I think birthright citizenship, as a policy matter, doesn’t make sense. We have right now upwards of 12 million people living here illegally. It doesn’t make any sense that our law automatically grants citizenship to their children, because what it does is, it incentivizes additional illegal immigration.

But the heart of what Donald proposed, and indeed what I have introduced, is we have got to get serious about securing the borders.

CBS host John Dickerson noted that in 2011, Cruz said the legal arguments against the 14th Amendment providing birthright citizenship are “not very good.”

“So, as a legal matter, though, it can’t be touched, right?” Dickerson asked.

“Well, no, that’s not true,” Cruz said, and then he laid out the different means through which some legal scholars say the policy could be changed.

Cruz, Aug. 23: So, there are two different pieces. There’s the policy matter and the legal matter. As a policy matter, I think now, and I thought then, we should end birthright citizenship. And in 2011, in that same conversation, I publicly said we should end birthright citizenship. Indeed, I said so in writing.

Now, there’s a second question, how does one do it? And constitutional scholars differ in terms of the way that it can be effectively done. Some constitutional scholars argue Congress could pass a law defining what the words in the 14th Amendment “subject to the jurisdiction” mean.

Others argue, no, it couldn’t be done by statute. It must be done by constitutional amendment. In my view, there’s good-faith argument on both sides. We should pursue whichever one is effective. But, as a policy matter, we should change the law. But what I also said in that interview — and I think this is important, John — is we’re facing a crisis with the illegal immigration, a law enforcement crisis, a national security crisis. Any change in birthright citizenship, be it a statute or a constitutional amendment, will take many, many years. So, the first priority should be securing the border. And we can do that with a president, unlike President Obama, who will actually enforce the laws and get the job done.

Cruz made similar comments a couple days later in an interview on Fox News, saying that “as a policy matter, it doesn’t make any sense anymore that people who are here illegally, that their children would have automatic citizenship.” He argued that the policy acts as an incentive to further illegal immigration and that “we ought to change that policy.” However, he said,”there is a legal dispute about the best means to do it.”

Cruz, Aug. 25: There are serious scholars who argue that Congress could do it through statute defining what it means to be subject to the jurisdiction, the language of the 14th Amendment. There are other serious constitutional scholars who argue the only way to change it is through a constitutional amendment. My view is, we should pursue either or both, whichever is effective; what matters is that we should change the policy so we are not rewarding and incentivizing and encouraging more illegal immigration.

Cruz was then asked about his comments in 2011 that the legal arguments against the 14th Amendment not granting birthright citizenship are “not very good” and that “I don’t like it when federal judges set aside the Constitution because their policy preferences are different.”

“That’s why I said we should pursue either or both,” Cruz responded. “We should pursue either a constitutional amendment that overcomes any language in the Constitution, or a statute, if the other scholars are right that it’s within Congress’ authority. What matters is the underlying policy.”

We found nothing in Cruz’s 2011 comments that contradicts his claim about consistently opposing birthright citizenship. In fact, the questionnaire for Numbers USA during his Senate run explicitly stated his opposition to it. The question, then, is whether Cruz has changed his mind about how to achieve that policy change. Back in 2011, he said he thought it was “a mistake for conservatives to be focusing on trying to fight what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship.” In his 2015 interviews, Cruz was less dismissive of those efforts, saying that Congress “should pursue either or both” — a statute reinterpreting the 14th Amendment or a constitutional amendment.

The post Cruz on Birthright Citizenship appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In this video, FlackCheck.org reviews some of the false and misleading claims about climate change that we have written about for FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature.

The topics covered include: “global cooling,” glacier growth in Alaska, the impact of human activity on climate change, the connection between climate change and severe weather patterns, and black bear hibernation in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

For more on each claim in the video, see our “Climate Change Review” from Dec. 14.

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.

The post Video: Climate Change Claims appeared first on FactCheck.org.

At the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties in Paris, 195 countries approved an agreement that commits nearly every country to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to slow global warming. The nations pledged to take action designed “to hold global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius,” as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Dec. 12.

The agreement had been six years in the making, since the collapse of climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009. Prior to reaching a final accord, 186 countries already had submitted mitigation contribution plans to the U.N. Under the new agreement, all countries will update those plans by 2020 and revise them every five years thereafter to meet the global climate change goals.

With the climate change announcement, we provide here a recap of false and misleading claims about climate change that we have fact-checked in recent years.

The ‘Hiatus’

Those who reject mainstream climate science often claim that there has been no warming for 17 years — a claim that relies on cherry-picked data, as we have written about before. By starting with 1998, a particularly warm year, the amount of warming over that time period appears smaller than starting with 1997 or 1999. The far more relevant long-term trend, however, is unequivocal: Fourteen of the 15 hottest years ever recorded have occurred this century, and 2014 was likely the warmest year on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2015 is “extremely likely” to supplant it.

As explained by NOAA, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2012 that the “global surface temperature trend from 1998­­-2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951-2012.” However, a new report published in the journal Science by NOAA scientists has called that conclusion “no longer valid.”

The researchers updated temperature data sets to better reflect the readings taken from ships and floating buoys, as well as from land-based temperature stations. They found that the warming trend from 2000 to 2014 was 0.116 degrees C per decade – a number that is “virtually indistinguishable” from the earlier and longer period from 1950 through 1999 (0.113 degrees C per decade). Even if they shifted the more recent trend to 1998 through 2014, which features a very warm starting year, the trend was similar — 0.106 degrees C per decade.

“Cruz on the Global Cooling Myth and Galileo,” March 27, 2015

Satellite Data

Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, claimed that satellite data in particular “has clearly showed [sic] no warming for the past two decades.” In a Dec. 9 interview on National Public Radio, Sen. Ted Cruz made a similar claim, saying “[f]or the last 18 years, the satellite data … that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever.” This is misleading.

There have been discrepancies between surface and satellite data — but that does not “invalidate the fact that surface temperatures are rising” and global warming is occurring, as NOAA explains on its FAQ Web page.

Satellites have been taking measurements since 1979. The various satellite data sets of the temperature in the troposphere (the lowest atmospheric layer) — including from NOAA, from a research company called Remote Sensing Systems and from a research group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville — disagree. But the UAH data set is the only one to show a lack of warming. Though there is some disagreement on the best ways to adjust and interpret satellite data, studies have indicated that correcting the UAH data in certain ways (specifically, removing a particular source of satellite error known as diurnal drift) would yield similar results to other data sets, indicating more warming.

NOAA says the corrections of “some measurement and calibration problems” bring the satellite record “into better agreement with surface measurements.”

“Smith Misfires on Climate Science,” Nov. 5, 2015

Bears and Climate Change

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in August made the claim that climate change is causing bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains to change their hibernation patterns. But there is no evidence that climate change is actually having such an effect.

We could find no published evidence regarding changes to black bear hibernation, and biologist Jesse Garcia of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told us that “we have no data or specific evidence” that black bears in the Sierras have changed their hibernation patterns. Black bears are not “true” hibernators and they “will often display some mid-winter activity,” Garcia said.

“The Bear Facts,” Aug. 14, 2015

Climate Consensus

Sen. Rick Santorum in September criticized the oft-cited fact that 97 percent of scientists agree that human activity is primarily responsible for warming, saying that figure is “bogus” and comes from a single study. Several surveys involving thousands of researchers have all found that the level of consensus is about 97 percent.

The 97 percent number comes from several distinct sources. The first was a 2009 survey published in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine. A year later, another study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a similar result.

Most recently, a 2013 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed 11,944 journal article abstracts published from 1991 to 2011 that matched the search terms “global climate change” or “global warming.” From that list of papers, the study authors identified which ones expressed a position on anthropogenic — human-caused — global warming. Of the 4,014 papers that took a position, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that humans are causing global warming. A second analysis in that same study asked 8,547 authors to rate their papers. Did they think their papers endorsed the consensus on warming? A total of 1,189 scientists responded, rating 2,142 individual papers. The results: 97.2 percent of the papers endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.

“Santorum’s Climate Consensus Claims,” Sept. 2, 2015

Glaciers Growing?

In September, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin questioned the scientific evidence that human activity causes global warming, and cited the fact that some glaciers in Alaska are expanding. But an individual glacier’s growth does not disprove the existence or causes of global warming. In fact, the vast majority of glaciers in Alaska and around the world are losing ice rapidly.

In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in July, researchers from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington in Seattle measured the “mass balance” of 116 glaciers in Alaska — of 616 named and many thousands of unnamed glaciers, representing 41 percent of the total glacial area — and extrapolated the results to the rest of the state. They found that Alaska’s glaciers are losing 75 gigatons of ice every year. A gigaton is equal to 1 billion metric tons of ice.

“Palin Off on Glaciers and Global Warming,” Sept. 9, 2015

Volcanoes vs. Human Activity 

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in July said a single volcanic eruption “will contribute more than 100 years of human activity” toward global warming. Actually, it is estimated that humans pump upward of 100 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all the world’s volcanoes combined.

According to a summary of evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire collection of volcanoes around the world emits an average of 0.26 gigatons of CO2 per year. (Again, a gigaton is equal to 1 billion metric tons.) Humans today, on the other hand, emit more than 30 gigatons every year, from power plants and factories, cars and airplanes, agriculture, and other activities. According to the Energy Information Administration, humans worldwide emitted 32.3 gigatons of CO2 in 2012, the most recent year for which complete data are available.

So that means humans collectively are responsible for nearly 125 times as much CO2 entering the atmosphere every year as volcanoes.

“Huckabees’ Hot Air on Volcanoes,” July 29, 2015

U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions

In his State of the Union address in 2014, President Obama boasted that the U.S. “reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth.” That’s accurate in terms of sheer tonnage of emissions reduced, but the U.S. is the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions. Dozens of countries reduced their emissions by a larger percentage than the U.S.

On ABC’s “This Week” on Dec. 13 — as well as in a press conference on Dec. 12 — Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the president’s claim. “And the fact is, the United States of America has already reduced its emissions more than any other country in the world,” Kerry said on “This Week.”

However, even with the benefit of another year of data, our conclusion remains the same. While the U.S. is the biggest reducer in terms of overall tonnage, there are other countries with a higher percentage reduction than the U.S.

A State Department official told us Kerry was looking at the change between 2003 and 2012, the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration available for international comparison (even though in the press conference Kerry referred to the effect of “President Obama’s plans,” which obviously did not take effect until 2009). Nonetheless, by that measure the U.S. reduced emissions by 583 million metric tons, more than any other country. But that was a 10 percent reduction, while, for example, France (10.7 percent) and the United Kingdom (12.9 percent) saw larger percentage reductions. And while international data are not yet available beyond 2012, EIA data for the United States show emissions increased 2.5 percent in 2013 and 0.9 percent in 2014, mostly due to an increase in the gross domestic product as the country recovers from the Great Recession.

“Facts of the Union,” Jan. 29, 2014

‘Zero Impact’?

Santorum falsely claimed in January that U.S. policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will have zero impact” on climate change. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, and while it’s true that the U.S. can’t solve the problem of global warming by itself, emissions reductions by the U.S. could indeed play a role in slowing the rise of global temperatures.

For example, in August 2012, the Obama administration finalized rules that will increase fuel-economy standards for vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The administration estimated that the new fuel standards could reduce oil consumption by 12 billion barrels through 2025, which would mean a reduction of 5.16 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide through the life of the program.

A study published in the journal Nature suggested that to avoid catastrophic warming, about one-third of all the remaining oil reserves (and higher percentages of coal and natural gas) needs to stay in the ground. A single U.S. policy — such as increasing fuel-economy standards to 54.5 mpg — would represent almost 5 percent of that amount.

The U.S. also could have an indirect impact, climate scientists told us, because its leadership on the issue could spur a global movement to cut down on the carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the planet. The climate agreement struck in Paris may be an example of that, depending on how the U.S. and future governments comply with the agreement and to what extent the agreement is effective in slowing global warming.

“Distorting Climate Change Threats, Solutions,” Jan. 28, 2015

Temperature Data ‘Falsified’?

Rep. Gary Palmer, a Republican from Alabama, falsely claimed in February that temperature data used to measure global climate change have been “falsified” and manipulated.

Palmer cited the so-called Climategate episode of six years ago, in which emails written by climate scientists purportedly showed evidence of data manipulation, and a more recent accusation of climate scientists tampering with data from temperature monitoring stations. The Climategate scandal has been subject to several separate investigations, all of which exonerated all scientists involved from any wrongdoing. And the latest data manipulation charges are a mischaracterization of standard, well-validated and peer-reviewed methods for adjusting temperature records to eliminate factors that could produce inaccurate readings.

Palmer’s claim that “we are building an entire agenda on falsified data” has no basis in evidence. Even as these claims of data manipulation have resurfaced, there is now a general consensus that 2014 was likely the hottest single year since temperature record-keeping began. This same conclusion has been reached by NOAA and NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the World Meteorological Organization. According to NASA, nine of the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 1998 the lone exception.

“Nothing False About Temperature Data,” Feb. 12, 2015

Was 2014 the ‘Warmest Year’?

In April, President Obama said that 2014 was “the planet’s warmest year on record.” Several major climate monitoring organizations have found that 2014 is more likely than any other year to have been the warmest. But statistical uncertainties inherent to calculating global temperatures make the president’s definitive claim problematic.

Given the margin of error associated with global average temperature calculations, it is possible that 2005 and 2010 were warmer. The president would have been on firmer ground had he said 2014 was “most likely” the planet’s warmest year on record.

“Obama and the ‘Warmest Year on Record,’ ” April 20, 2015

Climate Change and Severe Weather

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Rep. Lamar Smith wrote that a connection between worsening storms and climate change has been “widely debunked,” and that the United Nations doesn’t believe that warming is related to “more severe weather disasters.” Both claims are incorrect. There is some evidence linking climate change to worsening hurricanes, droughts and other disasters.

We asked Smith’s office for supporting evidence, and his office sent us a number of links to and quotes from various documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that releases periodic reports on the entirety of climate change science. Smith’s citations were generally cherry-picked lines from very long and complicated reports. The list ignored other lines from the same reports, as well as evidence published elsewhere.

A 2014 summary published jointly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its British equivalent, the Royal Society, agrees that the science on hurricanes in general is not settled, but that hurricanes are likely to become larger and more powerful as the world warms. There is also evidence that warming will make hurricanes more intense, and extreme weather events — like droughts and heavy precipitation events — worse.

“The Extreme Weather-Warming Connection,” April 30, 2015

‘Significant Shortcomings’ in U.N. Climate Reports?

In his op-ed, Smith also misrepresented an InterAcademy Council report as saying the U.N.’s climate reports had “significant shortcomings in each major step” of the U.N.’s assessment process.

The InterAcademy Council is a group made up of major science academies from around the globe — including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences — that provides advice to international bodies such as the United Nations. Its 2010 report did find problems with the methods and structure in U.N. climate reports. But Smith was cherry-picking. The council’s general assessment was that “[t]he Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall.”

“The Extreme Weather-Warming Connection,” April 30, 2015

Human Contribution to Global Warming

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush claimed that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. In fact, the United Nations climate change research organization says it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.

In response to a question about climate change during an event in New Hampshire, the former Florida governor said that while climate change is occurring, “I don’t think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. I just don’t — it’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.”

According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report that was released in 2013, it is “extremely likely” (meaning between 95 percent and 100 percent certain), that human activities caused more than half of the observed global warming between 1951 to 2010. In its summary for policymakers, the IPCC stated, “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, the best guess is that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred.

“Jeb Bush Off on Contributions to Warming,” May 22, 2015

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.

— compiled by Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley

The post Climate Change Review appeared first on FactCheck.org.

ummary

Republican presidential candidates debated once again on economic issues and offered some misleading takes on jobs, tax plans, immigrants and state budgets.

• Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that “welders make more money than philosophers.” Actually, those with undergraduate degrees in philosophy earn a higher median income than welders.
• Businessman Donald Trump said that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had forced out 1.5 million immigrants who were in the country illegally. The federal government claimed it was 1.3 million, but historians say that’s exaggerated.
• Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said the Tax Foundation calculated that his tax plan “costs less than virtually every other plan people have put up here, and yet it produces more growth.” But the foundation said Bobby Jindal’s and Rubio’s plans both would lead to higher gross domestic product growth over a decade.
• Cruz also repeated the years-long falsehood that there’s a “congressional exemption” from Obamacare. Members of Congress and their staffs face additional requirements than other Americans, not fewer.
• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said that his state has had “eight credit upgrades,” but two credit rating agencies moved the state to a “negative” outlook in February. And it faces a $117 million deficit in its most recent budget.
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he had cut his state budget by 11 percent during the 2001-2003 recession. Over his entire tenure, however, spending went up by 50 percent.
• Jindal claimed that there were “more people working in Louisiana than ever before.” That’s wrong. There were fewer Louisianans working in September than there were in December 2014.
• Huckabee said that Syrians make up only 20 percent of the refugees arriving in Europe. The figure is actually 52 percent for 2015.

Analysis

In the Fox Business Network debate held Nov. 10 in Milwaukee, only eight candidates took to the main stage — Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rand Paul.

Four more Republicans debated earlier that evening: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Philosophers Better Paid Than Welders

Rubio proposed increasing vocational education opportunities for high school students, but he went too far when he said that “welders make more money than philosophers.” Typically, they do not.

Rubio: For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.

The Wall Street Journal, a cohost of the debate, published a chart on undergraduate degrees that “pay you back,” and prominently mentioned philosophy majors.

The Journal wrote, “Your parents might have worried when you chose Philosophy or International Relations as a major. But a year-long survey of 1.2 million people with only a bachelor’s degree by PayScale Inc. shows that graduates in these subjects earned 103.5% and 97.8% more, respectively, about 10 years post-commencement” than they had earned right out of college.

PayScale’s latest data, for 2015-16, show that the median starting salary for a worker holding a philosophy degree is $42,200, rising to $85,000 after 10 years. By contrast, the median income for a welder with zero to 5 years experience is $38,728, increasing to $44,498 after 10 years, according to PayScale.

Similarly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median annual wage was $63,630 for a philosophy and religion teacher as of May 2014, and $36,300 for welders, cutters, solderers and brazers as of 2012.

Trump Invokes ‘Operation Wetback’

Trump, defending his promise to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally, cited the actions of President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Trump: Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president. … Moved a 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country. …  You don’t get nicer. You don’t get friendlier. They moved a 1.5 million out. We have no choice. We have no choice.

It’s true that during a 1954 effort that was officially known as “Operation Wetback” (a term that many today find offensive), the federal government claimed to have forced as many as 1.3 million people to return to Mexico, but historians consider that number to be exaggerated.

Texas State Historical Association: It is difficult to estimate the number of people forced to leave by the operation. The INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most undocumented immigrants, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation.

Trump also claimed that those forced to return “never came back” after being moved “way down south” rather than just across the border. According to historian Mae M. Ngai, in her book “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America,” many of those deported were simply transported a few miles across the border and left in the desert, but more than 25 percent were transported to the Mexican coastal city of Veracruz on hired cargo ships. A congressional investigation later likened one of the ships to “an eighteenth century slave ship,” Ngai wrote.

Worth noting is that after the operation was concluded, border officials declared that “[t]he so-called ‘wetback’ problem no longer exists,” and that “[t]he border has been secured.” That, of course, turned out to be wishful thinking.

Cruz’s Tax Plan Boast

Cruz said that according to the Tax Foundation, his tax plan “costs less than virtually every other plan people have put up here, and yet it produces more growth.”

Actually, among the tax plans of seven Republican candidates that it analyzed, the Tax Foundation concluded that the gross domestic product would grow more over the next decade under two other plans — from Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio. The Tax Foundation also concluded that Rubio’s plan would lead to higher wage and capital investment growth.

Cruz’s tax plan calls for a 10 percent flat tax on individual income, though for a family of four, the first $36,000 would be tax-free. On the business end, the corporate income tax and payroll taxes would be eliminated and replaced with a “business flat tax” of 16 percent.

Cruz correctly noted that the Tax Foundation concluded that under a “static” basis, the plan would reduce revenues by $3.6 trillion over 10 years. But under “dynamic” scoring — accounting for the economic growth the Tax Foundation expects his plan would spur — it estimates the plan would only reduce revenues by about $768 billion. That means it is estimated to cost less than every other Republican plan analyzed by the Tax Foundation, except for Rand Paul’s (which it estimates would increase revenues by $737 billion).

But Cruz was wrong to say the Tax Foundation found his plan produces the most growth.

According to the Tax Foundation, Cruz’s plan would grow the GDP by 13.9 percent over the next 10 years. But the Tax Foundation concluded that Jindal’s plan would grow the GDP by 14.4 percent, and Rubio’s plan would grow the GDP by 15 percent.

The Tax Foundation also found that Cruz’s tax plan would lead to 10-year capital investment growth of 43.9 percent, and to 10-year wage rate growth of 12.2 percent. That’s lower than the projected growth from Rubio’s plan of 48.9 percent for capital investment and 12.5 percent for the wage rate.

Cruz Repeats ‘Exempt’ Whopper

Cruz repeated the long-running myth that Congress is “exempt” from Obamacare. Lawmakers and their staffs actually face additional requirements that other Americans don’t, thanks to a Republican amendment.

Cruz: And, I’ll give you an example of that, which is the Congressional exemption from Obamacare, which is fundamentally wrong, and I’ll tell you this, if I’m elected president, I will veto any statute that exempts members of congress. The law should apply evenly to every American.

Unlike other Americans who get their insurance through their employers, members of Congress are now barred from directly doing so. As of 2014, they can no longer get health coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, as they and other federal employees have done for years. Because of a Republican amendment added to the law, members are required to get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces.

Before that amendment, the legislation said that federal employees, employees of large companies, and those who get insurance through Medicare or Medicaid wouldn’t be eligible for the marketplaces, which were designed for individuals buying their own insurance. That gave rise to the false notion that Congress was somehow “exempt” from the law. But lawmakers were being treated just like other workers with employer-provided insurance. And they were required to have insurance or face a penalty, just like everyone else.

But even after the amendment put Congress in the ACA marketplaces, the “exempt” claim lived on.

The federal government had long made premium contributions to pay for part of federal employees’ health insurance, including the insurance of members of Congress and their staffs — just like other employers do. And in August 2013, the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the FEHB Program, said that the federal government could continue to make those premium contributions for Congress, even though members were getting insurance through the marketplaces. OPM said the contribution couldn’t be greater than what’s made under the FEHB Program. Republicans claimed, once again, that this made Congress “exempt” from the law — even though lawmakers were getting the same employer contributions they got before, but faced the requirement of getting new coverage through the marketplaces.

Louisiana’s Finances Not So Rosy

Jindal painted a rosy picture of his state’s fiscal situation. Attacking New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, he said: “In New Jersey, you’ve had nine credit downgrades, setting a record. We’ve had eight credit upgrades in Louisiana.”

Jindal is right about New Jersey. But Louisiana’s finances are not as good as the governor suggests. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, two credit rating agencies — Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s — moved Louisiana from a “stable” to a “negative” outlook in February. “Both agencies held off on downgrading the state’s credit rating at this time, but a ‘negative’ outlook does leave the state vulnerable to a future drop,” the newspaper reported.

More recently, the Associated Press reported that the state ended its most recent budget year with a $117 million deficit, which by law must be made up before the next budget year begins. “Louisiana has faced repeated budget shortfalls during Jindal’s two terms in office, a combination of the economic downturn and the cost of tax breaks that have siphoned more dollars away from the state treasury than expected,” the AP reported. “Rather than match state spending to income, the governor and lawmakers have raided savings accounts, sold property and used other short-term fixes to patch together budgets. But that creates new gaps each year.”

Huckabee on Cutting Arkansas Budget

Huckabee repeated a claim he made during the 2008 presidential campaign, saying that when he was governor of Arkansas “we ended up cutting 11 percent out of the state budget through that [2001-2003] recession.” Jindal countered that “spending in Arkansas went up 65 percent” under Huckabee.

Huckabee cherry-picks from his two terms to make his claim. Jindal is close, but doesn’t adjust for inflation. Spending in Arkansas went up by 50 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over Huckabee’s time overseeing the state budget.

We checked Huckabee’s 11 percent claim before — way back in January 2008 in a Republican presidential debate. The head of the Arkansas Budget Office told us it was “certainly plausible” that the cuts amounted to 11 percent of the budget in fiscal 2002 — a year for which a glitch in the state record-keeping system made accessing data difficult.

But the better measure of Huckabee’s record is his entire time in office. In inflation-adjusted dollars, spending went from $10.4 billion in fiscal year 1998, the first budget under Huckabee’s responsibility, to $15.6 billion by the end of 2006.

Jindal accurately cited a figure from a Cato Institute commentary piece. But using inflation-adjusted figures, the increase was less than 65 percent.

Jindal on Job Growth

Jindal said that “as we sit here today, we have more people working in Louisiana than ever before” and that “we’ve had 60 months in a row of consecutive job growth in our state.” That’s not accurate.

In fact, there were fewer people working in Louisiana in September than there were in December 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while there has been a fairly steady increase in employment since the end of the recession, there have been several months with dips.

Trish Regan, a moderator of the Fox Business debate, noted that as governor, Jindal has “pushed Louisiana’s energy resources as a means to grow jobs in your state” but that “as oil prices have plunged in recent months, so has jobs growth.”

Regan correctly stated that Louisiana now has an unemployment rate, 6 percent, above the national average, even though in February 2014 the Louisiana rate (5.4 percent) was more than a percentage point below the national average (6.7 percent). So, she asked, “Will your energy-focused jobs plan for the country be subject to the same market ups and downs?”

Jindal responded, “In Louisiana, we’re actually a top 10 state for job growth. As we sit here today, we have more people working in Louisiana than ever before, earning a higher income than ever before. We’ve had 60 months in a row of consecutive job growth in our state. So the reality is, we have diversified our economy.”

According to the latest available employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 1,990,000 people employed in Louisiana in September. That’s 6,600 fewer jobs than in December 2014, so it is incorrect for Jindal to say, “As we sit here today, we have more people working in Louisiana than ever before.” There has been a dip, and some energy industry experts have attributed that to a drop in oil prices.

In addition, the unemployment rate in Louisiana was at 6 percent in August and September. As Regan said, that’s higher than the national average, which was 5.1 percent in September. The state’s unemployment rate was below the current rate of 6 percent from November 2013 through May 2014.

We’re not sure which 60 months Jindal was referring to when he boasted that Louisiana has had “60 months in a row of consecutive job growth.” But that’s not true of any 60-month period during Jindal’s tenure as governor, which began in January 2008. Although there has been fairly steady job growth in Louisiana since the end of the recession, there have been several setback months interspersed along the way.

As for Louisiana being a top 10 state for job growth, we reached out to the Jindal campaign to see what time period that referenced, and we did not hear back. But looking at the entirety of Jindal’s tenure as Louisiana governor, the rate of job growth, 2.9 percent, slightly lagged the national growth rate of 3.1 percent over the same period.

Huckabee Understates Syrian Refugees

Huckabee said that Syrians make up only 20 percent of the refugees arriving in Europe. That’s wrong.

Huckabee: The idea that we’re just going to open our doors, and we have no idea who these people are — what we do know is that only 1 out of 5 of the so called “Syrian Refugees,” who went into Europe were actually Syrian. Many of them, we had no idea who they were. They weren’t Syrian.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Syrians made up 52 percent of the more than 792,000 refugees who crossed the Mediterranean sea into Europe in 2015.

In September, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, reported that 4 out of 5 of the refugees arriving in Europe weren’t from Syria. But that analysis only looked at the 213,000 refugees arriving in April, May and June of this year. That’s about one-fourth of the total number of refugee arrivals in 2015.

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

Correction, Nov. 11: We incorrectly referred to the Fox Business Network as Fox Business News. We have corrected the error.

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Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014 25-1126 Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary.” 25 Mar 2015.

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Koestler, Fred L. “Operation Wetback.” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. Undated, accessed 11 Nov 2015.

Ngai, Mae M. “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.” Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press. 2004. p 156.

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Robertson, Lori. “Obamacare Myths.” FactCheck.org. 16 Sep 2013.

O’Donoghue, Julia. “Louisiana credit outlook moved from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ by two of three rating agencies.” New Orleans Times-Picayune. 13 Feb 2015.

DeSlatte, Melinda. “Louisiana’s budget deficit from last year pegged at $117M,” The Associated Press. 30 Oct 2015.

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The post FactChecking GOP Economic Debate appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In the wake of the mass shooting at an Oregon community college, Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates claimed that the school was a “gun-free zone.” That’s not exactly accurate.

Umpqua Community College does have policies prohibiting guns on campus, but they “would not apply to those with valid concealed weapon permits pursuant to Oregon law,” a college official told us.

The Oct. 1 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead, including the shooter. Trump, the Republican party’s leading candidate for president, was one of several GOP candidates who criticized the school’s policies on guns. He did so, for example, during an interview on “Fox and Friends Weekend” ( at the 2:25-minute mark).

Trump, Oct. 4: You know that was a gun-free zone in Oregon where they had no guns allowed, no nothing. So the only one that had the gun was the bad guy, and everybody was sitting there and there was nothing they could do. Not a thing they could do.

Mike Huckabee also used the “sitting duck” analogy in a tweet posted to his Twitter account a day after the shooting with the hashtag #UCCshooting. Carly Fiorina at an Oct. 2 press conference said about UCC: “This campus was a gun-free zone.”

The confusion is understandable. The school has two policies that prohibit weapons on campus under certain conditions.

The school’s student conduct policy states that students cannot carry a weapon “without written authorization.”

“Possession or use, without written authorization, of firearms, explosives, dangerous chemicals, substances, or any other weapons or destructive devices that are designed to or readily capable of causing physical injury, on College premises, at College-sponsored or supervised functions or at functions sponsored or participated in by the College” is prohibited, the student conduct policy states.

There is also a general prohibition on bringing weapons on campus “except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations.”

“Possession, use, or threatened use of firearms (including but not limited to BB guns, air guns, water pistols, and paint guns) ammunition, explosives, dangerous chemicals, or any other objects as weapons on college property, except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations, is prohibited,” the school says on a web page labeled “safety & security info.”

The state, however, has a 1989 concealed weapon law that conflicts with such gun bans. State law expressly states (in section 166.170) that the authority to regulate the possession of guns or “or any element relating to firearms” is “vested solely in the Legislative Assembly.”

As often happens in these cases, the conflict was settled in court. A Western Oregon University student in 2009 challenged his school’s gun ban after he was suspended for possessing a weapon on campus despite having a permit to carry a concealed weapon. “A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals said that an Oregon University System ban on guns exceeds its authority and is invalid,” the Oregonian reported.

But here’s where it gets tricky: the state Board of Higher Education adopted a policy after the 2011 court case that was specifically designed to get around the court ruling. The Oregonian reported at the time that the new board policy prohibited students or anyone else doing business with the university or attending school events to bring guns into “classrooms, buildings, dormitories and sporting and entertainment events.”

The Oregonian explained the board’s legal defense for the new policy this way:

The Oregonian, March 2, 2012: The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in September that the board did not have authority to regulate guns through the use of an administrative rule. But the court also said the board has broad control over its property. So the board turned to the policy to keep guns off its campuses.

George P. Pernsteiner, who was chancellor of the university system and author of the weapons policy, told us in an email how the policy works.

“Basically, by registering to be a student, by being an employee, or by using a ticket to an event, the person had to agree not to bring a weapon — even if they had a concealed weapons permit,” Pernsteiner wrote. “Buildings were posted as not permitting weapons as a condition of entry into the building.  But, as you note, a person with no relationship to the university but with a concealed weapons permit could have such a weapon while walking on and across campus grounds (university open spaces).”

However, Pernsteiner also told us that the board’s policy “applied to the seven universities that were within the university system and did not apply to any of Oregon’s 17 community colleges,” including Umpqua Community College.

So we asked UCC if it had adopted a policy similar to the one at the universities that are part of the Oregon University System. Understandably, school officials did not immediately respond to our questions. On Oct. 19, we received a response from Rebecca Redell, UCC’s vice president and chief financial officer, who said the school’s weapon policies do not apply to those who have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Redell, Oct. 19: The student misconduct policy regarding firearms does not apply to students with a valid concealed weapons permit. There is a general prohibition against the possession of weapons on campus that would apply to College patrons, but this, similarly would not apply to those with valid concealed weapon permits pursuant to Oregon law (ORS 166.170).

So, Umpqua Community College isn’t exactly a “gun-free zone,” as described by some of the Republican presidential candidates.

The post The Oregon Shooting and Gun-Free Zones appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

The Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate on Sept. 16, this one hosted by CNN at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. We found they strayed from the facts on numerous issues, including:

• Donald Trump told a story linking vaccination to autism, but there’s no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism. And Sen. Rand Paul suggested that it would be safer to spread out recommended vaccines, but there’s no evidence of that, either.
• Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Trump donated to his gubernatorial campaign to get him to change his mind on casino gambling in Florida. But Trump denied he ever wanted to bring casino gambling to the state. A former lobbyist says he did.
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that Hillary Clinton was “under investigation by the FBI” because she “destroyed government records.” Not true. She had the authority to delete personal emails.
• Trump said that “illegal immigration” cost “more than $200 billion a year.” We couldn’t find any support for that. Actually, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, as Trump proposes.
• Trump again wrongly said that Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy like the United States. It does.
• Carly Fiorina said that the Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” But that scene isn’t in any of the videos.
• Fiorina repeated familiar boasts about her time at Hewlett-Packard, saying the size of the company “doubled,” without mentioning that was due to a merger with Compaq, and she cherry-picked other statistics.
• Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” The U.S. acting alone would have a small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, and experts say U.S. leadership on the issue would prompt other nations to act.
• In the “happy hour” debate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham glossed over the accompanying tax increases when he said only that Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.”

Analysis

Wrong on Vaccines

Several candidates made false or misleading statements about vaccines. Donald Trump told a brief story linking vaccination to autism, but there is no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism.

Trump: Just the other day, 2 years old, 2 and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.

The fact is, the link between childhood vaccinations and autism has no scientific basis — a point that was made by one of Trump’s rivals, Dr. Ben Carson, who said “there have been numerous studies, and they have not demonstrated that there is any correlation between vaccinations and autism.”

A link was first suggested by a paper published in 1998 in the journal The Lancet and retracted in 2010. Its author, Andrew Wakefield, had his medical license in the United Kingdom stripped. In fact, an investigation by the British Medical Journal found that Wakefield perpetrated an “elaborate fraud.”

Many studies have since examined a potential link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, on which Wakefield’s paper focused, and found no such connection. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine released a report summarizing vaccine safety in general, and found sufficient evidence to reject the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Trump began his point by saying that “[a]utism has become an epidemic.” Though diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders has indeed risen, recent research has pinned the blame for this on changes to diagnostic and reporting criteria, and not to vaccines or any other medical therapy.

We covered related vaccine issues in February, when Sen. Rand Paul claimed that he had heard of “many” children that developed “profound mental disorders” after receiving vaccinations. Paul, a physician by training, again erred on vaccine science during the debate. Paul, Trump and Carson said that vaccines should be spread out more or that parents should have a choice to do so, suggesting it would be safer.

Paul: So I’m all for vaccines. But I’m also for freedom. I’m also a little concerned about how they’re bunched up. My kids had all of their vaccines, and even if the science doesn’t say bunching them up is a problem, I ought to have the right to spread out my vaccines out a little bit at the very least.

Paul is right that “the science doesn’t say” this is an issue. There is no evidence that the vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually raises risk of any complications. Earlier this year, University of California professor of pediatrics and vaccine expert James Cherry told us this idea of spreading out vaccines is “stupid. … [T]hat will allow these illnesses to occur.”

Several studies have addressed this issue. One found that there is no increased risk of autism spectrum disorders with increasing exposure to the compounds in vaccines. Another found that there were no adverse neuropsychological effects in children who were vaccinated according to the CDC schedule, and in fact those who had delayed vaccinations performed worse on some measures. Another, similarly, found that delaying the MMR vaccine increased the risk of seizures.

Trump’s Bid for Florida Casinos

In a spirited back and forth between former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Trump, Bush claimed that Trump donated generously to his campaign for governor in order to get Bush to change his mind about casino gambling in Florida. Trump did not contest that he had raised money for Bush, but denied that he ever tried to get casino gambling in Florida. A former state Senate president once testified that Trump did.

“The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something — that was generous and gave me money — was Donald Trump,” Bush said in the debate. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida.”

“I didn’t,” Trump said.

“Yes you did,” Bush said.

“Totally false,” Trump said.

“You wanted it and you didn’t get it because I was opposed to casino gambling before during and after,” Bush said. “And that’s not — I’m not going to be bought by anybody.”

Had he wanted it, Trump said, “I promise I would have gotten it.”

Bush reiterated the point moments later, saying, “When he asked Florida to have casino gambling, we said no.”

“Wrong,” Trump interjected.

“We said no. And that’s the simple fact. The simple fact is –” Bush said.

“Don’t make things up. Jeb, don’t make things up. Come on,” Trump said.

Despite Trump’s protestations, CNN reported on Sept. 1 that in the late 1990s, Trump had hoped to build a multimillion dollar casino with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. In 2005, Bloomberg Business reported that a former state Senate president, Mallory E. Horne, was hired by Trump to lobby to increase the types of gambling allowed in the state, something Bush opposed. In a court affidavit obtained by Bloomberg, Horne testified that after Bush’s election in 1998, he told Trump that state officials wouldn’t budge on the issue and Trump replied, “That’s the end of it.”

CNN noted that Trump hosted a fundraiser for Bush’s gubernatorial campaign in 1997, and that he donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party in 1998, all at the time Trump was pursuing the casino project. CNN added, however, that it was “not clear that Trump’s political contributions were aimed at needling Bush and Republican lawmakers toward a more flexible posture toward the gaming industry.” And a Bush aide told CNN that Trump did not personally lobby Bush on the gambling issue. So whether Trump’s fundraising efforts were an attempt to change Bush’s mind on casino gambling cannot be settled definitively. But Trump’s denial that he was ever interested in bringing casino gambling to Florida is contradicted in a legal affidavit by a former Senate president who says he was hired by Trump to do just that.

Huckabee on Clinton Emails

At the outset of the debate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made an inaccurate remark about an ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal server and her use of a personal email account while secretary of state.

Huckabee made his comment while favorably comparing the Republican candidates to the top two candidates for the Democratic nomination, Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Huckabee: None of us are a self-professed socialist. None of us on this stage are under investigation by the FBI because we destroyed government records, or because we leaked secrets.

Clinton is not being investigated because she “destroyed government records.” As we have written, Clinton had more than 60,000 emails on her personal server, and she determined about half of them were work related. So she turned them over to the State Department at the department’s request. She deleted the rest, which she described as personal. But the Justice Department said in a recent court filing that she had the authority to delete personal emails.

In a Sept. 11 story, the New York Times quoted from the court filing: “There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server,” the filing said. “Under policies issued both by the National Archives and Records Administration and the State Department, individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”

Huckabee is referring to a “security referral” that was made to the Justice Department by I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community, after he discovered that some of Clinton’s emails contained unmarked classified material. The inspector general stressed that it was not a “criminal referral.” The referral was made to determine if there were any “potential compromises of national security information,” McCullough said.

Trump’s $200 Billion Immigration Claim

Trump twice made an unsupported claim that the cost of unauthorized immigration is $200 billion annually:

Trump: I will say this. Illegal immigration is costing us more than $200 billion a year just to maintain what we have.

And again a few minutes later:

Trump: As I said, we are spending $200 billion — we are spending $200 billion a year on maintaining what we have.

We cannot find any support for Trump’s claim. Quite the opposite, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to do what Trump proposes: deport all of the estimated 11 million immigrants who are currently in the U.S. illegally, based on the current $12,500 cost of deporting a single individual.

Back in 2009, we debunked a false but widely circulated chain email claiming that those here illegally cost exactly $338.3 billion annually. That was clearly wrong — the cited numbers didn’t even add up to the claimed total.

The most extreme estimate we found was a 2010 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for less immigration. It estimated that the net cost of illegal immigration on the federal and state and local levels was $99 billion a year — half the sum Trump claimed.

A more neutral source is a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which examined 29 reports on state and local costs published over 15 years and concluded that while it is “difficult to obtain precise estimates of the net impact of the unauthorized population on state and local budgets,” the impact “is most likely modest.”

CBO didn’t put a number on such costs nationwide, saying: “No agreement exists as to the size of, or even the best way of measuring, that cost on a national level.”

And it should be noted that these are estimates for costs of keeping the status quo. Granting legal status to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally potentially would bring some benefits to the economy, such as increasing the workforce and the number of taxpayers.

In 2013 the CBO estimated that a bipartisan bill to do just that for many who lack legal status — which passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 32 only to die in the House — would have boosted economic output by 3.3 percent in 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033, compared with current projections.

Taking that into consideration, CBO estimated that “the legislation would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014–2023 period and by roughly $700 billion over the 2024–2033 period.” That’s the opposite of what Trump claimed.

Trump on Birthright Citizenship

Asked about his opposition to birthright citizenship, Donald Trump repeated the incorrect assertion that Mexico does not have such a policy. It does.

Trump also said “almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have” a birthright citizenship policy. While the majority of countries do not have such a policy, at least 30 of them do, including Canada and a number of other countries in Central and South America.

Trump argued that the 14th Amendment — which holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” — does not guarantee birthright citizenship to immigrants in the country illegally.

“And by the way Mexico and almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have that,” Trump said, referring to birthright citizenship. “We’re the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it.”

As we noted when Trump made a similar claim at a rally in Alabama in August, the U.S. and Mexico use different terminologies, but the two countries’ policies are actually very similar. According to Article 30 of the Mexican Constitution, “The Mexican nationality” is acquired by birth if someone is born within Mexican territory, “whatever their parents’ nationality might be.”

Technically, according to the Mexican Constitution, people don’t become “citizens” of Mexico until they turn 18, at which point they can vote, be elected to public office and join the military. That’s true even of babies born in Mexico to Mexican parents.

As for Trump’s claim that “almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have” a birthright citizenship policy, it’s true that America’s policy is in the minority in the international community.

According to a 2010 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, at least 30 of the world’s 194 countries grant automatic birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants in the country illegally. The U.S. and Canada are the only ones among those 30 countries that have advanced economies as defined by the International Monetary Fund. Outside North America, most of the 30 countries that have birthright citizenship policies are in Central and South America. No country in Europe has such a policy.

Fiorina on Planned Parenthood

Carly Fiorina spoke out against Planned Parenthood regarding the controversial videos released over the last few months. The scene she described, though, does not exist in any of the videos.

Fiorina: I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.

We are aware of no video showing such a scene. The videos, released by the Center for Medical Progress beginning on July 14, have focused on fetal tissue being collected for research and have shown some aborted fetal tissue. As we wrote before, the use of donated fetal tissue has been important in several areas of scientific research.

Fiorina’s description matches up with one of the videos in a series the Center for Medical Progress has called “Human Capital” — but only with regard to how an interviewee describes her experience. Holly O’Donnell, an “ex-procurement technician” for StemExpress, a company that procures fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics, relates a story of an intact fetus. She says that a Planned Parenthood doctor “taps the heart and it starts beating,” and then instructs her to remove its brain for collection.

The video does contain images of what appear to be intact fetuses, but they don’t fit Fiorina’s description. In one, where a fetus does appear to move, there is a caption saying that the footage is from the pro-life Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform; there is no indication as to where the footage was shot. In the other, it was revealed after the video’s release that the image was of a stillborn baby, rather than an aborted fetus.

Though we cannot verify if part or all of O’Donnell’s story is true, the scene Fiorina “dares” others to watch is not present in any of the Planned Parenthood videos.

Trump on Polls

Trump boasted at one point that he is “number one in every polls (sic) by a lot.” Not in every poll, at least not lately.

Trump has held a double-digit lead in the national polls for several weeks, but a CBS News/New York Times poll released Sept. 15 shows Trump and Carson are in a virtual tie. Trump leads Carson by 4 percentage points, 27 to 23, but that is within the margin of error.

Also, Carson pulled even with Trump in Iowa, according to a Monmouth University Poll released Aug. 31.

Trump on Wisconsin Budget

In a sharp exchange between Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the billionaire businessman falsely claimed that Wisconsin under Walker has “a huge budget deficit.”

Trump: So, look, we brought it out, you were supposed to make a billion dollars in the state. You lost 2.2 — you have right now, a huge budget deficit. That’s not a Democratic point. That’s a point. That’s a fact.

That is not a fact.

As we have written before, Wisconsin had a projected $2.2 billion shortfall based on budget requests submitted by state agencies. But those budget requests were pared back, and Walker signed a two-year balanced budget into law on July 12. Wisconsin, like most states, requires that the governor submit and the Legislature pass a balanced budget.

Fiorina’s HP Boasts

Carly Fiorina repeated one of her standard talking points about her rocky tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina, who was fired in 2005 after nearly six years as head of the company, said, “[W]e doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation.” She neglects to mention that the increase in revenue (or size) came after HP acquired Compaq and was accompanied by a decrease in net earnings. And she uses a different time frame to come up with a quadrupling of the growth rate and cash flow.

We wrote about these claims in May. Fiorina compares the fiscal 1999 revenue of $42.4 billion with the fiscal 2005 revenue of $86.7 billion, though fiscal 2004 ($80 billion) would better align with Fiorina’s time at the company. That’s close to a doubling. But a controversial merger with Compaq in May 2002 was a major reason for the increase.

HP’s revenue in 2001 was $45.2 billion and Compaq’s was $33.6 billion. In the first full fiscal year after the merger, 2003, HP’s revenue totaled $73 billion.

It’s worth noting that while revenues doubled, net earnings declined over Fiorina’s time at HP, from $3.1 billion in 1999 to $2.4 billion in 2005, the same time period Fiorina used for her claim on revenues.

Fiorina has repeatedly touted a quadrupling of the “growth rate,” specifically saying in the past that it went from 2 percent to 9 percent. She’s talking about revenue, but instead of using fiscal 1999 and 2005, as she does for the size of the company, her super PAC told us it compared the second quarter of 1999 to all of 2005.

Using the same comparison as Fiorina’s “doubled” claim, we see the growth didn’t come anywhere close to quadrupling. Instead, it went from 7.5 percent in 1999 to 8.5 percent in 2005. Plus, the revenue growth in 2005 was only 6 percent on a constant currency basis, which is an adjustment due to foreign currency fluctuations. Over her six years, revenue growth year-to-year fluctuated significantly.

Fiorina again uses a different time frame to claim a quadrupling of “cash flow.” Her super PAC told us she was comparing cash and short-term investments from Oct. 31, 1998 to Oct. 31, 2005. But the figures increased by 150 percent (more than a doubling) if we use 1999 as the starting point, as she did for her “doubled” revenue claim.

Finally, Fiorina said HP “tripled its rate of innovation,” and there’s support for that in terms of the rate of obtaining patents in 1999 compared with 2004. But the Compaq merger again had an impact on that, as it did for other financial indicators.

Rubio on Climate Change

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” Though the U.S. acting alone would have a relatively small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, Rubio went too far:

Rubio: We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather, because America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.

Rubio is correct that “America is not a planet,” of course, but that does not mean that policies at the national level will have absolutely no effect on the climate. When we covered this issue in January, an expert told us that U.S. emissions alone, if left unchanged, would cause about half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Efforts to cut these emissions, including the recently released Clean Power Plan, which would limit emissions from power plants, and other policies such as fuel efficiency standards, will have a small but non-zero effect on that temperature change, and related sea level rise.

Furthermore, many experts say that U.S. leadership on climate is important in convincing other nations to also cut their carbon pollution. In both senses, Rubio is wrong that cutting emissions will do “absolutely nothing” to fight climate change.

FactChecking the ‘Happy Hour’ Debate

We found some missteps among the four Republican presidential candidates who didn’t make the cut for the prime-time debate, and instead participated in the so-called “happy hour” debate.

• South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham oversimplified when he said Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.” In fact, much more was required. The 1983 law to which Graham referred also provided for increases in the payroll tax, and broadened the tax base by requiring employees of nonprofits and new federal employees to be covered and pay into the system. And it made a portion of Social Security benefits subject to federal income tax for the first time, for certain high-income people.
• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, “Every Republican says they will shrink the size of the government. I’m the only one that has done it. Cut our budget 26 percent.” As we have written before, the 26 percent “cut” reflected a decline in federal aid. The Times-Picayune wrote that the 26 percent cut “is explained by waning hurricane recovery appropriations and the end of federal stimulus aid.”
• Former Sen. Rick Santorum said legislation he sponsored that would have codified sanctions against Iran failed by four votes. “The four people who opposed on the floor: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” he said of the 2006 vote. That’s true, but the Bush administration lobbied against Santorum’s bill, and 14 Republican senators also voted against it, as we have written before. The bill passed three months later after a compromise was worked out with the Bush administration, which opposed the bill because it was negotiating with Iran at the time.

— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley and Dave Levitan

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The post FactChecking the CNN Republican Debate appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In arguing against the Iran nuclear deal, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee spins the facts.

Huckabee said “no American aircraft would be able to get through” the S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system that Iran plans to install. U.S. military officials and arms control experts dispute that assertion, including one expert who tells us Huckabee is “exaggerating.”

He also claimed the nuclear deal “lets Iran do their own inspections.” That’s wrong. Under the deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency would have daily access to and continuous monitoring at declared nuclear sites for at least 15 years. Huckabee was likely referring to a confidential side deal covering inspections at Parchin, a military site connected to nuclear weapon development. But the issue of inspections at that site is in dispute.

The IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said claims of self-inspections “misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work” at Parchin.

Iran’s Plans for Defense System

The Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is complex and parts of it aren’t even public. It’s easy for those who support or oppose the deal to spin the facts to suit their argument.

That’s what Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is doing here when he presents opinions as facts.

A vocal opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, Huckabee discussed the deal and related issues on “Fox News Sunday.” At one point, Huckabee warned that the threat of a U.S. military strike should the Iranians violate the terms of the nuclear deal is meaningless, because Iran plans to purchase an advanced anti-aircraft defense system from Russia. The S-300 surface-to-air missile, as it is known, could be used to protect Iran’s nuclear sites from attack.

Huckabee, Aug. 23: The Iranians are right now, even before the deal is signed, negotiating with the Russians to get S-300 anti-aircraft weaponry, some of the most sophisticated, sophisticated enough that no American aircraft would be able to get through.

The claim that “no American aircraft” could penetrate the S-300s caught our attention. We asked the Huckabee campaign to support it, but didn’t get a response. If we do we will update this item.

The deployment of anti-aircraft missiles in Iran by most accounts would make a U.S. strike against Iran more difficult, but not impossible.

The Russian sale of the defense system to Iran has been in discussions for years. Russia first agreed to the sale in 2007, but suspended it in 2010 because of U.S. objections, as detailed by the New York Times. Despite continued U.S. opposition, Russia lifted the ban in April, leading to the most recent negotiations.

At an April 16 press conference, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military option in Iran would remain “intact” even if Iran purchases the S-300s. “[W]e’ve known about the potential for that system to be sold to Iran for several years, and have accounted for it in all of our planning,” Dempsey said.

Steven Pifer, a retired foreign service officer who now heads the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative, told us “Huckabee overstated the threat posed by the S-300 surface-to-air missile system.”

“The U.S. military has for decades invested significant resources to deploy the stealthy B-2 bomber, F-22 fighter and (now coming on line) F-35 fighter-bomber, as well as stand-off attack weapons and electronic countermeasures, to enable U.S. aircraft to conduct operations in areas defended by very sophisticated air defenses,” Pifer said in an email to us. “We will not know for sure unless the U.S. military has to fly against Iranian S-300s. If that had to happen, the smart money would be on the U.S. Air Force and Navy.”

Likewise, two research analysts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is headed by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, co-wrote an op-ed in the congressional newspaper The Hill that said the U.S. and Israel both could penetrate the defense system.

“The S-300’s formidable capabilities do not, however, make Iran’s air-defenses immune to all threats,” they wrote. “Both Israel and the U.S. have experience training against Western-acquired S-300s. And although both air forces have yet to face an S-300 battery in combat, there is little doubt they would be able to counter the system.”

Iran’s Self-Inspections?

Huckabee then went on tell guest host Shannon Bream that “this deal … lets Iran do their own inspections.”

Huckabee, Aug. 23: So this is just — I mean — I mean it’s balloon juice for the president to get out there and pretend that this deal is a good one, in part, Shannon, because this lets Iran do their own inspections, do their self-reporting. It’s like letting a tenth grader grade his own algebra exams or letting Hillary Clinton take care of her own server. Both are nonsense and this deal is nonsense.

First, let’s clear up what Huckabee is talking about.

Huckabee’s does not explain the reference to self-inspections, making it seem like he is talking about all inspections. That’s wrong and could leave some viewers with a false impression of the nuclear deal.

Under the JCPOA, the IAEA would have daily access to declared nuclear sites for 15 years and continuous electronic monitoring of those sites for at least 15 years, as explained in a 67-page guidebook published by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Huckabee was most likely referring to a controversial side deal involving the Parchin military site, which has been the site of past high-explosive testing that the IAEA suspects is connected to nuclear weapon development. That separate agreement has not been made public, but the Associated Press on Aug. 19 wrote that a draft copy of the agreement indicated that “Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate.”

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano responded to the AP article by issuing a statement that said, “I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work.”

Amano didn’t explain the inspection process because the agreement is confidential. In his statement, he only said “the arrangements are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices.”

The confidential agreement on Parchin and the claim that it allows Iran to self inspect has become a major issue in recent days.

The American Security Initiative, a bipartisan group of four former senators, has begun running TV ads targeting Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania that feature the AP story and a young man who says Iran sponsored the terrorist group that killed his father. In the ad, the man says, “This news about them self-inspecting. It doesn’t make sense. I wonder why we’re giving up so much control. We cannot allow Iran to self inspect.”

As with many aspects of the nuclear deal, the facts are in dispute.

Thomas Shea, a former IAEA inspector who once headed the agency’s Trilateral Initiative Office in the Department of Safeguards, co-wrote an op-ed for The Hill that carried the headline, “No, Iran is not allowed to inspect itself.” He wrote that IAEA inspectors will likely oversee Iranian collection of samples at Parchin.

Shea and Mark Hibbs, Aug. 21: The IAEA and Iran have developed a protocol to allow this to happen in a way that ensures, to the satisfaction of both parties, the integrity of the process. Without knowing the precise details of the IAEA’s understanding with Iran, IAEA inspectors at Parchin will likely oversee the taking of multiple samples using environmental sampling kits that the IAEA has prepared. Multiple samples would be prepared at each location identified by the IAEA inspectors. Each side would obtain samples taken with the kits. Critically, the IAEA would have samples using kits prepared in advance by its own laboratory.

Tariq Rauf, who once headed IAEA’s Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office, explained how that process could work on the website Atomic Reporters:

Rauf, Aug. 20: Under regular IAEA safeguards inspections, Agency inspectors carry out the swiping and collection of samples, as at Bushehr, Esfahan, Natanz, Fordow and elsewhere in Iran. Parchin being a military industrial facility is not subject to regular IAEA safeguards as it is not a “nuclear facility” as defined for purposes of IAEA safeguards. The IAEA, however, can request and obtain access to a facility such as Parchin under “managed access” provisions of Iran’s Additional Protocol (AP) to its safeguards agreement with the IAEA. It would be unusual but by no means technically compromising to have Iranian technicians collect swipe samples at sites and locations at Parchin in the physical presence and direct line of sight of IAEA inspectors, including filming, and using swipe kits and collection bags provided by the IAEA.

However, David Albright, an IAEA weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, writes in the Washington Post that IAEA inspectors will not be present during the sample collection. He writes, “The IAEA will not be able to visit Parchin until after the samples are taken, and it remains doubtful that the inspectors will be able to take additional samples.”

In an email to us, Albright said he got his information from unnamed “congressional sources, based on briefings by senior U.S. officials.” He questioned whether Rauf knows the details of the agreement.

“Rauf’s statement that you quote is largely what would be expected if normal IAEA procedures were followed and Rauf does not imply any knowledge of the actual Parchin agreement in this statement,” Albright said. “The Parchin agreement is not normal, so it is to be expected that the procedures would vary from the standard ones.”

Rauf acknowledged that he has not seen the confidential agreement, “but neither has Mr. Albright.” He told us in an email that he based his op-ed “on the actual practices of the IAEA” and the reassurance by Amano that the arrangements with Iran are “consistent with established IAEA safeguards practices.”

At an Aug. 24 press briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked about the AP report and referred reporters back to Amano’s statement.

“The fact is that the arrangements between Iran and the IAEA are sound and consistent with the IAEA’s long-established practice; that the IAEA in developing this inspection plan didn’t compromise its safeguards or standards in any way,” Earnest said.

There is no resolution to this dispute at this point and perhaps there won’t be unless the agreement is made public or if the IAEA fully explains the verification process that it will use at Parchin.

But this much is clear: Huckabee’s statement that the nuclear deal “lets Iran do their own inspections” is at the very least in dispute. And, because he didn’t make clear what part of the nuclear deal he was talking about, viewers could have easily been left with the false impression that he was talking about all inspections. That would be wrong.

— Eugene Kiely

The post Huckabee’s Spin on Iran appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the email we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.

Human SO2 Emissions and Cooling

I just read Dave Levitan’s article regarding Mike Hukabee’s claim regarding man’s CO2 emissions vs. volcanoes’ [“Huckabee’s Hot Air on Volcanoes,” July 29]. Even before MH’s claim, I was always curious whether our efforts to curtail CO2 emissions were offset by a volcano, but hadn’t before found much info comparing the two. I also had heard about the cooling potential of SO2. It was thus with interest that I read the actual number comparisons provided by Dave. However the numbers on SO2 don’t make sense and Dave didn’t clarify further.

Dave writes, “The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 released an enormous cloud of SO2 — about 20 million tons. This caused the world to cool, not warm, by about half a degree Celsius. Still, though, this can’t match human emissions of SO2, which also comes from smokestacks and other sources. Though emissions have been declining in recent decades, humans still annually emit about 100 million tons of SO2, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.”

If 20 million tons of SO2 from Mount Pinatubo cooled the earth 0.5 degrees Celsius, then man putting five times [that much] SO2 in the atmosphere annually should cool the earth 2.5 degrees annually. Obviously this doesn’t happen. I think Dave should have followed up with an explanation why, if the numbers are correct, this doesn’t happen.

Though I believe man is causing warming, this discrepancy causes Dave’s other statements and conclusions to be suspect.

Jay Carldon
Westfield, New Jersey

Do you realize what your article said??

You wrote that Mt. Pinatubo actually cooled the planet, not warmed it, because it blew out 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide besides the 50 million tons of carbon dioxide. Cooled by a half degree C, or about .9 degrees F.

Let’s assume your facts are accurate (I have no reason to believe they aren’t).

You also said that man releases 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year. That’s five times as much as Mt. Pinatubo. And Mt. Pinatubo cooled the planet that year even though mankind released its usual quota of 30 billion (with a b) tons of carbon dioxide into the air. So, if 120 million tons (total) of SO2 lowers the worldwide temperature a half a degree, how much will a mere 100 million tons lower the temperature? I don’t know the answer to that, but my first guess would be to take the rise that is supposed to happen each year based on CO2 increases alone (I haven’t been able to find that exact number), find the difference between that number and -0.5, then calculate 80% of the result. So the question almost asks itself: Is man-generated SO2 cooling the whole planet as much as CO2 should be warming it? Is that a possible reason why there has been no significant rise in global temperature for the past 10 or 15 years?

I’m not grinding an ax, here. My question is solely based on what I read in your article.

Any comments?

Dean Kennedy
Minerva, Ohio

FactCheck.org responds: The idea that the 100 million tons humans emit should elicit a similar effect to that of a large volcanic eruption sounds logical, but it is not in fact correct.

Though human-caused emissions do indeed have a cooling effect on the world, they do not function in exactly the same fashion as volcanic emissions. Volcanic SO2 emissions rise into the stratosphere (which begins between about 30,000 and 50,000 feet above sea level), while most emissions from human sources stay much closer to the ground, as the Union of Concerned Scientists explains. Those stratospheric volcanic SO2 particles can stay airborne for several years, reflecting sunlight back into space and cooling the planet beneath; the human-caused emissions at lower altitudes, meanwhile, will only remain aloft for a very short period, and have a much lesser cooling effect.

More generally, the cooling effect of human SO2 emissions is far overshadowed by the warming effect of human CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. The image below from the Met Office in the United Kingdom illustrates this point. Without human SO2 and other aerosol emissions, the world would be warming even faster.

The post Mailbag: Volcanic Versus Human SO2 Emissions appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

The first prime-time Republican presidential debate featured the top 10 candidates, according to polling, and they twisted some facts.

• Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that “over 40 percent of small and mid-size banks … have been wiped out” since the Dodd-Frank law was passed. Actually, the total number of commercial banks has gone down only 16 percent, continuing a longtime trend.
• Businessman Donald Trump said his net worth is $10 billion, but outside estimates put the figure much lower.
• Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush twice claimed that he cut taxes in the state by $19 billion. But that includes cuts in Florida estate taxes mandated by federal law that Bush had nothing to do with.
• Ohio Gov. John Kasich claimed his state’s Medicaid program “is growing at one of the lowest rates in the country.” Ohio ranks 16th in terms of enrollment growth post-Affordable Care Act among the 30 expansion states and Washington, D.C.
• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker claimed his state “more than made up” for the job losses from the recession. That’s a stretch. The state has gained 4,000 jobs since the start of the recession.
• Rubio said he had never advocated exceptions for rape or incest to abortion bans, but he cosponsored a bill in 2013 that contained just such exceptions.
• Boasting about his education initiatives while governor, Bush claimed that the graduation rate “improved by 50 percent.” But most of the increase happened after Bush left office; the rate increased about 13 percent when he was governor.
• Bush claimed that the U.S. spends more per student than any other country, but Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway all spend more for primary and secondary education.
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee repeated the old claim that Obamacare “robbed” Medicare of $700 billion. That’s a reduction in the future growth of spending over 10 years.

We fact-checked the earlier debate, too, for candidates not in the top 10. See our story, “FactChecking the GOP Debate, Early Edition.”

Analysis

Rubio on Dodd-Frank

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio implied that the new banking law imposed in 2010 was responsible for killing off small banks and loans to small business.

Rubio: [W]e need to repeal Dodd-Frank. It is eviscerating small businesses and small banks. Twenty — over 40 percent of small and mid-size banks that loan money to small businesses have been wiped out over the — since Dodd-Frank has passed.

Actually, the total number of commercial banks has gone down only 16 percent since the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law July 21, 2010. And that decline continues a trend that goes back at least to the 1980s.

Note that Rubio caught himself. He started to say the decline was “over the” law — meaning the law caused the decline — but then said the decline happened “since” the law was passed. That just describes a coincidence, which may or may not have been caused by the law.

The fact is, small and medium-sized banks had been getting swallowed up by larger banks for decades before the Dodd-Frank bill was enacted. And the rate does not appear to have accelerated since the law took effect, as seen in this graph from the Federal Reserve Economic Data database, maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The numbers on which the graphic is based show that there were 14,400 commercial banks (all but a handful “small and medium” in size) in the first quarter of 1984, but that number had declined to 6,570 by the third quarter of 2010, when Dodd-Frank was signed into law.

That’s a fairly steady decrease of 54 percent over 26-and-a-half years. And since then, the number has declined further to 5,501 as of the first quarter of this year. That’s a drop of 16 percent (not “over 40 percent”) in four-and-a-half years.

Trump’s Wealth Claim

Donald Trump repeated his claim that his net worth is $10 billion.

Trump: The fact is, I built a net worth of more than $10 billion. I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did.

There’s ample reason to think he’s exaggerating. For one thing, in June Trump himself released a statement putting his net worth at less — $8.7 billion. In July, he increased that figure to $10 billion, touting his ability to assemble “massive” wealth as a reason voters should support him.

But outside estimates are far lower. Forbes estimated his net worth at $4 billion, ranking him in 405th place among its listing of the world’s wealthiest people (the fluctuating “real-time” ranking by Forbes has him at 430th, as of this writing).

Later, the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, after examining the 92-page disclosure of assets and liabilities that Trump filed with the Federal Election Commission, came up with an even lower estimate: $2.9 billion.

Trump once testified in a lawsuit that his estimate of his own net worth “fluctuates” partly due to “attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”

Judging by Trump’s $10 billion claim, he’s feeling very good. But even if he is worth less than a third of what he claims (as Bloomberg estimates), he’s still a very rich person.

Bush’s Tax Cut Boast

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush claimed — twice — that as governor of Florida he cut taxes by $19 billion. But a big chunk of that came from cuts in Florida estate taxes mandated by federal law that Bush had nothing to do with.

Bush: I cut taxes ever year totaling $19 billion.

He repeated the tax cut figure later in the debate when asked about disparaging comments he allegedly made about Trump.

Bush’s Right to Rise PAC told Politifact Florida that the figure was based on cumulative changes in revenue between the fiscal years 1999-2000 and 2007-2008. But not all of the revenue changes were due to tax cuts. They also included various fees and license changes, as well as sales tax holidays and lottery proceeds, according to the Politifact Florida analysis.

In addition, Martin A. Sullivan, chief economist of Tax Analysts, a tax news nonprofit organization, did his own analysis and found that state legislation enacted during Bush’s eight years as governor resulted in $13 billion in tax cuts.

“My estimate — following the method used by the Florida Legislature — includes nontax revenue increases such as new lottery and slot machine revenue, and it does not include automatic cuts in Florida estate taxes brought about by changes in federal legislation in 2003,” Sullivan wrote.

He added: “These factors probably explain most of the difference between my estimate and the Bush website’s estimate.”

Sullivan said that the $13 billion in cuts amounted to $140 per resident.

Kasich on Medicaid Expansion

Ohio Gov. John Kasich defended his decision to expand Medicaid in his state under the ACA, saying that “our Medicaid is growing at one of the lowest rates in the country.” But Ohio’s Medicaid rolls are 24 percent higher, compared with pre-ACA monthly enrollment. That puts the state at 16th in terms of growth among the 30 states and the District of Columbia that have expanded Medicaid.

According to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, Ohio’s average monthly pre-ACA Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment was 2,341,481, using July-September 2013 numbers. The post-ACA monthly figure, as of May 2015, was 2,902,768, an increase of 24 percent.

It’s true that some states saw much higher growth: Kentucky’s enrollment shot up 86 percent; Oregon’s is up 75 percent. Several other states are at 50 percent growth and above, including Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and West Virginia.

But Ohio is in the middle of the pack, not “one of the lowest rates in the country.”

The state’s growth is slightly above the 22 percent average for all states, including nonexpansion states.

Walker Spins Job Growth

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, when asked about failing to keep a campaign promise to create 250,000 jobs in his first term, responded with some spin on the state’s unemployment rate and job growth.

Walker: Before I came in, the unemployment rate was over 8 percent. It’s now down to 4.6 percent. We’ve more than made up for the jobs that were lost during the recession.

The claim that the state “more than made up” for the job losses from the recession is a stretch. In December 2007, when the recession started, the state had 2,878,000 jobs, and as of June it had 2,882,000 jobs — a net gain of just 4,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Walker is right about the state’s unemployment rate, but it begs for some context.

The state’s rate was 8 percent when Walker took office in January 2011 — a full 1.2 percentage points lower than the U.S. unemployment rate. As of June, Wisconsin’s rate was 4.6 percent — 0.7 percentage points lower than the U.S. at large.

So, under Walker, the state’s job growth has not kept pace with the rest of the country — which is reflected in the fact that Wisconsin ranks 34th in job growth rate during his time as governor. Since January 2011, Wisconsin has a job growth rate of 5.1 percent, while the U.S. as a whole has a rate of 8.4 percent.

Rubio’s Stance on Abortion

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he had never advocated an exception to abortion bans for victims of rape or incest, but he cosponsored a bill in 2013 that contained just such exceptions.

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly began a question to Rubio by saying he “favor[s] a rape and incest exception to abortion bans.” Rubio answered:

Rubio: Well, Megyn, first of all, I’m not sure that that’s a correct assessment of my record. I would go on to add that I believe all–

Kelly: You don’t favor a rape and incest exception?

Rubio: I have never said that. And I have never advocated that. What I have advocated is that we pass law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection.

Though we can find no specific comments the senator made on this issue, he was an original cosponsor of a bill in 2013 called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. (The House passed a similar bill earlier this year, and we wrote about the uncertain science regarding fetal pain.) That bill prohibits abortion beyond 20 weeks gestation except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, and where:

Senate bill 1670, November 2013: [T]he pregnancy is the result of rape, or the result of incest against a minor, if the rape has been reported at any time prior to the abortion to an appropriate law enforcement agency, or if the incest against a minor has been reported at any time prior to the abortion to an appropriate law enforcement agency or to a government agency legally authorized to act on reports of child abuse or neglect.

Rubio made no further comment during his answer on whether he currently supports such exceptions. Although he is entitled to change his opinion over time, his claim that he never supported exceptions to abortion laws regarding rape or incest is false.

Bush Overhypes Graduation Rate Increases

Boasting about education changes he initiated as Florida governor, Bush claimed, “Our graduation rate improved by 50 percent.” According to the federal uniform graduation rate calculations, however, Florida’s graduation rate increased by about 13 percent when Bush was governor.

The Bush campaign pointed us to statistics that showed graduation rates have increased more than 46 percent from the time Bush took office until 2013-2014. But most of that increase took place after Bush left office in 2007, and the context of Bush’s comments left the impression he was talking about gains made during his time in office.

Bush: I’m for higher standards measured in an intellectually honest way, with abundant school choice, ending social promotion. And I know how to do this because as governor of the state of Florida I created the first statewide voucher program in the country, the second statewide voucher program, in the country and the third statewide voucher program in the country.

And we had rising student achievement across the board, because high standards, robust accountability, ending social promotion in third grade, real school choice across the board, challenging the teachers union and beating them is the way to go.

And Florida’s low-income kids had the greatest gains inside the country. Our graduation rate improved by 50 percent. That’s what I’m for.

There are several different ways to calculate graduation rates, and when we reached out to the Bush campaign for backup, it pointed to a Florida Department of Education report on “Historical Summary of Florida’s Graduation Rate.” According to the FDE methodology, the Florida graduation rate in 1998-1999 — which takes in Bush’s first year in office — was 60.2 percent. It went up to 71 percent in 2005-2006, the last full school year under Bush. That’s an 18 percent increase.

The report also lists the “federal uniform graduation rate,” which climbed from 52 percent in 1998-1999 to 58.8 percent in 2005-2006. That’s a 13 percent increase. Using that methodology, the rate increased to 76.1 percent in 2013-2014. That comes to a 46 percent increase between the time Bush took office until the latest available year of data in 2013-2014. That’s the increase to which the Bush campaign says Bush was referring.

The U.S. Department of Education’s statistics on average freshman graduation rates for public secondary schools show a more modest gain in graduation rates under Bush, from 61.4 percent in 1998-1999 to 63.6 percent in 2005-2006. That’s just under a 4 percent gain. The 2005-2006 rate ranked Florida 45th out of 50 states.

Bush on Education Spending

Bush said that the U.S. spends “more per student than any country in the world other than a couple rounding errors.” Not so.

Bush: Because today in America, a third of our kids, after we spend more per student than any other country in the world other than a couple rounding errors, to be honest with you, 30 percent are college- and/or career-ready.

According to the 2014 “Education at a Glance” report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, based on 2011 data, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway all spent more per student on primary and secondary education than the U.S. (see chart B1.2a on page 207). The U.S. was only the leader in per-student spending on tertiary education.

But there is support for Bush’s claim that 30 percent of high school students are college ready.

The 2014 ACT College Readiness report, according to a press release, showed that just 39 percent of ACT-tested high school graduates “met three or more of the four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, math, reading and science, suggesting they are well prepared for first-year college coursework.” What’s more, 31 percent, or almost 1 out of 3 students, didn’t meet any of the benchmarks.

Huckabee’s Obamacare Talking Point

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee repeated a years-old Republican talking point in saying that Obamacare “robbed” Medicare of $700 billion. That’s a $716 billion cut in the future growth of spending of Medicare over 10 years — not a slashing of the current budget, or taking money from the Medicare trust fund.

Huckabee: And, if Congress wants to mess with the retirement program, why don’t we let them start by changing their retirement program, and not have one, instead of talking about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare that was robbed $700 billion to pay for Obamacare.

We’ve covered this claim many times, including in May, when Huckabee used the line in announcing his presidential candidacy. It was one of the whoppers of the 2012 presidential campaign.

The ACA called for reducing the future growth of spending primarily by reducing the growth of payments to hospitals and Medicare Advantage payments. Spending less than had been expected is good for Medicare’s finances, as we explained before. We’ve also said that experts question whether some of the cuts actually will be implemented. But if they are, Medicare will be able to stretch its revenues for a longer time than they would last otherwise.

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

Sources

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Federal Reserve Economic Data, “Commercial Banks in the U.S.” Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

Trump, Donald J. “Donald J. Trump Summary of Net Worth As Of June 30, 2014.” 16 Jun 2015.

Trump, Donald J. “Donald J. Trump Files Personal Financial Disclosure Statement With Federal Election Commission.” 15 Jul 2015.

Trump, Donald J. “Personal Financial Disclosure Report” (Office of Government Ethics Form 278e). 15 Jul 2015.

Forbes. “The World’s Billionaires” “Real Time” ranking of the world’s wealthiest persons. Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

Bloomberg Politics. “Here’s Our Tally of Donald Trump’s Wealth.” 27 Jul 2015.

“Text of Scott Walker’s inauguration speech.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 3 Jan 2011.

National Bureau of Economic Research. “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions.” 20 Sep 2010.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings – Wisconsin.” Undated. Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Local Area Unemployment Statistics – Wisconsin.” Undated. Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

113th Congress. “S.1670 — Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” Congress.gov. 7 Nov 2013.

Levitan, Dave. “Does a Fetus Feel Pain at 20 Weeks?” FactCheck.org. 18 May 2015.

Florida Department of Education. “Historical Summary of Florida’s Graduation Rate.” 2014.

National Center for Education Statistics. Averaged freshman graduation rates for public secondary schools, by state or jurisdiction: Selected years, 1990-91 through 2009-10. Digest of American Statistics.

Gillin, Joshua. “Jeb Bush says he cut Florida taxes by $19 billion, but did he really?” PolitiFact Florida. 11 Jun 2015.

Sullivan, Martin A. “How Much Did Jeb Bush Cut Taxes In Florida?” TaxAnalysts.com. 6 Apr 2015.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Education at a Glance 2014. Sep 2014.

ACT. “ACT College Readiness Report Points to Growing Interest in Higher Education Among U.S. High School Graduates.” Press release. 20 Aug 2014.

Kaiser Family Foundation. “Status of State Action on the Medicaid Expansion Decision.” Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

Kaiser Family Foundation. “Total Monthly Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment.” Accessed 7 Aug 2015.

Congressional Budget Office. Letter to the Honorable John Boehner. 24 Jul 2012.

The post FactChecking the GOP Debate, Late Edition appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

Reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act was swift — and included comments that strayed from the facts. President Barack Obama’s praise of the law and Republicans’ criticism of it went too far in several instances:

• Obama said that the ACA made health care “a right for all,” but as Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out, the law doesn’t achieve universal coverage.
• Several Republican presidential candidates claimed the ACA was driving up health care costs, when those costs have been rising at low rates in recent years.
• The president said families with insurance through work are paying an average of $1,800 less than they would have been “if we hadn’t done anything.” But his own economic advisers say the difference in premium growth is only partly attributable to the ACA.
• A day before the ruling, Sen. Ted Cruz said that premiums have gone “through the roof,” citing a $3,000 increase in family employer plans since the health care law was enacted. The figure is correct, but premium growth has been slower since the ACA was enacted
• Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry claimed that “nearly 5 million people los[t] their health plans.” That’s based on a high-end estimate by the Associated Press of those whose specific individual market plans were cancelled. But we found the analysis appeared to be inflated, and another analysis put the total at roughly 2.6 million.
• Former Govs. Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee criticized the cost of the law, but failed to mention that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it will actually reduce the deficits on net over the next 10 years.
• Obama said the tax credits in the ACA “have given about 8 in 10 people who buy insurance on the new marketplaces the choice of a health care plan that costs less than $100 a month.” They have “the choice” of such a plan, but we don’t know how many are actually paying that amount.

Analysis

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 25 in favor of the administration in the King v. Burwell case, which challenged whether federal subsidies could be given to those in states using the federal insurance marketplaces. Language in the Affordable Care Act said that subsidies would be available for those enrolled in an exchange “established by the State,” but 34 states chose to use federally run marketplaces, rather than set up their own. The court ruled that Congress had intended that subsidies would be available nationwide.

Universal Coverage?

Obama began his remarks on the ruling in the White House Rose Garden by saying that when the ACA was enacted five years ago, “we finally declared that in America, health care is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all.” Not exactly. The law was never expected to achieve universal coverage for all Americans.

Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate, basically got it right when he said in his post-ruling remarks that the United States, unlike the other major countries in the world, “doesn’t guarantee health care to all.” (It depends on what one considers “major” countries. But of the 11 countries examined by the Commonwealth Fund in 2014, the U.S. was the only one without a universal system, and the U.S. lagged behind all of the 30-some countries listed in a 2013 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in terms of insurance coverage for a “core set of services.”)

While the Affordable Care Act has lowered the number of the uninsured in the United States, it hasn’t covered everyone. Nor was it ever expected to.

The White House estimates that 16 million uninsured have gained coverage under the law. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected there would be 17 million fewer uninsured this year than there would have been without the law. But that would still leave an estimated 35 million uninsured this year. CBO estimates that in 2025, there will be 27 million uninsured.

CBO expects the percentage of insured non-elderly Americans, excluding those in the country illegally, to be 93 percent as early as 2018. But that’s not making health care “a right for all,” as the president said.

Health Care Costs

Several Republican presidential candidates claimed the Affordable Care Act is driving up health care costs.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the law “drives up health care costs.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said “American families are getting railroaded by … out-of-control health care costs.” And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the law “has failed to accomplish its prime objective: Containing health care costs.”

That fact is that health care costs have increased “at historically low rates,” although not entirely or even mostly because of the law, according to the journal Health Affairs.

As we have written before, total health care expenditures for the U.S. have been rising at rates around 4 percent per year (see Table 1 of National Health Expenditures Data) from 2009, when Obama took office, to 2013, which is the most recent year for which data are available. Health care spending grew 3.8 percent in 2009, 3.9 percent in 2010 and 2011, 4.1 percent in 2012, and dropped to 3.6 percent in 2013.

Writing for the journal Health Affairs, economists and statisticians for the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said for those five years, health care spending has grown “at historically low rates.” But that’s largely due to the economy, not the Affordable Care Act.

Health Affairs, December 2014: During the past five years, health care spending grew at historically low rates, between 3.6 percent and 4.1 percent each year. During 2010–13, this slow growth mirrored that of the overall economy, which increased 3.7–4.2 percent per year. … The key question is whether health spending growth will accelerate once economic conditions improve significantly; historical evidence suggests that it will.

$1,800 Less, or $3,000 More?

Many of the comments from both sides have centered on whether Americans were paying more or less under the ACA. The president and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican presidential candidate, offered these competing versions of what has happened to employer-sponsored premiums:

Obama: If your family gets insurance through your job — so you’re not using the Affordable Care Act — you’re still paying about $1,800 less per year on average than you would be if we hadn’t done anything.

Cruz, June 24 on Fox News: Obamacare has driven health insurance premiums through the roof. Remember President Obama promised the average family’s health insurance premiums would drop $2,500 under Obamacare. In actuality, the average family’s premiums have risen $3,000. (At the 4:11 mark.)

The average premium for employer-sponsored family plans has gone up by $3,064 from 2010, when Obama signed the ACA, to 2014, according to the latest data available from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual employer survey conducted with the Health Research & Educational Trust. But such growth isn’t what one would call a “through the roof” increase. In fact, premiums have grown more slowly under Obama than they did under President George W. Bush, as we’ve explained before. They’ve grown more slowly since the ACA was passed than premiums did before the law.

That was Obama’s point, but he was wrong to attribute the slower growth in employer premiums solely to the ACA. In fact, as we said, experts have primarily attributed the slow growth in overall health care costs in recent years to the sluggish economy.

The president claimed that families that get their insurance through work are “paying about $1,800 less” on average than they would have been “if we hadn’t done anything.” That’s simply not the case. He’s giving the ACA credit for the entire difference between the higher rate of premium growth from 2000 to 2010, and the lower rate of premium growth from 2010 to 2014. Even his own Council of Economic Advisers, which calculated this $1,800 figure using the KFF employer surveys, says the ACA is only responsible for some of the slowdown in premium growth.

The CEA’s September 2014 report said that “[a] significant fraction of the recent slowdown in health care price inflation can be linked to Medicare reforms in the Affordable Care Act.” The CEA didn’t say what “fraction” that was.

We wrote about this talking point in March, and again earlier this month, when Obama improved upon his wording. He didn’t credit the ACA for the entire change in premium growth, as he did today. Obama also said families were paying $1,800 less on average, but the difference in premium growth is for the total premium — what employers contribute as well as what employees pay.

As for Cruz’s remarks, the president in the past did say that a health care overhaul would save families an average of $2,500, a claim we’ve been punching holes in since 2008. Obama wasn’t clear that he was talking about a slower growth in health care spending, compared with what families would spend without health care legislation.

But Cruz cites the $3,000 increase since 2010 in family premiums as if it were evidence of “through the roof” hikes. Actually, it’s evidence of relatively low premium growth.

The KFF surveys show that premiums have always gone up year to year, at least since the survey began in 1999. The 2014 KFF report notes that “the average family premium has grown less quickly over the last five years than it did between 2004 and 2009 or between 1999 and 2004.”

More Premium Claims

Other Republicans used the Supreme Court ruling to rehash old and misleading or incomplete claims about the Affordable Care Act’s impact on premiums.

For example, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said, “What you will not hear from Democrats today is any information on how to make healthcare more affordable at a time when premiums are getting more expensive.”

And former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for president, said, “With individual premiums up more than 50 percent and nearly 5 million people losing their health plans, Americans deserve better than what we’re getting with Obamacare.”

Priebus is correct that premiums have, by and large, gotten more expensive — under Obama generally and since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. But as we just explained, the rate of growth in employer-sponsored insurance premiums has been slower than it was before the ACA. In other words, premiums are going up, just not as quickly as they were before.

As for Perry’s claim that “individual premiums [are] up more than 50 percent,” the important qualifier there that many may miss is that he’s talking only about those 6 percent of Americans who buy insurance on their own, the so-called individual market, as opposed to those who get insurance through an employer.

Perry’s campaign told us the 50 percent figure came from a Forbes story about an analysis from the conservative Manhattan Institute that concluded that individual market premiums rose by an average of 49 percent due to the health care law.

As we have noted previously, aside from the study focusing only on the relatively small percentage of Americans in the individual market, the institute didn’t adjust for the fact that the ACA requires certain minimum benefits, which many pre-ACA individual market plans didn’t have. By and large, the post-ACA plans are more robust (whether purchasers like or want that or not). So the analysis isn’t comparing similar types of plans before and after the ACA. And the institute’s figures don’t account for federal subsidies, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would be extended to 80 percent of all those buying exchange plans nationwide.

Perry’s claim that “nearly 5 million people los[t] their health plans” is also dubious. As we reported in April 2014, that’s based on a high-end estimate by the Associated Press of those who got cancellation notices due to the requirements the ACA put on individual market plans. We found the AP’s state-by-state analysis appeared to be inflated in several states.

In a March 3, 2014, posting on the website of the journal Health Affairs, two researchers from the Urban Institute analyzed findings from a nationwide poll and concluded that “roughly 2.6 million people would have reported that their plan would no longer be offered due to noncompliance with the ACA.”

Cost of the Law

Bush and Huckabee also criticized the cost of the law without mentioning that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the law will actually reduce the deficits over the next 10 years.

Bush said the law “causes spending in Washington to skyrocket by $1.7 trillion.” Huckabee used an even higher figure, calling the law “a $2.2 trillion Washington disaster.”

In a report issued this month, CBO considered the financial impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act. The CBO said the coverage provisions in the law — mainly the exchange subsidies and Medicaid expansion — will cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years, from 2016 to 2025. So Bush was right about that.

However, tax revenue and cost-saving provisions in the law would more than offset the cost and, as a result, repealing the law would increase deficits by $353 billion over 10 years, from 2016 to 2025. (See table 4.)

‘Less Than $100 a Month’

Obama, in touting the law’s affordability, said the tax credits provided by the law — and upheld by the court — “have given about 8 in 10 people who buy insurance on the new marketplaces the choice of a health care plan that costs less than $100 a month.”

In February, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the same thing: “Eight in 10 of those who signed up had at least one coverage option that cost $100 a month or less after tax credits.”

The key phrase in Obama’s sentence is “the choice.” The key word in Burwell’s statement is “option.” Neither is saying that 80 percent of buyers on the individual market are paying less than $100 a month.

In December 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services put out a statement encouraging people to shop around in 2015. In that statement, HHS said “it pays to shop” — noting that “nearly 8 in 10 (79 percent) current Marketplace enrollees can get coverage for $100 or less in 2015 after any applicable tax credits.”

How many enrollees are paying less than $100 a month? We asked the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, but we did not get a response. If we do, we will update this item.

However, we do know that 69 percent of those who selected a plan through the federally facilitated marketplace and received tax credits paid less than $100 a month in 2014, according to an analysis by HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. The report says that more than 5.4 million people selected a marketplace plan, and about 87 percent of them received tax credits. That means more than 3.2 million of the 4.7 million who received tax credits paid less than $100 a month for health insurance.

— by Lori Robertson, Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley

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