During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Steve King of Iowa underestimated what scientists know about the relationship between farming practices and water quality.

• King said scientists don’t know about the quality of water in the U.S. “when the buffalo roamed” because there were “no water quality tests then.” Pre-1900 water quality data is relatively scarce, but experts can use techniques from paleolimnology to evaluate past water quality.
• He implied that this lack of “baseline” data prevents scientists from knowing whether applications of crop fertilizer are “too much.” But experts say they don’t need 19th century data to know fertilizers have negatively impacted water quality. The 20th century provides plenty of evidence.

To start, the term “bison” is scientifically more accurate than “buffalo” when referring to North American populations. In the 16th century, approximately 30 million to 60 million wild bison (Bison bison), roamed North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Over the span of the 19th century the number of bison on the continent was reduced to 1,000. Bison were slaughtered for a variety of reasons, including for food and for their hides and bones.

At a May 17 hearing concerning the impact of environmental regulations on the farming economy, King asked a witness from the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau a number of rhetorical questions concerning “the science” behind environmental regulations on farming practices. For example, he asked “are you confident that the records are good enough now that the science is there to make recommendations, let alone regulations, on applications of, say, fertilizer?”

He went on to imply, again in question form, that “we don’t have a sense on … what’s the baseline” for water quality. He claimed that “environmentalists” want water quality to return to “when the buffalo roamed because they say that’s when the ecology was as perfectly balanced as we can imagine.” He then claimed, “And I’m just submitting that they don’t know what it was then. There was no water quality tests then. And they can only imagine, but they also imagine that your application is too much.”

King also cited a pending lawsuit between the Des Moines Water Works and three counties in Iowa. According to the Des Moines Register, the “Des Moines utility sued Calhoun, Buena Vista and Sac counties [in March 2015], alleging underground drainage tiles act as conduits that enable high levels of nitrates to move from farm fields into the Raccoon River, one of two sources of drinking water for 500,000 metro area residents.”

We take no position on the lawsuit. But we can say there is knowledge of water quality from the 1800s and before. We can also say scientists don’t need data from the 1800s and before to know that the applications of crop fertilizers have negatively impacted water quality in the U.S., despite King’s implication.

We reached out to King’s office for clarification and comment, but it hasn’t gotten back to us. We will report back if it does. In the next sections we’ll explain what scientists know about water quality in the U.S. pre- and post-1900.

Water Quality Pre-1900

In a chapter of the book Food, Energy and Water, Donna N. Myers, a water quality expert at the U.S. Geological Survey, writes, “Water quality activities in the United States began around 1800.” Increased water usage and development “to support economic development,” she explains, “created a need for water quality monitoring and assessment.”

Early analyses concentrated on evaluating the mineral composition of water. By 1850, scientists had distinguished “90 chemical elements,” writes Myers, including chlorine, sulfuric acid, water hardness and organic matter. Spurred by outbreaks of water borne diseases (e.g. cholera and typhoid fever) starting in the 1830s, chemists developed additional methods for evaluating water pollution from sewage. These included tests for nitrogen-based chemicals, like ammonia.

Scientists also began publishing manuals on water analysis methods in the 1800s. Myers notes one in particular: Water Analysis: A Practical Treatise on the Examination of Potable Water. First published in 1868, the book outlines techniques for detecting nitrate and nitrite, among other chemicals, in water.

Between 1887 and 1894, Massachusetts carried out what’s been called the “Great Sanitation Survey.” This was “the most extensive effort of its time with more than 40,000 samples collected in rivers, streams, and wells” across the state, writes Myers. The survey included analyses of nitrate, nitrite, ammonia and chlorine. Shortly after Massachusetts began its survey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio and Illinois followed suit.

However, by the late 1800s, humans already had drastically reduced bison numbers and impacted water quality. But scientists also can evaluate “ ‘baseline’ conditions, meaning water quality and ecology in the absence of human effects” by using “the least disturbed sites we have available today,” Peter Van Metre, a hydrologist at the USGS, told us by email.

“None of these [sites] are guaranteed to be truly pristine” because even Native Americans “affected the environment” when the bison were roaming, added Van Metre. But they still give scientists a good idea of the water quality needed for “a healthy ecological community.”

Scientists can also use sediment cores from water bodies, a technique from paleolimnology, to evaluate the water quality of the past. “As sediments accumulate in lakes and the oceans, they preserve a record of historical water quality,” Van Metre explained.

Some of the most extensive research on water quality using sediment cores analyzes mercury contamination, he told us. Atmospheric mercury often contaminates lakes and rivers via rainfall. Methylmercury in particular is a known neurotoxin to humans, fish and other wildlife.

Techniques from paleolimnology can also be used to analyze nitrate levels over time, a chemical King mentions during the hearing. However, unlike mercury, nitrate is water soluble, so it doesn’t remain in the sediment, Van Metre told us. So researchers use diatoms as indicators of changes in nitrate levels over time.

Diatoms are algae with silicon shells, which are preserved in sediment. “Researchers can identify the different species from those shells” and reconstruct how algae communities change because different species are sensitive to different changes in water quality, including nitrate levels, Van Metre said.

In 2003 R. Eugene Turner and Nancy N. Rabalais, ecologists at Louisiana State University, published a paper in BioScience that used this technique. The researchers specifically looked at Mississippi River Basin, which spans the Midwest and includes King’s state of Iowa. In addition to examining changes in land clearing, agricultural expansion and soil erosion, they also analyzed diatom levels at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

With data dating to 1700, Turner and Rabalais found that peaks and declines in diatom levels “coincide with land-use changes resulting from land clearing, expansion of agriculture, and land drainage efforts” within the region.

Due to this close parallel, they concluded that the rise in diatom concentrations in the second half of the 20th century is “undoubtedly related to increased nitrogen loading from the [Mississippi] river, which occurred as a direct consequence of fertilizer application rising dramatically [in the basin] after World War II.”

In short, scientists have knowledge of water quality in the U.S. “when the buffalo roamed,” despite what King claimed. Some water quality testing was conducted, but they can also reach back in time using methods from paleolimnology.

In the next section, we’ll outline how the data collected in the 1900s further supports the link between applications of fertilizers and decreased water quality in the U.S.

Water Quality Post-1900

Water quality monitoring “increased substantially” in the 20th century, especially after the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, Lori Sprague, a surface water specialist at USUGS, told us by email.

“We really don’t have to go back” to when the bison roamed “to see the change [in water quality] due to nitrate … pollution in just the 20th century alone,” Myers, the author of the Food, Energy and Water chapter, also told us in an email.

Many reports and papers have concluded that 20th century crop fertilizer use, combined with soil erosion from farming and other factors, has negatively impacted water quality in the U.S. Poor water quality creates issues for both humans and wildlife, such as blue baby syndrome and eutrophication, respectively:

• Blue baby syndrome, also called methaemoglobinaemia, is “caused by the decreased ability of blood to carry vital oxygen around the body. One of the most common causes is nitrate in drinking water,” according to the World Health Organization.
• Eutrophication can be characterized as “an explosive growth of algae” that reduces oxygen in water “when the algae die and are eaten by bacteria,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

If severe enough, these algae blooms can completely deplete water bodies of oxygen, leading to massive fish deaths, like those experienced in Lake Erie over the 20th and 21st centuries. The cause? An excess of nutrients like nitrates and phosphates in the ecosystem.

Small amounts these nutrients are necessary for plant growth and a healthy ecosystem. But in excess, they disturb ecosystems and leach into drinking water supplies. How does this happen? “When soils are disturbed enough during cultivation, the ecological processes that keep nutrients bound up in the soil and organic matter are subdued, and the stored nitrogen is released,” explain Turner and Rabalais in their BioScience paper. The nutrients then leach into creeks, rivers and coastal zones.

In other words, soils can become “exhausted” through cultivation, meaning they can’t hold nutrients or be used for crop farming. So farmers apply fertilizers to compensate for the decreased soil productivity. “Many studies have concluded that the application of fertilizers is a major source of the increased nutrient loading among large river watersheds in the last 50 years,” write Turner and Rabalais.

As previously mentioned, the authors point to nitrate, or nitrogen-based fertilizers, in particular as the main culprit in the Mississippi River watershed. “One thing seems certain: It took decades for the present system to develop, which suggests that it will take decades of working together for water quality rehabilitation to succeed,” the authors add.

In sum, there is scientific consensus that crop fertilizers have negatively impacted water quality in the U.S. Scientists have some evidence from the 19th century and before as well as plenty of evidence from the 20th century to support their conclusion, despite King’s implication.

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

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Summary

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

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

Analysis

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

Obama, a Supreme Court Justice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terrorism and the Philadelphia Shooting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medicaid and Recidivism in Ohio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bush: Obama’s ‘Poison Pill’ Amendments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cruz’s Legalization Amendment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rubio’s Immigration Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cruz’s ‘Job Killer’ Claim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kasich’s Jobs Boast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Hillary Clinton TV ad claims that “in the last seven years drug prices have doubled.” That’s inaccurate. A report, provided by her campaign, says brand-name drug prices on average have more than doubled. But more than 80 percent of filled prescriptions are generic drugs, and those prices have declined by nearly 63 percent, that same report says.

In fact, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in its latest National Health Expenditure report that the shift to cheaper generic drugs has resulted in “historically low rates of prescription drug spending growth” in recent years.

The Clinton campaign has been running the ad, titled “Doubled,” for weeks in three Iowa markets in advance of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, an ad-tracking service. It is currently running in Davenport, Iowa, and Burlington, Vermont.

The ad begins by saying, “Heart disease. Asthma. Diabetes. Seven out of 10 Americans take prescription drugs. But in the last seven years drug prices have doubled.” The Clinton campaign provided us with a report published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings that showed nearly 70 percent of Americans use prescription drugs, a figure that has been increasing in recent years. But it could not support the claim that “drug prices have doubled.”

The Clinton campaign referred us to a Wall Street Journal article from April 26, 2015, that said: “Since 2008, branded-drug prices have increased 127%, compared with an 11% rise in the consumer price index, according to drug-benefits manager Express Scripts Holding Co.” Express Scripts is one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits managers.

But the Express Scripts report also shows that average generic drug prices have gone down nearly 63 percent, and that the vast majority of filled prescriptions are generic products, not name brands.

Jennifer Luddy, a spokeswoman for Express Scripts, told us in an email that among Express Scripts members “brand medications – specialty and traditional – accounted for 17.1% of all prescriptions filled in 2014. Generics accounted for 82.9%.” That is consistent with the CMS’ latest National Health Expenditure report that said the “generic dispensing rate” was 82 percent in 2014.

The Express Scripts report does not say, and Luddy couldn’t tell us, how much overall drug prices have changed over the last seven years. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a figure that combines generics and brands,” she said.

The report does, however, include year-over-year price increases for the top 10 traditional therapy classes that combine both generic and brand-name drugs. Of the three medical conditions mentioned in the ad, diabetes was the only one that saw a price increase in 2014, according to the Express Scripts report. The unit cost for medications that treat diabetes increased 18 percent from 2013 to 2014, while those for asthma declined 14.9 percent and those for heart disease declined 12.6 percent.

Glen T. Schumock, director of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomic Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has written extensively about drug costs, told us in an interview that it is misleading to say drug prices have doubled in seven years. “Most drugs are generic and those have gone down,” Schumock said.

Of course, there have been some well-publicized cases of individual drug prices spiking, an issue that gained renewed attention after the arrest of Turing Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli. But even when individual drug prices rise, Schumock said consumers don’t necessarily pay that price because most have private or public insurance that covers most of the expense — minus a set copay or cost-sharing amount.

“The bottom line is it is misleading to say it is doubling,” he said. “Not only is it untrue based on the data that [Clinton officials] quoted, but it is not true from a consumers’ perspective, by the way we pay for drugs as patients.”

Schumock said he did not know of any available data that could conclusively answer the question of how much consumer drug prices have increased. “The whole question about pricing is complicated,” he said. “I don’t know that there is an answer to that.”

For example, he said the so-called Red Book tracks the Average Wholesale Price set by manufacturers. “But,” he added, “nobody really pays AWP. The actual cost to a payer is not AWP, so it is kind of a fictitious number. There is price and what actually people pay.”

He said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ annual report on health care expenditures includes the total amount spent each year on prescription drugs. In 2014, that amount was $305.1 billion, a 12.6 percent increase from 2013, according to an article written by CMS researchers for the journal Health Affairs and published online July 28, 2015. The double-digit increase — the highest rate of growth since 2002 — was notable because the increases had been so modest in recent years. Prescription drug expenditures increased just 2.5 percent in 2013 and 2.3 percent in 2012, the article said.

“Recent historically low rates of prescription drug spending growth have been driven by the shift from brand-name medications to less expensive generic drugs,” CMS researchers wrote. “This shift to cheaper medications has offset annual price increases for brand-name drugs. With the generic dispensing rate already at 82 percent in 2014, there is an expectation of only a small increase in this rate over the next ten years.”

CMS researchers partly attributed the 12.6 percent increase in total prescription drug expenditures to “new treatments for hepatitis C.” But “prescription drug spending growth is projected to decelerate, as lower costs associated with expensive specialty treatments for hepatitis C are negotiated between payers and the drug industry,” the paper said.

Even the CMS data are not ideal for measuring consumer cost. Schumock said three factors affect the total expenditure on prescription drugs — usage, price and the availability of new drugs — and only one of those factors involves the cost.

In the end, we cannot provide a figure for how much drug prices overall have changed in seven years. But the Clinton campaign ad leaves the misleading impression that drug prices have doubled in the last seven years. The ad could have said that brand-name drugs have doubled. But those drugs account for less than 20 percent of filled prescriptions, and the shift to generic drugs has offset price increases for brand-name drugs.

The post Clinton’s Misleading Ad on Drug Prices appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

The three Democratic presidential candidates faced off on a Saturday night, and made several inaccurate claims:

• Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said that in President Reagan’s first term, the highest marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. But Reagan signed a bill in his first year dropping that to 50 percent, and it dropped again to 28 percent in his second term.
• Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the U.S. “has more income and wealth inequality than any major country on earth.” But Israel, Brazil and Chile have both greater income and wealth inequality, and more countries beat the U.S. in one of the measures.
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrongly said that wages “haven’t risen since the turn of the last century.” Real average weekly earnings of rank-and-file workers rose 7.2 percent since 1999.
• Sanders repeated his talking point about billionaires paying “an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers.” That may be the case for some in those professions, once we factor in payroll taxes, but it’s not accurate for all.
• When Clinton cited Princeton economist Alan Krueger’s support for her minimum wage proposal, O’Malley called him a Wall Street economist. He’s not.
• O’Malley boasted that Maryland was “the only state” to freeze college tuition four years in a row. This year, Maine did so as well.

Analysis

Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley met at Drake University in Iowa for the debate, which was hosted by CBS News, KCCI-TV in Des Moines and the Des Moines Register.

O’Malley on Top Tax Rate Under Reagan

O’Malley said that in President Ronald Reagan’s first term, “the highest marginal [income tax] rate was 70 percent.” That was true only briefly. In Reagan’s first year in office, he signed a bill reducing the top rate to 50 percent. And in his second term, he reduced it again, to 28 percent.

O’Malley cited the top marginal tax rate during the debate to make the point that upper-income taxpayers should be paying more, and historically have.

O’Malley: And may I point out that under Ronald Reagan’s first term, the highest marginal rate was 70 percent. And in talking to a lot of our neighbors who are in that super wealthy, millionaire and billionaire category, a great number of them love their country enough to do more again in order to create more opportunity for America’s middle class.

As a matter of history, the top marginal tax rate of 70 percent was established in 1964, when Congress passed a tax cut backed by President John F. Kennedy. In the decades before that, the top rate was much higher — hovering around 90 percent.

So 70 percent was the top rate when Reagan took office in January 1981. Eight months after taking office, Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which cut the highest marginal tax rate to 50 percent.

In his second term, Reagan signed a bill in 1986 that lowered the top marginal income tax rate to 28 percent.

Sanders Off on Inequality and Poverty

Sanders continued to peddle some false claims about U.S. inequality and child poverty:

Sanders: This country today has more income and wealth inequality than any major country on earth. …  We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. …

Regarding income inequality, we noted back in May that World Bank statistics list at least 41 countries with greater income inequality than the U.S. — including Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

And as for wealth inequality, the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent in the U.S. puts it in 11th place among 37 nations listed in the 2015 edition of the Global Wealth Databook. The top 1 percent in Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, China, Czech Republic and Israel each hold a greater share of their nation’s wealth, according to that publication.

Finally, the rate of child poverty is far worse in many other countries, including several with industrialized economies. The campaign told us the senator was referring to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, but that report ranks the U.S. seventh in “relative childhood poverty” among the 38 countries listed.

Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria all had higher rates of child poverty than the U.S., in the OECD’s ranking.

It’s also worth noting that “relative poverty” is a measure of household disposable income relative to others in that country.

Clinton Wrong on Wages

Clinton erred when she said real wages haven’t risen in nearly 15 years.

Clinton: [W]ages adjusted for inflation haven’t risen since the turn of the last century.

That’s not true, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Real average weekly earnings of rank-and-file workers were 7.2 percent higher in September than they were in December 1999.

Furthermore, real weekly wages have jumped 2.3 percent in the most recent 12 months alone.

Sanders on Truck Drivers’ Tax Rates

Sanders repeated one of his campaign trail talking points: “But we are going to end the absurdity, as Warren Buffet often remind us … that billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers.” That’s the case for some in those professions — compared with billionaires who earn their money through investments — but it’s not accurate for all. In fact, a truck driver would have to earn more than the median salary to pay a higher effective rate.

We previously ran the calculations for several different hypothetical nurses and truck drivers (and firefighters and police officers, who have also been part of this Sanders claim), comparing total effective tax rates, including payroll taxes, to what an investment fund manager would pay if only paying capital gains tax rates on earnings.

The billionaire fund manager would pay 23.8 percent — the top capital gains rate for income above $413,200 for individuals — and a 3.8 percent Medicare surcharge tax on investment income for those earning more than $200,000. A truck driver earning the median income for the profession ($39,520) wouldn’t pay a higher rate then the fund manager’s 23.8 percent. But if that truck driver earned a higher salary — such as the average pay in Peabody, Massachusetts ($57,250) — and was single with no dependents, he or she would pay an effective tax rate of 26 percent, higher than the fund manager. If that truck driver had one dependent child, however, the rate would drop to 21 percent.

As for nurses, the median salary is much higher — $66,640. A single nurse with no dependents would have a 28 percent effective tax rate with that salary. But once we add a dependent child, or a nonworking spouse, or both, the nurse’s rate sinks below that of the wealthy fund manager.

If the billionaire fund managers’ earnings were taxed at regular income tax rates, he or she would pay a higher rate. Most marginal income tax rates are higher than capital gains rates, with individual income between about $37,000 and $90,000 at the 25 percent rate for 2015. The top income tax rate is 39.6 percent, which starts after income surpasses $413,200.

Krueger Not a Wall Street Economist

O’Malley lumped Princeton economist Alan Krueger in with what he called “economists on Wall Street.” Krueger is not a Wall Street economist.

O’Malley made his remarks when he had a disagreement with Clinton over how much to raise the minimum wage. O’Malley supports raising it to $15 per hour. Clinton has proposed $12 per hour, and she cited Princeton economist Alan Krueger’s support for her proposal and concern for increasing the minimum to $15 per hour.

O’Malley: I think we need to stop taking our advice from economists on Wall Street …

Clinton: He’s not Wall Street.

O’Malley: … And start taking advice …

Clinton: That’s not fair. He’s a progressive economist.

O’Malley is wrong about Krueger’s background. It is entirely in academia and education.

Krueger graduated with a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1987. “Since 1987 he has held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University,” according to his biography on the university website.

Krueger also has held top positions in government, including chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Bill Clinton. His full curriculum vitae can be found here.

O’Malley’s Outdated Tuition Boast

O’Malley claimed that Maryland was the only state that went four consecutive years without an increase in college tuition. That’s no longer the case.

O’Malley: We were the only state to go four years in a row without a penny’s increase to college tuition.

Yes, as governor, O’Malley did sign bills implementing a tuition freeze at public universities in Maryland that lasted from 2007 until 2010. But Maine has now matched what Maryland once achieved.

In March of this year, the University of Maine System Board of Trustees again voted to freeze in-state tuition at its seven member schools. That means the school system has now gone four years without an increase in tuition at its public universities.

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

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Credit Suisse Research Institute. “Global Wealth Databook.” Oct 2015.

World Bank. “GINI index (World Bank estimate).” Data accessed 15 Nov 2015.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Chart CO2.2.A. Child income poverty rates, 2012.” Data accessed 15 Nov 2015.

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Robertson, Lori. “Hedge Fund Managers’ Tax Rates.” FactCheck.org. 8 Sep 2015.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014. 53-3032 Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers. accessed 15 Nov 2015.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014. 29-1141 Registered Nurses. accessed 15 Nov 2015.

O’Malley for President. “Raise the Minimum Wage.” Undated.

Krueger, Alan B. “The Minimum Wage: How Much Is Too Much?” New York Times. 9 Oct 2015.

Princeton University. “Alan B. Krueger, Biography.” Undated.

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