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The "pay-as-you-go law ... was a big reason why we had record surpluses in the 1990s. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama reiterated his praise for "pay as you go," a budget approach that is supposed to force lawmakers to offset new spending with an equal amount of revenue or budget cuts.The president told a joint session of Congress on Jan. 27, 2010, that the "pay-as-you-go law ... was a big reason why we had record surpluses in the 1990s."We originally analyzed a similar comment he made on May 7, 2009. Back then, he said, "One important step is restoring the 'pay as you go' rule — and I've called on Congress to do exactly that. This rule says, very simply, that Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere. This is the principle that guides responsible families managing a budget. This is the principle that helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s."We wondered then, and now, whether he was correct about the role of 'pay as you go' -- or PAYGO -- in balancing the federal budget in the 1990s.We found that Obama is correct that Congress operated under a PAYGO law that was in effect from 1990 until it expired in 2002. When the Democrats took control of Congress after the 2006 elections, they established a PAYGO rule, but it has been waived for some of the most expensive bills, such as the economic stimulus bill. Fiscal hawks are urging Congress to replace that rule with a new law that would have more impact and be more binding.Obama is also right, of course, that the federal budget was balanced by 1998 and ran four years of surpluses before plunging back into deficits. The question is how much to credit PAYGO for those surpluses.To find the answer, we interviewed budget analysts and examined reports on the deficit and the impact of PAYGO. During our round of interviews, we found a general consensus that PAYGO was a factor that reduced the deficit, but most said it was not as important as the two biggest forces that led to a balanced budget: the increase in tax receipts from the booming economy and defense cuts made possible by the end of the Cold War.Still, there was a range of opinion on how much the rule helped.Alice Rivlin, budget chief under President Bill Clinton, characterized PAYGO as a significant factor. She said in a recent interview on PBS's Frontline that PAYGO and other budget rules "made it easier for the Clinton administration to work on the budget deficit."She said the PAYGO rule provided discipline so policymakers could resist tempting but expensive programs. The rule "meant that the president could say no, and the Congress could say no to a lot of good-sounding ideas, including Medicare prescription drugs" that would have made it difficult to balance the budget.That's backed up by a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said, "Between 1991 and 1997, most new revenue and mandatory spending laws that were enacted were consistent with the PAYGO requirement to be deficit neutral; end-of-session balances on the PAYGO scorecard consistently showed zero or net reductions in the deficit."Josh Gordon, policy director for the Concord Coalition, a group that advocates fiscal responsibility and was founded in the midst of the PAYGO movement in 1992, said PAYGO provided some important discipline for members of Congress even if it was not as big a factor as the booming economy and the defense cuts. "There always needs to be a check on irresponsibility in Congress and PAYGO provides that," he said.But Brian Riedl, a budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said PAYGO's importance has been exaggerated. "There is this grand myth that we passed PAYGO and then we got this balanced budget. But we got the balanced budget because the Cold War ended and a bubble temporarily pushed revenues through the roof."He said that PAYGO didn't provide as much discipline as some claim because Congress repeatedly used gimmicks or took steps to ignore it.So back to Obama's claim. He said the "pay-as-you-go law ... was a big reason why we had record surpluses in the 1990s." He is correct that it is a basic principle behind the effort to balance the budget, but his statement somewhat overstates the policy's importance in achieving that goal.Yes, PAYGO rules provided some discipline that might have restrained Congress from adding more spending or new tax cuts, but the economy and the defense cuts were the biggest factors that led to the balanced budget. So we find his statement Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"For the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online. During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama talked about the importance of restoring trust in government. To close the credibility gap, Obama said, "we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; and to give our people the government they deserve." "That's why, for the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online," he said. We've been looking into the question of White House visitor logs. It's true that the Obama administration is releasing more information on White House visitors than any previous administration and posting those details to the Web. But the story is more complicated than that. And as we've noted before with this administration, you have to read the fine print because it includes some loopholes. When Obama first took office, the administration did not immediately release information on White House visitors, and it refused records requests from the news Web site msnbc.com and the advocacy organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW filed suit for the records in July 2009, and by September, the White House announced its intention to release some of the logs in a settlement with CREW. Starting Sept. 15, 2009, the White House said it would release records of all visitors, but the records would be released 90 to 120 days after the visits occurred. But the administration outlined a series of exceptions for records that would not be released: • personal information such as dates of birth, Social Security numbers or phone numbers• information that would be of concern to law enforcement or a threat to national security interests• personal guests of the president and vice president and their families ("i.e., visits that do not involve any official or political business")• records related to a "small group of particularly sensitive meetings (e.g., visits of potential Supreme Court nominees). The White House will disclose each month the number of records withheld on this basis, and it will release such records once they are no longer sensitive." It's that last point that stuck out to us. They'll release all the records unless the record is "particularly sensitive." That seems like a standard that can encompass an awful lot. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 CREW first filed suit against the Bush administration in 2006 for the White House visitor logs. Because White House records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the group argued that they belonged to the Secret Service and could be released under FOIA. A federal judge agreed with CREW in 2007, but left the records sealed pending appeal. The settlement with the Obama administration stopped that process. CREW says it still believes that the records are subject to FOIA but that it chose to settle because "the administration agreed to go much farther than we had asked in court: rather than just providing documents about specific visits upon request, the administration is posting the records of nearly all White House visitors," according to an e-mail to PolitiFact from CREW executive director Melanie Sloan. It's worth noting CREW's founder was Norm Eisen, who now is Obama's special counsel for ethics and government reform. He joined the administration in January 2009 and wrote the blog post announcing the new records policy. Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning organization that has sued both Democratic and Republican administrations, isn't satisfied with the settlement and has filed suit to force the release of all the logs. "The problem with these exemptions is that they're just exemptions that (the White House is) making up," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. "By their own admission, they're not releasing everything." Some open government organizations have nevertheless praised the administration's move. It's a "huge step toward a more transparent government," said Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, writing on the group's Web site. Mentioning the exemptions, she said, "We are going to trust them to make the right decisions. ... One misstep and the goodwill we are offering them right now goes out the window." So far, the White House has released one month of visitor logs. An Obama administration spokesman said that so far, it has not withheld any records for political sensitivity. A few records are still being processed for national security concerns, according to the White House Web site. Getting back to Obama's statement, he said, "For the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online." He's right that the release was unprecedented -- there is no dispute that the Obama administration has released more information from the logs than any previous administration. But there is still a gap for roughly the first nine months that Obama was in office. And the administration has given itself a significant loophole with the exemption for sensitivity, especially given that there's already a substantial delay built into the release. So while he's opened the records and earned praise from open-government advocates, it's not quite as sweeping as he suggests. We find his claim Mostly Tru

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison “voted to continue Roe v. Wade. U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s record on abortion makes some Republicans uncomfortable, so it was no surprise that it came up during the Jan. 14 Republican gubernatorial debate.Gov. Rick Perry invoked abortion to try to illustrate what he called the senator’s “issues with inconsistency.”“You voted to continue Roe v. Wade,” Perry said to Hutchison.Hutchison, who said during the debate that she always comes down on the “side of life,” has not always voted in ways that please two state groups, Texas Alliance for Life and Texas Right to Life's political action committee, which have endorsed Perry. Nor have Hutchison's votes on abortion issues satisfied some abortion rights advocates. "She's voted for every unreasonable restriction in the book," Donna Crane, policy director for National Abortion Rights Action League Pro-Choice America, said through a spokeswoman.Historically, the senator has supported abortion rights, with restrictions. Her campaign points to her record of voting for legislation limiting the procedure, including the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. To Texans watching the debate, Perry’s statement on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, may have seemed odd. That’s because Congress can’t vote to overturn a Supreme Court decision based on a constitutional right, University of Texas law professor Scot Powe said.Congress could, however, act to amend the U.S. Constitution to prohibit abortions.But for an amendment to become law, it must be passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That hasn’t happened.We wondered what vote the governor was referring to during the debate. His campaign pointed us to a 2003 vote that Hutchison cast for a resolution expressing support for Roe v. Wade. The resolution, an amendment to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, expressed "the sense of the Senate that (1) the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade … was appropriate and secures an important constitutional right; and (2) such decision should not be overturned.”In and of themselves, such "sense of the Senate" resolutions enact no laws, spend no public funds and are largely symbolic. The resolution was not included in the final version of the bill in Congress. The late-term ban was later upheld by the Supreme Court.In 2003, Hutchison told the Dallas Morning News that she "thought it was a very clean amendment that said Roe v. Wade has evolved into allowing reasonable restrictions to be put on by states, while also allowing women in the early stages (of pregnancy) to have that capability, if that is what they and their doctors decide."When asked this week about her vote, Hutchison's campaign said that the senator believes states should be able to keep their ability to restrict abortion and that the amendment sent that statement. However, the only reference that the 2003 resolution made to state restrictions was the observation that Roe v. Wade actually limits "the power of States to restrict the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy." During the gubernatorial debate, Hutchison voiced a different concern: that overturning Roe v. Wade would lead to "abortion havens" because some states would pass looser laws on abortion while others would outlaw the practice altogether.Hutchison was among 17 senators, including six Republicans, who voted both for the ban on the late-term procedure and the resolution affirming Roe. While critics have called those dual votes an attempt by lawmakers to appeal to both sides in the abortion debate, Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, disagrees. Supporting restrictions on abortion while recognizing that access to abortion services is needed in some cases actually reflects the moderate views most Americans have on the issue, he said."The idea that pro-choice means unrestricted access to abortion services and that pro-life means that life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder are the poles in this debate," Jillson said. "But there’s a vast middle ground. And for two-thirds of America, that's where they live."Summing up: On its face, Perry's statement that Hutchison "voted to continue Roe v. Wade" is wrong because senators have no such power regarding Supreme Court decisions. If Perry had substituted "affirm" for "continue," the statement would have been accurate, though perhaps less politically potent.But the brunt of Perry's charge is correct: Sen. Hutchison voted for a resolution that said Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. We rate his statement as Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison “has voted nine separate times to raise the national debt ceiling. Gov. Rick Perry casts his leading Republican challenger, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, as a fiscally irresponsible lawmaker who’d bring a free-spending approach to state government. Amplifying that theme, Perry’s campaign said Nov. 30: “Hutchison has voted nine separate times to raise the national debt ceiling.” We wondered if that was so. Perry’s camp compiled votes — undisputed by Hutchison — showing that since joining the Senate in 1993, Hutchison has voted nine times to raise the ceiling. But she’s also voted five times against raising the ceiling. Our request for an explanation of Hutchison’s votes didn’t generate an immediate reply from her. If she does pipe up, we’ll update this item. UPDATE: Hutchison spokesman Jeff Sadosky offered a statement Jan. 28 suggesting that Hutchison's "aye" votes while George W. Bush was president reflected her support for his across-the-board tax cuts and spending initiatives including commitments to fight terrorism, provide prescription drugs to senior citizens and rebuild after 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike. Sadosky said: "She has voted against efforts to increase the debt ceiling when it is necessitated by wasteful spending like that seen in the stimulus bill and in the annual discretionary appropriations bills proposed by the Democratic-led Congress and presidency." We wondered anyway what any vote on the debt ceiling really means. Josh Gordon of The Concord Coalition, which was founded by the late Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass) to advocate for long-term fiscal responsibility, advised that votes to raise the ceiling might be portrayed as big deals to score political points. In reality, they’re not, he said, though they are necessary. “If they didn’t do it, the (U.S.) Treasury would no longer be able to borrow money,” Gordon said. “Everything from savings bonds to Treasury bills to very short-term financial instruments of the Federal Reserve would cease to be worth anything. It would basically destroy the economy.” Unlike congressional votes on taxes or spending, Gordon said, lawmakers' votes to increase the debt limit aren't necessarily indicators of members' fiscal philosophies. Gordon said the fact all but two of Hutchison’s votes to raise the ceiling occurred with Republicans in charge of the Senate was probably not a coincidence. Typically in Congress, the majority party bears responsibility for attending to essential business, including hikes in the debt ceiling if necessary. When the ceiling issue comes up, members of the minority party can vote "no" knowing the other side will muster the votes to do it. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022 Hutchison’s five “no” votes occurred when Democrats controlled the Senate. With Democrats holding the Senate majority, she voted for raising the ceiling as part of the Wall Street rescue plan approved in October 2008 and earlier voted for raising the ceiling in June 2002. Perry got all of Hutchison’s “yes” votes right. We rate his claim as Tru

"PWNED: House GOP Dominates Twitter, YouTube, Social Media in Congress. Quick quiz of your online fluency: Do you know what PWNED means?We'll admit we had to Google it. In Internet geek, it's trash talk that means you "owned" your opponent.Here it is in a recent press release from House Republican Leader John Boehner: "PWNED: House GOP Dominates Twitter, YouTube, Social Media in Congress."The release said, "The conventional wisdom is being turned upside down as House Republicans demonstrate an unmatched ability to connect with the American people on the Internet’s most popular communities. Once considered the party of online innovation, new research and a host of media reports show that Democrats are largely ignoring some of the most popular social media communities on the Web."Indeed, there's been a widespread perception that Democrats had the lead. During the presidential campaign, the Washington Post dubbed Barack Obama "the king of social networking." By nearly every social networking measure -- Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter -- Obama's engagement and influence dwarfed the McCain campaign. Obama's text messaging became a powerful grass-roots tool for getting out his message and raising money. The Obama campaign even mocked Sen. John McCain for his inability to navigate the Internet and ran an ad linking him to a record player and a Rubik's Cube. We decided to fact-check Boehner's boast about Republican domination of social media in Congress.First stop: Twitter.Earlier this month, Mark Senak, senior vice president and partner at Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., issued a report titled "Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress" in which he analyzed the Twitter use of all members of Congress. The findings surprised him.In Congress, he found, there are 132 members using Twitter actively: 89 Republicans and 43 Democrats. It breaks down like this: In the Senate, there are 14 Republicans using Twitter compared to 11 Democrats; and in the House, there are 75 Republicans using Twitter (42.13 percent of the Republican caucus) and 32 Democrats (12.45 percent of the Democratic caucus).And the GOP leads in tweet production: "Republicans send out more tweets and have the attention of many more people than do the Democrats," the report says.The disparity in Twitter usage was most pronounced in the House. In the House, only one Democrat ranks in the top 10 in terms of the number of followers; and only two are in the top 20. Not only do more House Republicans actively use Twitter, they have many more followers and send out far more Twitter messages, 29,162 tweets compared to 5,503 for their Democratic counterparts, according to the report, which tallied their messages through the end of 2009. The power of Twitter, however, is not just in the number of followers you have and how many messages you send out a day. The idea is to get people on your followers list to "re-tweet" -- pass on -- your message, potentially exposing your message to an exponentially larger group. So analysts also look at your "influence" and "clout," which factors in how often people "re-tweet" and cite your messages. And by that measure, House Republicans are far outpacing Democrats.Measured by the sheer number of followers, Boehner leads the Republicans in the House with 18,800; followed by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., with 16,500. But it was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who led House Republicans in "clout" and "influence" because she is re-tweeted so often. And for the record, the supposedly out-of-touch McCain beats everyone in Congress for total followers, with nearly 1.6 million."When I first saw the results, I was surprised," Senak told PolitiFact. "That was a counterintuitive finding after the Obama campaign. But when when I thought about it, the party that is not in power always has had to be more aggressive in using communication tools to get their message."So Round 1, Twitter, to House Republicans.What about YouTube? On Jan. 21, 2010, YouTube's CitizenTube posted a year-end wrap-up that showed 89 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats in Congress have started YouTube channels to engage their constituents. More importantly, people are watching the Republican channels much more often. According to the report, eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, though Democrats took two of the top three spots. The top 4, in order, are Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Boehner. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 A tracking of YouTube views by industry analyst TubeMogul shows that with few exceptions, Republican videos consistently drew more clicks than those from Democrats. None of the videos have gone viral, said David Burch of TubeMogul, and no one is getting huge viewership. "Obama spoiled us in terms of what 'a lot' means," during the campaign, he said. Obama remains on the cutting edge. On Jan. 25, 2010, the administration rolled out a new White House iPhone app which will allow users to watch White House live-streaming video.Still, in Congress, the GOP is ahead. Round 2, YouTube, to Republicans.And lastly, Facebook, the favorite of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin's Facebook page has more than 1.2 million fans.No one in the House has that kind of reach. And we couldn't find any comprehensive analysis of engagement on FaceBook by members of Congress. But as of Jan. 22, 2010, Boehner had 31,757 fans of his page, compared to 8,745 for Pelosi.Boehner's director of new media, Nick Schaper, said House Republicans are building an important lead in social media. "We're pretty proud of that," he said.For many Republicans, the Obama campaign was a real eye-opener to the power of social media tools. And so Republican leaders made a conscious effort to ramp up their involvement. In weekly meetings, members of the Republican conference routinely discuss their social media successes and talk about how best to use various tools.Engagement in new social media just makes sense, Schaper said. It's easy to use, but it takes commitment.Boehner typically tweets about 5 to 10 times a day."The more active you are, the more followers you get," Schaper explained. "Everyone on the press team considers Twitter an important part of the process. We make it a focus, not a secondary kind of thing."It's a great resource to reach people with your message, he said. Boehner might only have about 19,000 followers on Twitter, but if enough people re-tweet some of his messages, he can reach a couple hundred thousand people in just a couple hours.But while House Republicans may rightly crow about deeper engagement in social media than their Democratic counterparts, Senak, the author of the study, says neither side is doing particularly well compared to other large institutions. Both parties have a minority of members engaged in Twitter. And neither side has fully embraced the give-and-take of Twitter. Most members have elected to follow very few other people and rarely "re-tweet." In other words, he said, they are mostly using Twitter as a soapbox."Both sides have room for a tremendous amount of improvement," Senak said.But the bottom line is that Boehner is correct when he boasts that the House GOP dominates the Democrats on Twitter, YouTube and other social media in Congress.Still, we had to ask, is Boehner really so plugged-in that he knows what PWNED means?Schaper artfully sidestepped the question and said, "He surprises me every time I talk about it (social media). I think people would be surprised."On this claim, Boehner earns a Tru

"We have over 300 state agencies. Forty-five of those agencies are related to health care. Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, running for governor, said she wouldn't hesitate to trim state spending to cope with a looming state revenue shortfall of up to $17 billion. "We should start cutting across the board now in our state agencies," she said during the GOP gubernatorial debate Jan. 14. "We have over 300 state agencies. Forty-five of those agencies are related to health care. I'm just wondering if we couldn't consolidate some of those state agencies." Forty-five agencies, all concerned with health care? We decided to check. Hutchison's campaign sent us a list of 50 councils, boards, committees and state departments, all characterized by Hutchison's camp as relating to health care in some capacity. The 50 were plucked from a list of more than 300 entities that the governor was making appointments to as of February 2008. Case closed? Not quite. The veracity of Hutchison's statement depends on how broadly "agency" is defined. Two experts we spoke with understood how Hutchison made the stretch. But Harvey Tucker, a political science professor at Texas A&M, said that according to how state law defines what constitutes an agency, Hutchison "probably went too far." Ken Levine, interim director of the Sunset Advisory Commission, which reviews government agencies and makes recommendations to the Legislature about what services can be consolidated, declined to weigh in on the truthfulness of Hutchison's claim. But he said that it's not realistic to count all the entities on Hutchison's list as full-fledged agencies. For instance, the governor appoints members of advisory committees — we counted four of them on Hutchison's list, including the Dental Hygiene and the Family Practice Residency advisory committees. But "I wouldn't count those as state agencies," Levine said. Also, some of the entities Hutchison may envision as targets for possible consolidation to cut costs don't cost much money now. The vast majority of advisory committee members are not salaried state workers. Put another way, panels including the Dental Hygiene Advisory Committee do not have line-item appropriations in the budget. The dental hygiene panel's six members only get state money to reimburse travel expenses. Separately, we found three published state lists that put Hutchison's claim of 45 health-related agencies in question. According to an appendix to the latest state budget and compilations by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and the Texas State Library and Archives, Texas has no more than 15 health-related agencies including the mammoth Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees smaller units. One way Hutchison gets to a higher number is by counting components of some agencies as if they were separate entities. For instance, Hutchison includes on her list the Executive Council of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Examiners plus the Texas Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners and the Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners. A council spokeswoman told us that those three entities amount to one state agency. Except for a section of the state ethics code relating to financial disclosure by public officials, it's difficult to find a strict definition or criteria for what constitutes a state agency in Texas. We decided to take the state's word for how many health-related government agencies it has: 15, including the five health and human services agencies traditionally associated with health care. Hutchison's list — ranging from the sprawling HHSC to itty-bitties like the Chronic Kidney Disease Task Force — shapes up as overly long. We rule her claim False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022

"Right now the Tea Party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats. The Tea Party is getting popular -- really popular, if you ask Dick Armey, a former House Republican leader whose organization FreedomWorks helped organize the fledgling group, which has used tea bags to symbolize its opposition to new taxes. "This is the broad center of American politics," he said in an interview with MSNBC. "Look at the polling data. Right now the Tea Party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats." The Democrats and Republicans have been around awhile, so we were a little skeptical that the new party had gained such ground. We contacted FreedomWorks to find out which poll Armey was referring to and were told to check out a December 2009 NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. The poll asked the following question: "As you may know, this year saw the start of something known as the Tea Party movement. In this movement, citizens, most of whom are conservatives, participated in demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and other cities, protesting government spending, the economic stimulus package, and any type of tax increases. From what you know about this movement, is your opinion of it very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, or very negative? If you do not know enough to have an opinion, please say so." The poll found that 41 percent of respondents had a positive view of the Tea Party movement (either somewhat or very positive), while only 23 percent saw it negatively and 21 percent were neutral and 15 percent did not have an opinion. By contrast, 28 percent viewed the Republican Party positively, 43 percent saw it negatively and 27 percent were neutral. The Democratic Party was seen positively by 35 percent, negatively by 45 percent and neutral by 19. But some political analysts have questioned whether the poll exaggerated the Tea Party's favorable ratings because the group is not well known and because of the heavy coverage it gets from Fox News, a conservative news outlet. About 76 percent of those who see the Tea Party movement favorably also said they get their news from Fox, according to an analysis on MSNBC's First Read. On Meet the Press in response to Armey's comments, NBC political editor Chuck Todd questioned whether the Tea Party was "in the center. I mean, when we did our own polling on this, it's clear that the Tea Party gets a big benefit because there's one news organization that gives them a huge bump all the time. I mean, their favorable rating among Fox viewers is through the roof, and the rest of the country sort of doesn't know a lot about these folks." PolitiFact interviewed Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and she made the same point. "We know from other polls that a lot of Americans don't know what the Tea Party is," she said. Indeed, the same NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed that only 7 percent of respondents know a great deal about the Tea Party and 22 percent know a fair amount. Bowman also questioned the validity of comparing the parties because of the way the poll was worded. The Tea Party question included information about the group's activities such as "protesting government spending," while there were no such labels for Republicans or Democrats. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 25, 2022 in an Instagram post The documentary “2,000 Mules proves” Democrats “cheated on the 2020 elections.” By Jon Greenberg • October 28, 2022 "I think people were responding to deep concerns about government," she said, not necessarily the Tea Party movement. While it's clear that Republicans and Democrats are not polling well -- and that the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll provides some useful information about the mood of the country -- it doesn't show definitively that the Tea Party is the most popular party in the country, Bowman said. We also spoke with Jay Campbell, vice president for Hart McInturff, the firm that conducted the poll. For the same reasons outlined by Bowman, he told us Armey's comments were not an accurate representation of the poll's findings. "The main problem with it is that they're making a comparison that is not an apples-to-apples comparison at all," Campbell said. "If we had said that the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, they might have polled more favorably." His firm included the descriptions for the Tea Party because pollsters were concerned that respondents otherwise would not know what it is. A December 2009 Rasmussen poll also contradicts Armey's statement. It found that in a three-way generic ballot, Democrats attracted 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picked up 23%, and Republicans finished third with 18% of the vote. Another 22% are undecided. And a Fox News poll released Jan. 21, 2010, demonstrated that President Barack Obama would beat a potential Tea Party candidate in a White House run. So Armey is drastically overstating the group's standing. Yes, the Tea Party is viewed favorably by people who know about the group (particularly those who get their news from Fox), but the pollsters who conducted the survey say it's not accurate to say that the party is more popular than Democrats or Republicans. Also, other polls contradict Armey's statement and indicate that Democrats are more popular than Tea Party candidates. So we find Armey's claim to be Fals

Democratic presidents "have been considerably more effective at creating private-sector jobs. As the recession continues to inflict economic pain on most Americans, the political battle to frame the debate rages on. In a House floor speech on Jan. 21, 2010, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., held up a chart showing job creation statistics under two former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "This chart goes back to 1992, the year that President [Bill] Clinton was elected," Maloney said. "It shows that during his time there was very robust job creation in the private sector, and then during the Bush years it fell dramatically. This dark line is the job creation, going up during the Clinton years, falling dramatically under the [George W.] Bush administration. It also shows that Democrats have been considerably more effective at creating private-sector jobs." We wondered whether that pattern held true for other presidents as well, or whether Maloney had simply chosen two presidencies that conveniently showed her party in the most favorable light. So we ran the numbers and got some interesting results. We did this by turning to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site, where visitors can customize data tables on national employment statistics. We used the month-by-month totals for nonfarm employment in the United States. (We actually ran the numbers twice -- once using Maloney's cited statistic, private-sector employment, and a second time using the combination of private-sector and government employment. It turned out that the general trends were virtually identical, so we'll be sticking with the statistics on just private-sector employment below.) The BLS data go back to 1939, but since that fell in the middle of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, we skipped forward to Harry Truman and compared him and all of his post-World War II successors. We also did some minor massaging of the numbers in order to make the statistics more comparable. First, we calculated how much the number of jobs rose or fell on each president's watch. Then we divided that result by the number of jobs there were when the president began his first term, in order to get a percentage increase in jobs over that president's tenure. This enabled us to minimize the effect of population growth, which would otherwise credit later presidents with larger employment increases than earlier ones. Next, we divided this job growth percentage by the number of years the president occupied the Oval Office, creating a statistic that calculates percentage job growth per year as president. This allowed us to more fairly compare the job growth rates under, say, Gerald Ford with those of two-termers such as Ronald Reagan and Clinton. Finally, we lumped the Democratic presidents' annual job-growth percentages together and averaged them, and did the same for the Republicans. Because President Barack Obama has served just one year in office -- a length of time that some would consider statistically problematic -- we ran the Democratic numbers both with and without Obama, so that readers could choose their preferred statistic. Before we provide the final totals, let's run down how each president did. Here are the average annual percentage increases in jobs for each postwar president: Harry S. Truman (Democrat): increase of 2.95 percent a year Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican): increase of 0.50 percent a year John F. Kennedy (Democrat): increase of 2.03 percent a year Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat): increase of 3.88 percent a year Richard M. Nixon (Republican): increase of 2.16 percent a year Gerald R. Ford (Republican): increase of 0.86 percent a year Jimmy Carter (Democrat): increase of 3.45 percent a year Ronald Reagan (Republican): increase of 2.46 percent a year George H.W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.40 percent a year Bill Clinton (Democrat): increase of 2.86 percent a year George W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.01 percent a year Barack Obama (Democrat): decrease of 3.0 percent a year (Can we take time out here to say how surprised we are that Eisenhower, who presided over the "happy" 1950s, managed an anemic half-percent job growth per year, while Jimmy "Malaise" Carter finished second with 3.45 percent annual job growth?) Now for the totals. If you exclude Obama, Democrats averaged 3.03 percent annual job growth, compared to 1.07 percent for Republicans -- a nearly 3-to-1 advantage. If you include Obama, the Democrats still held a significant edge. With Obama included, the Democrats averaged 2.03 annual job growth, compared to the same 1.07 for Republicans -- about twice as high as the GOP. And based on some quick calculations he did, Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless said that the U.S. working-age population actually grew slightly faster under Republican presidents, making the Democratic accomplishment even more impressive. So the statistics are clear: Democratic presidents have been more successful at creating jobs. But how much importance should we assign to this fact? We hereby list some caveats that we and several historians we contacted came up with. -- The president actually deserves less credit for the good times -- and less blame for the bad times. It's a truism of politics that when things go well, the president generally gets too much credit, and when things don't go well, the president usually gets too much blame. Shouldn't the Republican Congress of 1995-2001 get a share of the credit for Clinton's robust job growth? Shouldn't the Democratic House that served under Reagan? Most experts would say yes and yes. -- Timing can be hugely important. "Statistics about employment growth over presidential terms are dominated by the timing of the business cycle, including Federal Reserve policy, and have no apparent connection to economic policies attributed to the White House, as opposed to Congress," said Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. One example: Clinton had the good fortune to enter office when the economy had just undergone a recession. This relatively low starting point made it easier for him to rack up big gains over eight years. The converse is true for George W. Bush: He took office right as the tech bubble was bursting, meaning that any jobs he added to the nation's total amounted to digging the country out of a jobs hole. -- Outside factors can play a big role. Truman's private-sector employment numbers likely benefited from the post-World War II demobilization of troops. (Private sector jobs grew at 2.95 percent per year during his presidency, compared to 2.7 percent a year for all jobs.) Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson took office right as the first wave of baby boomers was turning 18, a fact that almost certainly boosted his job-creation figures. And research by James D. Hamilton, an economist at the University of California at San Diego has shown that oil price shocks -- something entirely out of a president's control -- have caused most postwar recessions. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 As Yale political scientist David Mayhew points out, conclusions drawn from a relatively narrow data set -- in this case, just 12 postwar presidencies -- need to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, most experts we spoke to agreed that the pattern is too consistent to dismiss out of hand. And it's not the only one that reflects a strong correlation between an economic factor and the president's partisan affiliation. In his 2008 book Unequal Democracy, Princeton University political scientist Larry Bartels showed that changes in income inequality are strongly correlated with the president's party. Under every postwar Republican president, Bartels concluded, the gap between rich and poor has grown, and under every Democratic president except for Carter, that gap has shrunk. (For those on the lookout for ideological bias, Bartels made a point of writing in his introduction that he is "an unusually apolitical political scientist" who last voted in 1984, for Reagan. "I was quite surprised to discover how often and how profoundly partisan differences in ideologies and values have shaped key policy decisions and economic outcomes," he wrote. "I have done my best to follow my evidence where it led me.") Ultimately, the experts we contacted said that, despite the caveats, Maloney's calculations, and our expansion of them, were justified. "This is a reasonable exercise in the scheme of things," said liberal economist Dean Baker. "Obviously, luck matters a lot, but when there is a consistent pattern over more than 60 years, it starts to look like more than just luck." Kevin Hassett, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a former economic adviser to the Republican presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain, argued that the best way to evaluate presidents is to look at their policies. Still, he added, calculations like Maloney's "are worth doing. They can be thought-provoking and can ignite debates that help inform." So the significance of this pattern is open to question, but on the facts, the evidence is clear: We rate Maloney's statement True, not just for the two presidents she cited, but for the postwar presidency as a whol

"As long as I have served . . . This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. In case you haven't heard, the traditionally blue state of Massachusetts just elected Republican Scott Brown to take the seat of the late Edward Kennedy, a standard-bearer for the the Democratic Party. A lot of ink has been been dedicated to what this means for Democrats in the midterm elections, the party's strength and, of course, the health care reform plan in the Senate. The upper chamber needs 60 votes to prevent a Republican filibuster on the bill, and with Brown's election, Democrats have lost their supermajority. Vice President Joe Biden lamented this obstacle in a speech just days before Brown defeated Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "As long as I have served … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the Constitution stood on its head as they’ve done," Biden said at a Florida fundraiser Jan. 17, 2010, according to a White House pool report. "This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators." We're going to check the second part of Biden's statement, that this is the first time in his political career that every decision in the Senate has required 60 votes. But first, some Senate history. Once upon a time, senators could stall debate indefinitely by reading from cookbooks or reciting Shakespeare (think Jimmy Stewart's impassioned speech in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). In 1917, new rules allowed Senate leadership to end debate so long as it had support from two-thirds of the Senate. In 1975, the Senate reduced that to three-fifths, or 60 of the current 100 senators. Around this time, the old-school filibuster started to become less popular. With only 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster, the majority party would simply file cloture motions -- the technical term to set up a vote to stop debate -- and get on with it, said Senate historian Don Ritchie. Of course, both the minority and the majority have benefited from the tactical tool. The minority can unify and oppose a cloture motion, effectively stalling a bill. And the majority, knowing it has no chance of winning on a vote, can file a cloture motion and then blame the opposition for holding things up. But back to Biden's statement. He won his Senate seat in 1973, just two years before the Senate adopted its new cloture rules, and served until Jan. 15, 2009, shortly before he was sworn in as vice president. The Senate historian's office provided us with a list of cloture votes since 1919, which have been on the uptick in the last three decades. The 110th Congress, which spanned from 2006 to 2008, boasts the most with 112 votes. There were 54 such votes from 2004 to 2006, and 49 vote from 2002 to 2004. There have been 39 cloture votes so far this session, which has been under way since January 2009. Is the increasing use of cloture an example of pure obstructionist politics, as Biden's statement would imply? It's more complicated than that, said Ritchie. In the early '70s, when Biden first came to the Senate, the membership of both the Democratic and Republicans parties were more ideologically diverse and, as a result, party-line votes were scarce, Ritchie said. "In the late '80s, the two parties became more internally coherent and cohesive," he said. "As a result, leadership was invoking cloture a lot more." This dynamic has come to a head in recent years when the Senate leadership, whether Republican or Democratic, has had such narrow majorities, Ritchie said. The minority is more likely to unify against legislation, effectively filibustering a bill. As a result, the majority is essentially forced to round up 60 votes to keep the process going. Sarah Binder, a congressional expert teaching at George Washington University and a fellow with the Brookings Institution, echoed Ritchie. In the early 1970s, senators "were less likely to vote with fellow partisans, so there was a less partisan use of cloture," she said. "Today, there's no ideological overlap between the parties." Binder also pointed out that the size and scope of the leadership's agendas has grown dramatically in recent years, but it has little time to get big things done. Invoking the 60-vote rule is one way to keep the agenda moving. Back to Biden: His overall point -- that the Senate more frequently requires 60 votes to get things done these days -- has some truth to it. According to Senate experts, there have been more and more cloture votes as the upper chamber becomes increasingly split along party lines. But he said "every single solitary decision has required 60 senators," which is an exaggeration. In 2009, for example, there were 397 roll call votes. According to the Senate Historian's office, only 39 of them were cloture votes. Indeed, we found plenty of major bills that did not require 60 votes to start or end debate, including a bill meant to give more children health insurance and a bill to prevent mortgage foreclosures. Furthermore, the Senate frequently passes noncontroversial bills unanimously, so there are countless pieces of legislation such as post office namings and resolutions that don't require 60 votes. As we like to say at PolitiFact, words matter; if Biden had said every "major" decision requires 60 votes, he would have been on more solid ground. As a result, we rate his claim False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Members of Congress passed a pay raise for themselves of $10,000 over two years even as they voted not to raise Social Security benefits for 2010 and 2011 It is now conventional wisdom that American voters are angry -- very angry. And few things set them off as much as perks for lawmakers and the denial of benefits for seniors. A chain e-mail ties together these two hot-button issues and runs with them.The version we received reads, in part:"U.S. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises."1. They voted to not give you a [Social Security] Cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011."2. Your Medicaid premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years and You will not get the 3% COLA: $660/yr. Your total 2-yr loss and cost is -$1,600 or -$3,200 for husband and wife."3. Over 2-yrs they [Members of Congress] each get $10,000"4. Do you feel SCREWED?"5. Will they have your cost of drugs - doctor fees - local taxes - food, etc., increase? NO WAY . They have a raise and better benefits. Why care about you? You never did anything about it in the past. You obviously are too stupid or don't care."The e-mail closes with a call to action on the 2010 midterm elections: "SEND THE MESSAGE -- You're FIRED."Let's take these claims one by one:A congressional pay raiseUnder a law in force for two decades, members of Congress are entitled to a pay raise every year unless they vote to reject it.For two out of the past four years, lawmakers have voted to decline their cost-of-living increase. In votes taken in 2006 and 2009 -- affecting their pay during 2007 and 2010, respectively -- lawmakers turned down the pay raise. In 2007 and 2008, however, lawmakers didn't act to reject their pay raise, so their salaries increased -- by $4,100 for 2008 and by $4,700 for 2009. That boosted the rank-and-file congressional salary to its current level of $174,000. (Leaders in both chambers get more.)So it's true that Congress has acted (or, more precisely, failed to act) in a way that increased lawmaker salaries. But if you compare apples to apples by focusing on the most recent two-year period, as the e-mail does with the Social Security COLA (cost-of-living adjustment), congressional salaries in 2009 and 2010 increased by $4,700 -- less than half of what the e-mail alleged.Bottom line: The e-mail is partly right. Lawmakers did raise their salaries, but by less than the e-mail said.A cost-of-living increase for Social SecurityIn September, PolitiFact looked at an earlier chain e-mail that claimed that "for the first time in history, the Democratic Congress will not allow an increase in the Social Security COLA." We'll recap and update our original analysis here.Until 1975, it took an act of Congress to adjust Social Security payments for inflation. But a law enacted in 1972 -- and signed by President Richard Nixon -- created a formula to automatically calculate the COLA every year. The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment was tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).The government compares that index in the third quarter (July, August and September) of the current year to the third quarter of the previous year. Every year since the formula was put into effect, it has resulted in a cost-of-living increase. In fact, high oil prices in the summer of 2008 helped produce a sizable COLA increase in January 2009 of 5.8 percent -- the highest increase in more than 25 years.But lower energy prices and the effects of the recession combined to reduce the CPI-W during the period used to calculate the 2010 Social Security COLA. So in a break with tradition, there was no COLA for Social Security recipients this year. And projections by the Congressional Budget Office suggest that there won't be a COLA for Social Security recipients in 2011, either.But as we stated in our analysis of the earlier e-mail, this process occurs without any intervention by Congress. So it's incorrect to say, as the current e-mail does, that Congress "voted to not give you a [Social Security] cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011."In addition, CBO projections aside, it's not yet official that Social Security beneficiaries won't get a COLA for 2011. The statistics that determine whether that will happen won't be calculated for another 10 months or so.Finally, several bills are pending in Congress that would provide seniors with additional money to make up for the lack of a Social Security COLA this year. The bills -- S. 1685, H.R. 3536, H.R. 3557, H.R. 4429, H.R. 3572 and H.R. 3536 -- are being offered by both Democrats and Republicans, and most of them would provide recipients with additional payments of $150 or $250. President Barack Obama is on record saying that he supports the idea of a $250 one-time payment to seniors. As of yet, none has advanced beyond the committee stage.How big could the hit from a lost COLA be? For someone who has a $3,054 monthly benefit -- a comparatively generous amount, based on what a steady earner at the maximum level would get every month if he or she had retired in 2009 at age 70 -- would lose $1,099 over the course of the year compared to what they'd get with a 3 percent COLA. But most recipients would take a much smaller hit, according to Social Security Administration tables.Bottom line: On this point too, the e-mail is partly right. Social Security recipients won't be getting a COLA in 2010, and they are projected not to receive one for 2011, either. But it's inaccurate to blame Congress for that -- and the e-mail fails to note that the president and many lawmakers are working to provide a COLA to seniors retroactively.Increases in premiums for MedicareLet's get one thing clear before we start: It's not Medicaid premiums the e-mail writer meant. It's Medicare premiums.Americans age 65 and older get their health coverage through Medicare and pay monthly premiums to support Part B of the program -- coverage for outpatient services, including physician visits. These premiums are subtracted from a recipient's Social Security check.Part B premiums typically rise every year, but in the past, the annual increase in Social Security benefits has generally exceeded the annual rise in Part B premiums, meaning that the amount of a recipient's Social Security check has risen year after year despite the Part B increases. With the absence of a Social Security COLA this year, the rise in Part B premiums threatens, for the first time, to reduce the amount in Social Security checks compared to the prior year.But we need to raise a couple of caveats. Under a so-called "hold-harmless" law, 73 percent of Social Security beneficiaries are protected from any reduction in Social Security benefits caused by a rise in Part B premiums.Another 17 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are covered by both Medicare and Medicaid, and under current law, Medicaid -- not the recipient -- covers the higher Part B premium.And another 3 percent are new enrollees in Social Security or Medicare. While they will pay the higher Part B premiums, they won't see any change in their Social Security check amount because they either weren't getting Social Security checks last year or weren't enrolled in Medicare last year.So, the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries will see the amount in their Social Security checks stay the same, rather than decline, due to this year's Part B premium increases.Those who will see a decrease in their Social Security check -- about 5 percent of Medicare enrollees -- are generally those who have a modified adjusted gross income greater than $85,000 (for individuals) or $170,000 (for couples). For these recipients, the typical year-to-year increase in Part B premiums will be $14.10 per month. That works out to be $169.20 additional per year for an individual, or $338.40 additional for a couple -- levels far below what the e-mail alleged.Meanwhile, there's one additional factor that could cut into Social Security benefits: an increase in premiums for Medicare Part D, the part that covers prescription drugs. The impact from Medicare Part D premium hikes will vary widely because it's a voluntary program and because enrollees may choose among a variety of plans, each with different levels of benefits and premiums.One estimate cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts that 1.2 million beneficiaries could see their Part D premiums rise this year by at least $10 a month -- a change that would mean dollar-for-dollar reductions in their Social Security checks. That's about 3 percent of those enrolled in Medicare as a whole. A larger number of beneficiaries could see smaller monthly changes.Bottom line: The e-mail is correct that the absence of a Social Security COLA this year will affect Medicare premiums (even though it mistakenly called them Medicaid premiums). However, the vast majority of beneficiaries will see no reductions in their Social Security checks, and the relatively small proportion who do see a decliine -- many of them at the higher end of the income scale -- are likely to see increases far smaller than those alleged in the e-mail.SummaryAs with many chain e-mails we've seen, this one takes nuggets of truth and distorts them, adding several layers of inaccuracies.For one thing, the losses suggested in the e-mail are on the higher end of the scale. If the recently retired high-earner who was cited above also got hit by both types of premium increases, he or she would stand to lose $1,389 for the year. If his or her spouse was in the same situation, they would lose a combined $2,778. That's not so far off from the $1,600 to $3,200 claimed by the e-mail. But it's also for an extreme case. For most recipients, the hit would be much smaller.So let's recap. To its credit, the e-mail is correct that Congress has acted to increase its own pay, that Social Security recipients will not see a cost-of-living increase this year and that some recipients may in fact see a decrease in their checks from rising Medicare premiums.But the e-mail got many key details wrong. It cherry-picked its data in a way that overstated the increase in congressional salaries; it wrongly blamed Congress for killing the Social Security COLA (when in fact many lawmakers and the president are working to reverse that development); it vastly overstated the number of people who will be hit by rising Medicare premiums; and it used an extreme case in constructing its example of income being lost.If the author of the e-mail had been more careful in vetting the statistics, this missive could have been informative. But since the author was not, we will rate it Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"The Texas Department of Transportation... misplaced a billion dollars." The Texas Department of Transportation has become an easy target this campaign season, and Debra Medina, the Wharton businesswoman vying to knock Gov. Rick Perry from his seat, took a swing at the agency during the Jan. 14 GOP gubernatorial debate. "We've got to look at transparency, efficiency and accountability in all areas of state government," she said. "We have seen sloth, if you will, sloppy management in the Texas Youth Commission, in criminal justice, in the Texas Department of Transportation, where they misplaced a billion dollars." A billion dollars, MIA? Chris Lippincott, TxDOT director of media relations, said: "That's not correct." In October 2007, TxDOT officials accidentally counted $1.1 billion in bonds revenue twice, he said — a mistake that led the agency to commit an extra billion to road projects. Chief Financial Officer James Bass realized the agency had erred by a billion dollars when it approved $4.2 billion for construction in fiscal 2008. Because of the mistake, the department announced huge cuts in spending that froze some road projects that were ready to go. "There was an accounting error," Lippincott said. "A miscalculation." Actually, there were two accounting errors, according to an August 2008 state audit of the agency. In adding up what was available for projects, department forecasters added $581 million of bond money that was already in a $3.1 billion total. Then, they lumped in another $488 million from the Texas Mobility Fund, money that was actually already tabbed to pay for past projects. Taken together, that was $1.069 billion that at least some people in the agency counted twice. TxDOT didn't announce its gaffe until a February 2008 legislative hearing, where lawmakers were skeptical that it was just a number-crunching error and not a tactical move to create a financial crisis and thus pressure legislators to ease the limits on private toll road contracts. The audit concluded that "ineffective communication, a complex reporting structure, and misunderstanding of reported data led the Department of Transportation to overschedule $1.1 billion in planned contract awards for fiscal year 2008." No one has shown that any money was misplaced, as Medina claimed. The money never existed in the first place. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022 But she didn't miss the point. The transportation behemoth did make a billion-dollar mistake, a misstep that hobbled crucial road projects. We rate Medina's claim Mostly Tru

“The largest tax increase that we have ever had in our state is yours – it is the business margins tax that you signed, governor. The revamped business tax was a point of contention between Gov. Rick Perry and Republican opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison, a U.S. senator from Texas, during the first GOP gubernatorial debate. Portraying Perry as an enemy of business, Hutchison lashed out at him for signing legislation in 2006 that restructured the state’s franchise tax as part of a tax swap intended to reduce school property taxes.“The largest tax increase that we have ever had in our state is yours – it is the business margins tax that you signed, governor,” Hutchison said.Perry rebutted later in the debate that he has in fact cut the business tax — a claim we'll address at a later date. (When it comes to tax matters, it's dangerous for truth-testers as well as politicians to bite off more than they can chew.)For now, we'll gnaw on Hutchison's claim: Did the revised franchise tax, often called the margins tax, amount to the biggest tax increase in Texas history? For most qualifying businesses, the franchise tax is 1 percent of their total annual revenue minus one of three options: the cost of goods sold, employee compensation or 30 percent of total revenue.In support for its claim that the revised tax was indeed historic, the Hutchison camp offered a background paper citing several news articles and government documents.Among the citations was an item from the Dallas Morning News Trail Blazers campaign blog, also mentioned by Hutchison in the debate, stating that the "largest tax increase in Texas" occurred under Perry's leadership. But the newspaper made an important distinction that Hutchison omitted in the debate: The article included both a tobacco tax and the franchise tax as the sources of that increase. In the information that it provided after the debate, the Hutchison campaign said that "Perry's new margin tax cost taxpayers $8.8 billion" over the 2008-09 biennium and compared that figure with the estimated $5.7 billion tax package signed into law in 1987 by Gov. Bill Clements. At the time, the 1987 legislation was widely reported to be the largest tax hike in the state’s history.But it turns out there are fatal flaws in the Hutchison campaign's math.For instance, the $8.8 billion figure is the total amount generated by the franchise tax, not the net increase resulting from the revision that became law under Perry. So it's misleading for the campaign to cite that number when discussing tax increases. The actual increase — revenue above what the old franchise tax would have brought in — was about $3 billion, significantly less than what had been projected. Let's compare that with the largest single piece of the Clements-era tax package: a hike in the sales tax. After it was enacted, sales tax revenues went up $4.2 billion during 1988-89 compared with the previous biennium.If you're keeping track, that's significantly more than the $3 billion wrought by changes in the franchise tax. However, the Texas state comptroller's office says that it cannot say with certainty how much of that 1988-89 sales tax revenue increase can be attributed to the legislation per se and how much is due to other factors, such as increased consumer spending.As we evaluated Hutchison's claim, we also learned that the broadening of the franchise tax did not necessarily mean that businesses paid more taxes overall after the 2006 changes. Some companies actually wound up paying less, thanks to the reduction in school property taxes that was part of the deal.According to experts, there are several ways to try to determine which was the state's largest tax increase in history. We used the simplest, looking at total dollars brought in. Another way would be to calculate the percentage increase of franchise tax revenue and compare that to percentage increases in other state taxes.Taking the percentage approach, we found that the 51 percent increase in franchise tax revenue for 2008-09, compared with the previous biennium, was not the largest for that tax. After the Legislature revamped the franchise tax in 1991, revenue grew 92 percent over the next two years.Hutchison's campaign took the dollar approach to the franchise tax instead of percentages. But on either basis, her claim is flawed.First, the franchise tax that Perry signed did not result in an $8.8 billion increase in tax revenue. Second, it appears that previous revisions of the sales tax have resulted in larger revenue increases. Third, examined on a percentage basis, the new franchise tax didn't set a revenue record.Hutchison bit off more than she could chew with her campaign rhetoric. Her claim that the expansion of the business franchise tax represents the largest increase in state history is False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022

The Democrats' health care bills would provide "free health care for illegal immigrants. It's hard to say when a chain e-mail has reached critical mass. Although we'd seen one from former attorney Michael Connelly floating around for months, we never weighed in on it. The chief claim in the e-mail is that the Democrats' health care plan is unconstitutional, which is a matter of opinion, not fact. Also, we'd dealt with many of the other issues raised in the e-mail. And it's an e-mail that was penned in August.The thing is, we are still getting lots of readers sending it to us, asking us to fact-check it. It's clearly still in high circulation. We've decided that critical mass has been reached.And so we're revisiting several claims in the e-mail. In this item, we will address the claim that HR 3200, "The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009," would provide "free health care for illegal immigrants."It's hardly a new charge. You may recall U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., famously yelling "You lie!" during a joint session of Congress when President Barack Obama said the reforms Democrats were proposing would not apply to those who are in the United States illegally.In an item we wrote then, we noted that, in fact, the House bill specifically stated that "undocumented aliens" would not be eligible for credits to help them buy health insurance, in Section 246 on Page 143. Still, Wilson and Connelly and others argued the bill did not spell out verification procedures strong enough to ensure that illegal immigrants couldn't access the health care plan."There are no provisions for enforcing it," Connelly told us in an interview on Jan. 20, 2010. "The loophole is too big."Others have made the same criticism. The anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform argued that illegal immigrants would be permitted to purchase insurance on the national health insurance exchange because the bill does not include a mechanism for verifying citizenship. So, the logic goes, illegal immigrants would have the chance to purchase insurance in the public option, a government-run health care plan that would offer basic coverage at a low price.FAIR also argued for more robust verification measures for the affordability credit and making sure that illegal immigrant parents won't be able to receive coverage if their citizen children are eligible. FAIR had a point that illegal immigrants would likely be able to buy insurance on the national health insurance exchange. We didn't see anything in the bills that would hinder that. A Congressional Research Service report issued Aug. 25, 2009, confirmed our observation. The House bill "does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens participating in the Exchange — whether the noncitizens are legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently," the report said. But buying insurance on an exchange is different from getting free health care, as Connelly's e-mail suggested. We're not aware of any particular restrictions that stop illegal immigrants from buying private insurance now. We should note that while Connelly's e-mail references HR 3200, the House version of the bill in play when Connelly wrote his e-mail in August, it's not the bill that the House ultimately passed. According to Connelly, the version ultimately passed by the House (3962) is even worse because it has lower standards than the version in the summer. The version that passed only requires that people be residents of the United States in order to be eligible for the health care exchange. One could simply provide an electric bill to clear that hurdle, he said.We checked the bill and found that Connelly is right about the language that says people have to be residents of the United States to be eligible.But we also found language similar to the older bill. Section 34, titled "No federal payment for undocumented aliens," states unequivocally, "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States." And Sec. 1786 prohibits Medicaid and CHIP payments to "individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."We further note that if the tax credits are administered through the Internal Revenue Service, there would be built-in scrutiny. For instance, if a system were set up for taxpayers to declare insurance expenses and then receive a refund or a rebate, illegal immigrants couldn't obtain coverage, "because illegal immigrants do not have legitimate Social Security numbers," Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a group that is generally pro-immigration, told PolitiFact back in September when this issue was hot. "Screening out illegal immigrants through the tax system would prevent them from obtaining health care-related subsidies." In addition, language in the House bill provides clear authority for the new government official who would run the exchange to set up that verification, as the Congressional Research Service report notes. Rosenblum concurs. "The commissioner could enforce these restrictions in one of two ways: through document- and database-based screening requirements as in the Medicaid system, or by reimbursing health care expenses through tax refunds," Rosenblum said. It's one thing to argue that the bill lacks adequate verification procedures (which is certainly debatable). It's another to claim if the those procedures aren't stringent enough, that the bill would provide free health care to illegal immigrants. Especially when the bill specifically states there can be no federal payments to undocumented aliens. That was in 3200 when Connelly wrote his e-mail, and it's in the bill the House ultimately passed. We rate this claim False. Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022

The House health care bill provides for "free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession. A chain e-mail written by former attorney Michael Connelly -- which blasts the Democrats' health care plan as unconstitutional -- was penned in August, but continues to make the rounds. Although many of the issues in the e-mail have been addressed in previous PolitiFact items, we continue to get queries about it.So we've decided to visit -- or revisit -- several claims made in the e-mail. In this item, we will address the claim that HR 3200, "The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009," would provide for "free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession." In the health care debate, abortion coverage has been a moving target as provisions have changed in various versions of the House and Senate bills. And we should note that Connelly wrote his e-mail back in August, long before the bills came to the floors of the two chambers.The House ultimately passed a health care bill that included an abortion amendment that essentially renders Connelly's argument moot. Still, Connelly said in an interview with PolitiFact on Jan. 20, 2010, that the same concerns he raised about the House bill back in August apply to the version of the health care bill passed by the Senate.Before we address that, let's back up a step. Although the original health care reform bills introduced in both the House and Senate were silent on abortion, the issue came to a head in late July when the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., which sought to make abortion coverage available in both the public plan and in private plans participating in the exchange, but paid exclusively through patient premiums, not government subsidies. Under that amendment, insurers would not be required to offer, or be prohibited from offering, abortion services in order to participate in the exchange. It also provided "conscience protections" so that any insurance plan participating in the exchange could not discriminate against hospitals or other health care facilities (such as Catholic hospitals) unwilling to provide abortions. That was largely the working House plan when Connelly penned his e-mail. And by that measure, we think Connelly was wrong when he said the bill would provide free abortions. Insurance purchased through private insurers on the exchange or the public option would not be "free." In fact, the amendment required that abortion coverage be paid through premiums paid by the insured. And Connelly's claim that the bill would probably mean "forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession," was specifically prohibited in "conscience protection" measures in the amendment.And that all became moot in November 2009, when a group of Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan forced a vote on an amendment that included tight restrictions barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions. It passed.Connelly said the concerns he raised in his August e-mail no longer apply to the House bill. But they still apply to the bill that passed the Senate, he said. The abortion language in the Senate bill is close to that in the Capps Amendment (though the Senate plan does not include a public option). As with the earlier House bill, the Senate plan would allow insurance companies on the exchange to offer abortion services. But for the same reasons we mentioned about the earlier House plan, we think it's a distortion to say it would provide "free abortions." And as in the earlier House bill, there are specific "conscience protections" written into the bill that make it clear doctors could not be discriminated against for opting not to provide abortions. So under the bill, no doctors would be forced to provide abortions.In other words, the claim was false when Connelly made it; it's moot now with regard to the House bill; and it's false with regard to the Senate bill.In other words, under no version of the plan then or now is Connelly's statement accurate. And we rate the claim False. Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022

There are "high administrative costs" when you donate to Haiti relief through the White House Web site After an earthquake hit Haiti last week, Rush Limbaugh made a series of controversial claims about the disaster, which killed tens of thousands and devastated the infrastructure and institutions of the poor Caribbean nation. On the Jan. 13, 2010, edition of his show, Limbaugh said President Barack Obama's administration would use the quake to "build 'credibility' with the black community -- in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country." He claimed Americans have "already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax." While talking with a caller, he cast doubt on whether money donated through Whitehouse.gov would end up in Haiiti, and said the people who did donate through the White House would find their e-mail addresses receiving fundraising appeals from Obama. On Monday, he suggested that the White House was somehow acting as a middleman for donations and then skimming off a high percentage for administrative costs. Limbaugh noted the criticisms of the charity run by Wyclef Jean ("Is Wyclef Jean a rap star or is he just reggae kind of music?" Limbaugh asked) has high administrative costs. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "What about the administrative costs of donating through WhiteHouse.gov, for crying out loud?" Limbaugh asked. "Do you know that one of the reasons the welfare budget is as high as it is -- and these numbers are I guess 10 years old, but in 1999, maybe earlier than that, for every dollar that was budgeted for welfare or food stamps, AFDC, whatever it is, 28 cents of it was spent on administering it, so 72 cents out of every dollar got there. I mean the high administrative costs are actually when you donate through the government," he said. "I don't know of a president ever who has asked people to donate to a relief effort through a White House Web site. It's never happened before. ... Nobody here ever said don't donate. We just pointed out you already contribute to the government with your income taxes. If you want to donate above and beyond that, go through a charity that's constantly on the ground in Haiti, or the Red Cross, if you want to go that route or whatever. Nobody said do not donate, which is what is being reported." In one respect, Limbaugh is right: He never said Americans shouldn't donate to Haiti. He did say to do it through private groups. But his point here was that the White House was somehow acting as an inefficient middleman. That got us wondering: Would donating through WhiteHouse.gov be inefficient compared with donating directly to the Red Cross or some other charitable organization? Do "high administrative costs" happen "when you donate through the government"? Instead of helping the people displaced by the quake, would the money instead be used to pay government salaries? We started looking around and discovered this: You never could actually donate through WhiteHouse.gov. On seemingly every White House Web page that mentions Haiti, there is a link to the Red Cross or the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. (There are no links to Wyclef Jean's group.) But those are just links to those sites -- not some kind of PayPal for the Obama White House. "I can confirm that we are not processing/have never processed any donations to Haiti through whitehouse.gov, but are just directing folks to other groups," White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in an e-mail. Lehrich also said there was no overhead being delivered to the White House nor the federal government, and that e-mail addresses of donors to the Red Cross or the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund wouldn't be shared. So it makes no difference whether you click the link from WhiteHouse.gov or go directly to the groups' own sites. To address Limbaugh's point that some charities make more efficient use of donations than others, we checked to see how the ones recommended on the White House site stack up. We looked at Charity Navigator, a Web site that grades and ranks charities. It gives the Red Cross a rating of three stars out of four. The Clinton-Bush Haiti fund, a joint effort of Bush's Communities Foundation of Texas and Clinton's William J. Clinton Foundation, was only formed last weekend and doesn't have a rating yet. But the William J. Clinton Foundation has a full four-star rating, and the Communities Foundation earned three stars. We looked at another charity ranking system, the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. The American Red Cross made its list of recommended Haiti charities. But the Clinton Foundation only fulfilled 13 of the 20 standards for charity accountability. The Communities Foundation hasn't been rated yet. In comparison, Wyclef Jean's Yele Foundation, which sparked Limbaugh's complaint, isn't rated by Charity Navigator. But in a blog post, the organization seems skeptical of Yele. The Wise Giving Alliance doesn't have a rating for Yele, but its director told the Associated Press the organization was "questionable." (Jean has defended the organization.) So Limbaugh is seriously distorting the truth, suggesting that people can donate through the White House when in fact the White House site has simply posted links to groups that earn generally positive ratings. There's no evidence the White House is using any of these donations for administrative costs, and the charities aren't sharing donors' e-mail addresses with the White House. Limbaugh is making a ridiculously false claim that the Obama administration is capitalizing on a tragedy. That's enough to set the meter ablaze. Pants on Fir

"The Washington Times ... pointed out that we had succeeded where previous administrations had failed" on spending cuts Under fire from Republicans for his sweeping plans to reform health care and the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, President Barack Obama is trying to portray himself as a budget-cutter. So in a recent speech, he said the Washington Times, a newspaper famous for its conservative editorial page, had given him a shoutout.During a speech at a retreat of the House Democratic Caucus on Jan. 14, 2010, Obama said, "The Washington Times -- not known for (being) a big promoter of the Obama agenda -- pointed out that we had succeeded where previous administrations had failed because of the work that was done here in this Congress to finally get serious on some of these spending cuts that had been talked about for years."That surprised us, so we looked into it.Indeed, we found that on the same day the president delivered the speech, the Washington Times had published a story with the headline "Obama wins more spending cuts than Bush." Anyone who heard Obama's speech or read the transcript very well could have thought he was referring to praise from the Times' conservative editorial page. In the parlance of the nation's capital, references like this are usually referring to editorials, not news stories. But in this case, it was a news story. It began:"President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years."The story offered a remarkably positive account of Obama's budget cutting, saying that he "was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs."It called the cuts a "bright spot in an otherwise dreary budget picture" and said Obama's "success rate at cutting programs was significantly higher than President Bush. But the article noted that the cuts would barely put a dent in the overall federal deficit, pointing out that they accounted for "well less than one-half of 1 percent of the total federal budget."So Obama was right that the Washington Times had run such an article. But his comment suggested it was editorial praise when it wasn't. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 So we'll take Obama down one notch for not noting it was a news story and rate this claim Mostly Tru

"The No. 1 issue that the American people care about is getting America back to work. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, heartily welcomed Republican Scott Brown’s upset win Tuesday of a Senate seat in Massachusetts — a victory that’ll soon give the GOP the 41 Senate seats needed to filibuster legislation to foil the Democratic majority. Cornyn, who doubles as chairman of a political committee devoted to electing GOP senators, was asked by the Fox News Channel on Wednesday what Republicans should do with the message sent by Massachusetts voters. Cornyn initially mentioned public concern about Democrats’ closed-door rewrites of a health care overhaul. But, Cornyn continued, this "is a matter also of misplaced priorities and the No. 1 issue that the American people care about is getting America back to work." We wondered if Cornyn correctly pegged Americans' priority issue. Indeed, a recent national poll places the economy at the top of voter concerns. In the poll taken Jan. 12-15 for The Washington Post and ABC News, 42 percent of respondents identified the economy as the most important problem they’d like to see President Obama and Congress address this year. Among those economy-focused respondents, 26 percent singled out jobs/employment as a priority. The second-highest-rated issue was health care, named as the first concern of 24 percent. Similarly, a poll taken Jan. 10-14 by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News found jobs topping Americans’ concerns. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said job creation and economic growth was the top priority. Thirteen percent chose national security/terrorism and 13 percent said the deficit and government spending. So the senator got it right. Americans consider jobs the No. 1 issue right now. We rate Cornyn’s statement True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022

Health care reform: "Everything about it is going to raise costs, raise taxes and lower the quality of health care. A day after Senate Democrats released their version of the health care reform bill on Nov. 18, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who's seeking the GOP nod for governor, debuted a TV ad attacking the legislation. "Everything about it is going to raise costs, raise taxes and lower the quality of health care," Hutchison says in the ad. Everything? This kind of sweeping claim is often hard to back up with evidence. Hutchinson said everything in the bills would raise costs, raise taxes and lower quality. So if we can find anything that lowers costs, lowers taxes or raises quality, that would undermine the accuracy of her claim. Hutchison's campaign told us the senator was criticizing all Democratic proposals. Her campaign sent us about 20 excerpts from documents seemingly supporting her claim, attributing most of it to to the Republican Policy Committee and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, both in Washington. We don't dispute any of the projected costs and taxes her campaign sent us. But like many parties to the health care debate, Hutchison appears to have cherry-picked numbers to prop up the points she wants to make. Let's talk about tax increases first. Hutchison notes that the bill includes a "$149 billion tax increase on private health insurance plans." She fails to mention that the levy, known as the "Cadillac tax," is one measure the federal government expects to generate revenue by taxing high-priced insurance plans (not all private policies). That is, most people, about 75 percent, won't see an additional tax. Hutchison cites "$43 billion in new taxes and fines levied on individuals and businesses," an abbreviated interpretation of how much the CBO has projected the federal government will generate in penalty payments from people and businesses who choose not to enroll in an insurance plan. She doesn't note that those increases are among the measure's features intended to offset costs. And she also fails to note that a good chunk of taxpayers — those who make up to 400 percent of the poverty level — will get a tax credit from the government to buy health insurance. So those people won't get a tax increase and in fact get a material benefit from the plan. Next, we looked at projected costs. Hutchison's campaign pointed us to total projected federal health care expenditures: $234 billion, according to a report by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Unnoted by Hutchison's camp: The $234 billion reflects how much national health care expenditures would increase by 2016 — including the cost of providing coverage for 33 million people who were previously uninsured — about 10 percent of the population, most of whom (we'll suppose) would see the new benefit as a boon. Also unnoted by Hutchison: The CBO projects that under the Senate's health care plan, most insured people would see their premiums drop slightly by 2016. The CBO also concluded that through 2019, the Senate approach would reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion and slow the rate of federal spending growth due to new taxes and provisions to reduce spending over time. Spending cuts have also been proposed to save money — Hutchison notes $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, among others. We learned that's what she's referring to when she says quality will suffer. Yet the Senate plan separately has features intended to enhance quality such as pilot programs rewarding doctors for improving patients' outcomes and aimed at curbing unnecessary medical tests. We looked too at the impact of the plan on American taxpayers. The bottom line, according to the CMS and CBO projections, is that most people's taxes would not increase and most people's premiums wouldn't either. Summing up, Hutchison is correct that the Senate plan is projected to increase costs — at the onset — and to add taxes. But she she overlooked CBO projections stating the plan would slow long-term federal spending thanks to its provisions designed to offset costs. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022 Hutchison stretches too far by saying everything in the bill would raise taxes, drive up costs and conceivably diminish quality. As we've described, several parts of the bill are intended to lower costs, and most people won't see a tax increase. We rate her overreach Fals

Chile ranks third internationally in economic freedom, while the U.S. ranks 17th Chile, an eager adapter of free-market principles in Latin America, has long been a favorite of economic conservatives. Recently, a decision by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- the club of rich nations -- to invite Chile to become a member has become, for many on the right, symbolic of how adhering to free-market principles can vault former Third World countries into economic affluence. In a video blog post dated Jan. 15, 2010, conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck championed Chile as a nation no longer "struggling with poverty," having overcome a reputation for corruption and bureaucracy through such policies as freer labor markets and lower taxes. In addition to citing the OECD invitation, Beck pointed to its high standing in recent international ratings of "economic freedom." "They ranked 71st of 72 in 1975 in a study of economic freedom in the world," Beck said in his video blog post. "Now, in that same study, they rank third. The U.S. is ranked 17th." We wondered whether Chile is really that far ahead of the U.S. in "economic freedom," so we looked at the data. We located an editorial in Investor's Business Daily -- a leading voice for free-market capitalism -- that appears to be the source of Beck's statistic. The editorial, published Dec. 4, 2009, was later picked up by a smattering of conservative bloggers on its way to Beck's desk. The editorial said in part, "In the Cato Institute's 1975 Economic Freedom of the World Report, [Chile] ranked a wretched 71 out of 72 countries evaluated. Today it's a different country altogether. Embracing markets has made it one of the most open economies in the world, ranking third on Cato's index, just behind Hong Kong and Singapore." Later on, the editorial added that the United States "ranks just 17th on Cato's 2009 Index of Economic Freedom." However, if you look at the 2009 Economic Freedom of the World study by Cato -- a libertarian think tank in Washington -- the numbers were actually different. Hong Kong and Singapore did indeed rank 1 and 2, respectively, but then came New Zealand and Switzerland before Chile at No. 5. In the No. 6 spot, behind by a fraction of a point, was the United States. So while it's true that, by Cato's reckoning, Chile ranked ahead of the United States, it was less of a blowout than Beck or IBD indicated. We also looked at the two prior years' Cato studies to make sure that Beck wasn't simply off by a year. That wasn't the case. In the 2008 study, Chile ranked No. 6 with the United States at 8, in a two-way tie with Australia and once again behind by a fraction of a point. And in the 2007 study, the United States actually ranked higher than Chile. The United States was tied for fifth while Chile was tied for 11th. One of the co-authors of Cato's 2009 study -- Joshua Hall, a Beloit College economist -- also confirmed to PolitiFact that the United States has never ranked as low as 17th in all the years that study has been conducted. Another co-author, James Gwartney, a Florida State University economist, confirmed that Beck was correct in saying that Chile ranked 71st out of 72 countries in 1975. In the meantime, we also looked at whether Beck (or IBD) had mistaken the Cato study for a different report. As it happens, there are at least three other studies that attempt to rank the nations of the world based on "economic freedom" or a similar yardstick. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, publishes an annual Index of Economic Freedom. In 2009, the United States ranked sixth in its study while Chile ranked 11th. The World Economic Forum, a Geneva-based international organization, publishes an annual Global Competitiveness Index. Its 2009-10 ratings peg the United States at No. 2 and Chile at 30. Finally, the World Bank publishes an annual "Doing Business" ranking that seeks to measure which countries have a regulatory environment "conducive to the operation of business." In this tally, the United States finished fourth overall with Chile 49th. Given these ratings, it would seem unlikley that Beck or IBD could have accidentally been referring to any of these studies. However, we would be remiss if we failed to add that, despite the apparent flub on reporting the rankings, Beck's overall assessment of Chile's recent economic history is largely accurate. We spoke with three experts on Latin American economics and politics who work with centrist-to-liberal think tanks -- Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, Andres Martinez of the New America Foundation and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz of the Brookings Institution -- and they agreed that there is a broad ideological consensus on Beck's two key points: Namely, Chile has improved its economic position in recent years and that free-market policies can take some of the credit. "If trends continue, Chile will soon be considered one of those rare countries that has graduated out of the developing world, according to plenty of living-standard indices," Andres Martinez said. "The country is also the poster child for those who believe globalization and free trade can lift living standards, as Chile's economic course has long been anchored in its free-trade agreement with the U.S. and its dynamic export sector. It also stands out among South American countries in that its governing socialists have pragmatically been the ones embracing this pro-business, market-oriented economy." So while there is some truth to Beck's underlying point that Chile has improved its economic freedom, he's wrong to portray Chile as ranking far ahead of the United States. By several measures, the United States ranks significantly higher than Chile; in one, Chile is slightly ahead. So we find his claim Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

"The Trans-Texas Corridor is dead. Eight years after Gov. Rick Perry proudly introduced his plan for the future of transportation in Texas, his campaign declared that vision null and void in a blog post during the Republican gubernatorial debate Thursday night. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is dead," said the post, which was entered at 7:26 p.m. The TTC -- unveiled in January 2002 as an approximately $200 billion plan for 4,000 miles of toll roads, rail lines and utility lines criss-crossing Texas in bundles -- has become an issue in the GOP primary contest between Perry, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra Medina, a businesswoman from Wharton. Hutchison has released online ads alleging that the controversial initiative, which drew the wrath of Perry opponents and some allies, is alive and well. One of the most vocal critics of the corridor idea was the Texas Farm Bureau, because it would have required the state to acquire a considerable amount of farmland. We decided to investigate the health of the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation pronounced the TTC dead, in concept and in name, in January 2009. But some remnants of the project are still on the books. For one, the Trans-Texas Corridor concept remains in the state’s Transportation Code and other official documents, which Hutchison says is evidence that the project endures. An attempt to remove those references failed during the 2009 legislative session with the death of a measure regulating the Texas Department of Transportation. As for the road projects that were envisioned under TTC, only two were still kicking after January 2009: the centerpiece, a tollway twin to the Interstate 35 corridor that would run from Dallas to San Antonio, and Interstate 69 between the Rio Grande Valley and Texarkana. But the I-35 twin was buried in October 2009 when a state environmental study of several years’ duration concluded with a "no-build" recommendation. The only vestige of that plan is the 49 northernmost miles of the Texas 130 tollway, which skirts the Austin area’s eastern edge from Georgetown to Mustang Ridge, and another 40 miles south from there to Seguin that are under construction by a private consortium. However, that project was under way before Perry proposed the TTC. The I-69 project lives on and is currently in the planning stages. However, two years earlier, in 2007, the Legislature dealt a major blow to one of the main tenets of the TTC — for the state to issue long-term leases to private companies to build and operate toll roads — by placing a moratorium on new public-private toll road partnerships, with several exceptions. That moratorium in effect became permanent last year when the Legislature failed to extend the authority for such leases beyond Sept. 1, 2009. The roads in the corridor plan technically could be built without public-private partnerships, but the state doesn’t have the money to do so. In any case, rural opposition to building any sort of twin roads to interstates was at the heart of the plan’s collapse. The I-69 initiative was one of the exceptions to the moratorium, but only a section of the approximately 600-mile road, the piece south of Refugio, can be a public-private partnership. And Chris Lippincott, a TxDOT spokesman, said that the decisions about exactly where the road will go and whether it will be tolled have not yet been made. The Texas Transportation Commission ordered that the road be laid down over existing highways, with free frontage roads alongside, except in areas where there is not an existing highway. This is much different from the original Perry concept of entire new road, rail and utility corridors. Texas still has a long-term transportation plan, but it’s not the TTC. In a January 2009 statement describing the changes being made to TTC, Amadeo Saenz, executive director of TxDOT, said that the new plan would be called Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009 and that any projects that had existed under TTC, such as an I-35 twin, would be developed individually, if they happened at all. Summing up: We found that some language in the state Transportation Code and the much-altered highway I-69 project survive from Perry’s original TTC vision. But its centerpiece paralleling I-35 is truly dead, and beyond that, the corridor plan retains only a faint statutory pulse. We rate Perry’s statement as Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022

Obama's job approval rating is up As Jan. 20, 2010, approaches, pundits and pollsters are scanning the numbers to see how President Barack Obama has done during his first year in office. A group of news analysts discussed Obama's job approval rating Jan. 17, 2010, on ABC's This Week, and specifically focused on a new ABC-Washington Post poll conducted between Jan. 12 and 15, 2010. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said that Obama is doing the best job he can given the circumstances. "He's had to inherit two wars, he's had to work with a Congress that often tries to take the lead. ... And of course he's worked against a Republican Party that was united against him and against all of his policies," she said. "Despite all of that, there's some good stuff in [the poll results]. ... Not only is his job approval up but most Americans consider him a strong leader." Brazile's comment that Obama's job approval is up piqued our interest. Could the numbers be so optimistic? We went back to the ABC-Washington Post poll and found that Brazile is technically correct: Obama's approval rating has increased three percentage points from 50 percent in December 2009. That was his lowest job approval rating to date, according to the same poll. So, Brazile is correct that Obama is polling three points higher than he did in December. But the latest figure also falls within the poll's three-point margin of error; statistically speaking, not much has changed since December. (She was more accurate with her claim that "most Americans consider him a strong leader." The poll showed that overall, 63 percent of the people characterized him that way.) To get some perspective, we looked at other recent job approval statistics. Pollster.com, a Web site that aggregates polling data from numerous sources and averages the results, shows that Obama's approval rating has been increasing since December. These averages are a bit squishy because each poll has a different margin of error, but they give a good estimate of where the country stands. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Fox News, for example, has Obama's approval ratings up four percentage points from November to 50 percent this month. According to Gallup, Obama's approval rating is up slightly as well. Rassmussen polling demonstrates a similar trend, though it also shows that slightly more people disapprove than approve of Obama's performance. Other polls, including Quinnipiac, however, show Obama's numbers on the downturn. So, Brazile claimed that Obama's job approval ratings are improving, and generally speaking, it seems they are. But we're going to lower our rating by one notch because she based her claim on one poll in which the increase is within the margin of error. So we rate this one Mostly True

Says Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for sanctuary cities When the candidates faced off on immigration in the GOP primary debate Thursday night, Gov. Rick Perry accused Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of supporting sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants. "Senator," he said, "you voted for sanctuary cities." Hutchison said the charge was "absolutely wrong." Who's right? We decided to check the vote. Perry's campaign pointed us to the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Hutchison voted against an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R.-Okla., to enforce existing border security and immigration laws before granting illegal immigrants amnesty. (The bill itself never passed the Senate.) From a press release Coburn issued, the amendment would have required enforcement of "existing border security and immigration laws before amnesty can be granted to illegal immigrants. These provisions of existing law include: control over maritime borders, full fencing required by law, integrated alien databases, US-VISIT program, biometric ID system, and ending 'sanctuary city' policies." A 1996 provision in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act requires states and localities to pass along someone's immigration and citizenship status on request from any government entity. Coburn's amendment tried to insure it would be enforced. From a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency that provides analysis to Congress: "Most cities that are considered sanctuary cities have adopted a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy under which they don't require their employees, including law enforcement officers, to report immigrants who may be illegally present in the country." Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 The Senate rejected the amendment 54-42. Hutchison's campaign said she voted against it because it also prevented local input on the location of a border fence — a project widely opposed in the Rio Grande Valley. "I must protect my constituents," Hutchison said in a speech on the Senate floor before the vote. Border fence decisions belonged to the Border Patrol, "not the Congress, most of whom have never visited Laredo, Texas." The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which Hutchison voted for, extended reinforced fencing and other barriers, roads, cameras and sensors, along 700 miles of the southern border. Hutchison said that she agreed with with the "purpose" of Coburn's amendment but objected to what she said it would have allowed: government disregard for the opinion of private property owners and cities on the Rio Grande who would be affected by the fence. But by voting to kill the amendment, was she also voting in favor of sanctuary cities? We found no evidence that Coburn considered opposition to his amendment as support for sanctuary cities. Coburn's amendment would have reaffirmed established border and immigration policies. From all evidence, there’s no reasonable way to conclude that Hutchison’s vote against the amendment was a vote in favor of sanctuary cities. Perry's spinning the facts. We rule his claim Fals

"No Democratic campaign for (Fla.) governor has ever had these kinds of resources this early on in an election cycle. Florida's leading Republican candidate for governor, Bill McCollum, is bragging that he raised more money in the last three months of 2009 than any other candidate running for the state's top elected post. That produced some crowing in response from Alex Sink, the major Democratic candidate. Sink raised more than $5 million in cash and check contributions in 2009, state campaign finance records show. "No Democratic campaign for governor has ever had these kinds of resources this early on in an election cycle, proving what a strong position our campaign is in going into 2010," Sink campaign manager Paul Dunn said on Jan. 6, 2010. We wanted to see if Sink, the state's chief financial officer, has built a war chest so large it's unusual for Florida Democrats. The state Division of Elections maintains an online database of campaign finance information for candidates going back to 1996. The online database covers gubernatorial elections in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. We searched the years prior to each election to see if anyone matches or comes close. Sink's 2009 total -- not including in-kind donations -- was $5,050,000. Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 There were two leading Democrats running for governor in 2006, former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and former state Sen. Rod Smith. Davis reported raising $1.65 million in 2005; Smith reported a total of $1.26 million in cash and check contributions. That's a little short of $3 million combined ($3.3 million when adjusted for inflation), way short of Sink's haul. Davis ultimately won the party's nomination, but was defeated by Republican Charlie Crist. In 2002, the two frontline Democrats were former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Sink's husband, lawyer Bill McBride. Reno raised $570,000 in the year ahead of the election; McBride raised $743,000. McBride won that primary, but lost in November to incumbent Gov. Jeb Bush. The Democrat in 1998 was Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, who was trying to hold the governor's mansion following Lawton Chiles. MacKay raised $1.57 million the year ahead of the election. MacKay lost to Bush. We also checked back to the 1994 gubernatorial election, the last time Democrats won in Florida. Chiles raised a total of $2.7 million in private donations for that campaign, the St. Petersburg Times reported. That's worth nearly $4 million in today's dollars, but Chiles' total includes contributions made in the year prior and year of the election. Sink, on the other hand, still has 11 months of fundraising ahead. Prior to 1994, eclipsing $5 million a year before the election was inconceivable. Sink clearly has benefited by being the only major Democrat running for governor. She's also campaigning at a time that simply requires candidates to raise more money. Yet the $5 million Sink raised in cash and check contributions in 2009 is more than what Jim Davis and Rod Smith raised in 2005, combined. It's also more than what her husband, McBride, and Reno raised a year ahead of the 2002 election. MacKay in 1997 and Chiles in 1993 don't come close, either. We rate Sink's statement Tru

Says Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson threatened to shoot him Two former state senators are warming up Texas-style in anticipation of a fall showdown over who should be Texas land commissioner through 2014. Lately, they've kidded each other about gunplay. Democrat Hector Uribe's campaign went so far as to issue a press release suggesting the Republican he hopes to defeat, incumbent Commissioner Jerry Patterson, recently threatened to shoot him. Uribe's Jan. 11 release states: "Meanwhile, Uribe’s Republican opponent threatened to shoot him last week." Keeping our own tongues firmly in cheek, we checked into the claim. Uribe's spokesman, Harold Cook, traced Patterson's threat to an item in the online Quorum Report. In the Jan. 4 item, Patterson notes that he and Uribe both appeared in "The Alamo," a movie. Patterson wrote, according to the report: "Hector's a friend and fellow actor. We were both in the recent movie ‘The Alamo’, filmed near Austin, albeit on different sides in the conflict (actually Hector had a real part, I was just an extra). When Hector surrendered at San Jacinto, I should have shot him when I had the chance... " "I hope folks understand then we were just acting, now it's a real war," the item quotes Patterson saying. Contacted later, Patterson — who once helped pass Texas' concealed-weapon law — said he was joking about any shooting. "If it's not tongue-in-cheek stuff, that's a criminal offense," Patterson said. "You're not supposed to threaten people. Does this put me on the (federal) no-fly list?" Probably not. Especially when it's all just in good fun — and he didn't really make a threat. He just expressed ex post facto regret. This is why we love Texas politics. Where else would a (pretend) gunfight spill into a (real) race for land commissioner? And where else would we get to fact check a claim like this one? For making us laugh and for reminding us not to take this stuff too seriously, we give Uribe's claim that he was threatened a rating of Pants on Fire. And we suggest that all guns remain holstered for the rest of the campaign. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 17, 2022 in an Instagram post There were two shooters in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. By Ciara O'Rourke • October 20, 2022

Says Rick Perry's "Pay to Play" politics led him to send $899 million to an offshore call center in Bermuda, driving down enrollment in children's health insuranc As Gov. Rick Perry questioned efforts by congressional Democrats to pass a health care overhaul, the Texas Democratic Party accused him of undermining Texans' care with policies that benefit private companies instead of citizens. "Perry's 'Pay to Play' politics led him to send $899 million to an offshore call center in Bermuda — a privatization scheme that deeply cost Texas taxpayers and resulted in 237,000 children losing their health insurance through CHIP," according to an Oct. 5 party news release. CHIP stands for Children's Health Insurance Program, which serves children of the working poor. The specter of needy Texans forced to seek assistance from operators in Bermuda — causing more than 200,000 children to lose their insurance coverage — seemed shocking. We wondered if the Democrats' charge was true. The Democrats' news release cited a 2007 article by the San Antonio Express-News.We couldn't find anything in the Express-News article to back up the fiery claim. A party activist quickly admitted at least partial error. Phillip Martin of the Texas Democratic Trust, which helps the party, said the press release was worded incorrectly. "The call centers obviously weren't in Bermuda," Martin said, "but the company was based in Bermuda — so Texas taxpayers' money did go to a company in Bermuda." The state had hired Accenture, a consulting and outsourcing company, to lead a group of companies called the Texas Access Alliance that would field social service applications and enroll clients. Accenture LLP, the U.S. subsidiary of Accenture Ltd., was incorporated in Bermuda in 2001, though shareholders voted last year to move the place of incorporation to Ireland. But CHIP phone calls haven't been going to either country. In fact, they're answered in Texas. We learned from the Health and Human Services Commission that the state's contract with Accenture required call-center employees to work from U.S. locations. The centers, located in Austin, San Antonio, Midland and Athens (the city near Tyler in East Texas — not Greece), have been run by Virgina-based Maximus, which signed a contract with the state when Accenture's role ended in June 2007. Commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said: "The only way a call could be sent out of state is if a catastrophic situation happened that took down all the phone lines." In a broader context, the Democrats’ Martin suggested the creation of the call centers still was part of a Republican-fostered privatization scheme driving down CHIP sign-ups. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022 Martin’s point: In 2003, the GOP-led Legislature made a push for privatization. Part of that involved directing the HHSC to determine whether using call centers run by private firms would cut costs. Kirsten Gray, Democratic Party communications director, explained that "'Pay to Play' is a political term of art," which we assume means Perry's politics are inspired by whoever coughs up enough money toward his career. He did sign HB 2292 — the legislation that ushered sweeping changes into the state's health and human services — but Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth authored the bill, and the Legislature passed it. Accenture later landed the state’s call-center contract, which was projected to cost $899 million over five years, the cost figure cited by the Democrats. The privately run call centers were set up to process applications for CHIP, food stamps and Medicaid. Accenture ended up getting $245 million because Maximus took over the call centers. We made a run at gauging whether the creation of the call centers alone reduced CHIP participation, as the Democrats claimed. It’s just not so. True, during the two years that Accenture was employed by the state, CHIP caseloads decreased and applications were lost in the system, causing children to lose health coverage. But those numbers first dropped before the Accenture contract — after lawmakers approved policy changes restricting enrollment. For instance, an amendment adopted in the 2003 legislative session required clients to re-enroll every six months instead of 12 — a reduced time-frame intended to keep children from staying in the program past the time that their parents’ income surged. However, that resulted in more children being dropped from the rolls because their parents failed to re-enroll in time. CHIP sign-ups rebounded a bit after legislators restored the 12-month enrollment period in 2007. Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans, summed up: "The state implemented some really, really ill-considered policy changes, all at the same time." She said that a combination of policy changes, privatization and staffing cuts all contributed to CHIP reductions, but it's impossible to blame any one factor for CHIP reductions. True, privatizing oversight of CHIP may not have delivered hoped-for savings, and enrollment may have been reduced. But the Democrats' claim that Perry sent nearly $900 million to an outfit in Bermuda, directly causing more than 200,000 children to lose their health coverage, amounted to a big overreach. If they'd been more careful — even saying that the call centers were part of a troubled privatized model — our analysis may have been different. But the party misstated the facts, undermining what could have been a meaningful critique. We rule the statement Fals

"Sen. Hutchison abandoned Republicans and stood with Democrats to ensure health care legislation would pass quickly. Gov. Rick Perry's campaign landed a Nutcracker-like leap in December by suggesting that Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison enabled Democrats to advance their health-care package by voting for the Senate to take up an unrelated spending proposal. Hutchison's vote caused a small stir back home. Texas "tea party" activists gathered outside Hutchison's offices in Austin, Houston and Dallas. Perry spokesman Mark Miner said Dec. 20: "After promising to fight health care, Sen. Hutchison abandoned Republicans and stood with Democrats to ensure health care legislation would pass quickly." But is that the way it happened in Washington? We decided to check Perry's version of events. True, Hutchison voted with the majority Democrats in favor of the Senate taking up the defense appropriation. Early on Dec. 19, Democratic leaders amassed more than the 60 votes needed under Senate rules to proceed to action on the measure. Outnumbered Republicans had hoped to keep members stewing on the defense plan, thereby putting off action on the looming health care legislation. The vote kept the Senate on a schedule that allowed the Democrats to bring up the health care overhaul. On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed it. By Perry's analysis, Hutchison's vote eased the Democrats' passage of the health care bill she opposed. Perry's campaign posted several videos online including the version we're showing to the right musically casting Hutchison as flip-flopping. The video includes a snippet showing Hutchison telling colleagues before the vote that its early-morning timing was being driven by the "underlying" health care legislation. Remember, Democrats needed only 60 votes to stay on their schedule. We found that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, voting at 1:14 a.m., provided the crucial 60th vote in favor of action on the defense bill. One minute later, two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — voted "aye." Video broadcast on C-SPAN2 shows Hutchison voting "aye" at 1:16 a.m. At 1:20 a.m., the final tally was read: 63 Yeas, 33 Nays. Most Republicans — including Hutchison — then joined Democrats in passing the spending measure, 88-10. Did Hutchison's procedural vote in any way ensure the Democrats' health care legislation would pass quickly? We don't see how. The Perry campaign hasn't offered evidence to prove Hutchison blessed the Democratic health plan in any way other than casting a vote on that defense bill after the outcome was determined. Asked why Hutchison signed off on taking up the earlier spending measure -- surely knowing her vote might generate sparks back home -- Hutchison spokesman Joe Pounder said: "After the Democrats had their 60, Sen. Hutchison felt it was important to register her vote for our defense priorities." Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022 Significantly, Hutchison later joined fellow Republicans and voted against passage of the Democratic health plan. In claiming that Hutchison paved the way for the Democratic health bill, the Perry campaign leaped to a conclusion not supported by the facts. We give the Perry campaign's statement a ruling of Pants on Fir

During his tenure as mayor, he "saw Houston’s crime rates drop to the lowest levels in more than 25 years. As his campaign revs up, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White is pointing voters to his record as mayor of Houston from 2004 through 2009. On his campaign Web site and in a thank-you letter published Jan. 2 in the Houston Chronicle, he brags about the city’s crime rates. Though White in his public statements has stopped short of claiming he reduced crime in the nation's fourth-largest city, his Web site biography notes that during his tenure as mayor, he "saw Houston’s crime rates drop to the lowest levels in more than 25 years." White's critics have accused him of being soft on crime, and the issue is likely to emerge in the governor's race. We decided to investigate whether White's statement about the decrease in Houston crime was true. Statistics provided by his campaign confirm that the crime rate overall hit a 25-year low during his administration. That measure includes three nonviolent property crimes (such as burglary) as well as four major violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault). The White campaign's numbers, which were generated by the Houston Police Department for the years 1980 through 2008, show that the city’s 2008 total crime rate -- 6,080 offenses per 100,000 residents -- was the lowest of any of those years. In fact, 2006, 2007 and 2008 had the three lowest total crime rates in the 29 years of data offered by the campaign. To double-check the numbers, we compared White’s statistics with those of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which collects data from local law enforcement agencies for the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. The DPS numbers for Houston did not perfectly match the police department’s because the agencies use different population estimates in their calculations. However, the discrepancies were small and did not undermine White’s assertion: In the DPS data starting with 1980, 2008 was also the year with the lowest total crime rate: 6,053.7 offenses per 100,000 residents. Looking only at violent crime in Houston, the picture changes somewhat. There was at least one year -- 1998 being the most recent -- when the violent crime rate was lower than any year during White's tenure. And both the White campaign and Clete Snell, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Houston Downtown, note that Houston experienced an uptick in violent crime in 2005, White’s second year in office, that they attribute to the influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. These days, few public officials can legitimately take credit for reducing crime locally. That's because crime rates have been trending down all across the country for years, in some cases to record lows. According to FBI data, the nation's total crime rate in 2008 was down 29 percent from 1983, 25 years earlier. Experts don't agree on the reasons for the persistent trend, but have suggested such factors as rising incarceration rates, the aging of the population and improved police practices. It is important to note that crime trends do not follow straight lines — they can fluctuate year-to-year. Still, according to the DPS data, total crime in Houston has dropped 31 percent since 1983. And the decline was under way before White took office. Nevertheless, when the Houston FBI office gave White the FBI Director’s 2007 Community Leadership Award, his efforts to combat crime were among the reasons cited. "Mayor White is being recognized for his outstanding contributions toward improving the quality of life in the City of Houston through his commitment to law enforcement and the prevention of crime," a statement from the FBI said. Summing up: Although experts debate the reasons for the downward trend in crime nationwide, White is right that the total crime rate in Houston hit a 25-year low during his time as mayor. We give him a True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 15, 2022 in Instagram post Seattle authorities are investigating a string of serial killings. By Michael Majchrowicz • October 17, 2022

"More than 1,000 people ... move to Texas every day. Gov. Rick Perry touts Texas as a model state that escaped the recession with few battle scars and a lot of jobs, if you're looking for one. An unemployment rate significantly below the national rate is one reason folks are coming here — 1,000 people daily, according to Perry. "I am pleased to receive the endorsement of the Southwest Movers Association, which plays a key role in supporting the more than 1,000 people who move to Texas every day," he said Dec. 29. "As our state continues to grow, I look forward to working with members and stakeholders of SMA to ensure that Texas remains a top destination for job seekers." Matthew Thompson, a senior writer and editor at the Office of the Governor, said the governor's staff divided the state's annual population growth by 365 days to estimate how much the population swells daily. The statistics came from the U.S. Census Bureau. Between July 1, 2008 and July 1, 2009, Texas gained 478,012 more people — more than any other state (California, still boasting the biggest population overall, was second with 381,000 new people). That's about 1,300 people per day, by Thompson's calculation. But 478,000 is the net population change. It includes births as well as people relocating to Texas, after accounting for deaths and people leaving the state. So, what part of that net figure represents newcomers? With help from the U.S. Census Bureau, we learned that about 635 people come to Texas every day, on average. A census official based that number on average daily net migration from other states (393) plus average daily net migration from other countries (242). Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 A separate estimate of the actual number of people entering the state comes from the Internal Revenue Service, which tracks the addresses of people who file taxes each year, and reports that information to the Census Bureau. The IRS found that 493,840 people switched their residence to Texas between the time they filed in 2007 and when they filed in 2008 — that's about 1,353 people each day. (The IRS' data are slightly older than the figures Perry cites as evidence for his claim.) In the end, Perry came close to getting it right, though he didn't take into account in-state births or people moving away. Statistically speaking, of course, a set number of people aren't moving to Texas every day because that number varies. But if you rely on IRS data collected in 2007 and 2008, more than 1,300 people on average were relocating here during that time frame. We rule Perry's claim Mostly True, even if he wasn't using the right data as evidenc

A recent Obama executive order could "lead to a number of investigations by Interpol in the United States, potentially aimed at American officials. Conservatives have long feared that America is losing its sovereignty to international organizations, dating back to the John Birch Society issuing warnings about "one world government" in the 1950s. And perhaps nothing evokes this fear more than the possibility of an international police or military force with power over American citizens. A recent executive order signed by President Barack Obama dealing with the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, has reignited those fears. During a Jan. 4, 2010, appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: "The president recently signed very quietly an executive order that basically releases Interpol from all American constraints. Freedom of Information Acts don't apply. All the constraints that you as a citizen could use against an American police force, based on a recent Obama-signed executive order, give Interpol, which has relationships with Syria, with Libya, with Iran, it gives them all sorts of extralegality in the United States in a way that has never ever before been offered to Interpol. And I'm very curious as to why the president is doing this. ... What I'm told is that it could lead to a number of investigations by Interpol in the United States, potentially aimed at American officials. And the question I would raise is, why would the president of the United States give that kind of extralegal protection to an international police force?" "So you're saying that if there was any abuse by the CIA or something like that, that Interpol now has more authority to come into the United States and investigate it?" O'Reilly asked. "Yes," the Georgia Republican replied. So Gingrich was raising the specter of an unaccountable group of foreigners coming to the United States with the approval of President Obama and arresting CIA officers or other American government officials. The key problem with this notion is that Interpol couldn't investigate CIA or American officials, because Interpol doesn't do investigations. Although Interpol is often portrayed in movies as an international police force, solving crimes and arresting bad guys, its actual purposes are modest: It helps police organizations in different countries communicate and coordinate actions, provides databases of crime information (fingerprints, stolen artwork, names of suspected terrorists), training and other support services. It doesn't arrest anyone, and doesn't even have its own officers. Instead, police forces from around the world loan their officers to the organization. "All investigations are done by national police," Interpol spokeswoman Rachel Billington said. "We don't have powers of arrest." So if this executive order doesn't surrender American authority, what does it do? It ensures Interpol is treated the same way any other international organization that operates on American soil is treated. Like diplomats, international organizations in the United States are given certain immunities and privileges. A 1983 executive order signed by President Ronald Reagan gave Interpol some of these privileges, but others were withheld because the organization didn't have an office on U.S. soil at the time. In 2004, Interpol opened an office near the United Nations in New York, and the Obama administration has just gotten around to giving it the rights most other international organizations have. What are these rights? Most of them deal with federal and customs taxes, but one grants Interpol immunity from having its property -- including its archives -- searched or seized. We spoke with Gingrich's representatives and spokesman Joe DeSantis e-mailed this response: "The argument that Interpol currently 'doesn't' do a certain activity misses the point. The executive order effectively removes the U.S.’s ability to know what Interpol is doing, and thus, if it wanted to start doing investigations into (for instance) American officials, it could, and the U.S. would have no way to ever know its activities since we have granted them immunity." But there's no reason to believe Interpol will suddenly reverse 87 years of precedent and begin to investigate and prosecute crimes. And for an organization based around the sharing of information, it's hard to think it will begin top-secret investigations of high-profile Americans, particularly when the current head of Interpol, Ronald Noble, is an American who served as a top official in the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. Noble told the conservative Web site Human Events that "the executive order gives Interpol no law-enforcement or investigative powers to engage in activities on U.S. soil." Noble said that included "searches, seizures or arrests in the U.S." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 DeSantis pointed us to a National Review Online piece by Andy McCarthy. It argues that even if Interpol has no plans to investigate Americans, the "order removes the negative legal restraints that block Interpol from conducting unauthorized police activity." Even if no one thought other law enforcement organizations -- he cites the New York Police Department and the FBI -- were going to abuse their police powers, McCarthy argues, we still wouldn't remove the congressional and judicial checks that prevent them from doing so. But, again, Interpol doesn't have police powers to abuse. It can't arrest anyone, and it doesn't conduct investigations. And even if it did, the organization's constitution bounds it to operate "within the limits of the laws existing in the different countries." The only relevant law Obama's executive order waives covers search and seizure, and that right can be reclaimed if the president deems it necessary. Much of the teeth-gnashing likely has roots in Interpol's relationship with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, another landmark for those who see the erosion of American sovereignty. Some blogs have raised the possibility of Interpol arresting Bush administration officials for trial at the ICC. But this is a misrepresentation of the relationship between the two organizations. True, the ICC would theoretically be responsible for investigating and prosecuting war crimes allegations against U.S. officials. But Interpol would still lack the power to arrest those officials. Instead, it would put out a "red notice" alerting domestic law enforcement agencies that the person is wanted by the ICC. Regardless, the ICC can only investigate crimes that are referred to it by the U.N. Security Council, that occur on the soil of a signatory to the court or are committed by nationals of a signatory to the court. The U.S. hasn't signed on to the ICC and can use its position on the Security Council to veto any referral. So any situation in which an ICC prosecutes an American is far-fetched. As for a few other parts of Gingrich's statement: Interpol does have relationships with Syria, Iran and Libya, but its 188 members include stalwart U.S. allies like the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia. And as an international organization, Interpol never would have been subject to FOIA. The United States' National Central Bureau -- which is based at the Justice Department in Washington and is the main point of communication between the United States and Interpol -- says it will continue to respond to FOIA requests. The sheer impossibility of the claims hasn't stopped them from becoming conservative talking points. After apparently originating on the blog ThreatsWatch, the claims spread to the aforementioned National Review piece, RedState.com, a column by Chuck Norris on WorldNetDaily and have been mentioned by Glenn Beck on his TV show. Beck, perhaps looking to add some credibility to the idea, declared: "The oddest part is the story was actually reported on in the New York Times. Yes." While the Times did report on the executive order, the story debunked many of the claims being made about it. Charlie Savage, the reporter who wrote the story, wrote in a Twitter message: "Debunking hysterical conspiracy theories about Obama's Interpol executive order." That's exactly what Gingrich's claims are: conspiracy theories, based on wild conjecture, not reality. For fanning the flames of paranoia, Gringrich's claims earn a Pants on Fire. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/7c646785-156a-4922-b957-12ef24ec4f

"A number of the national publications have put this race in a tossup race between Democrats and Republicans. They don't know who's going to win this race. With Republicans Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio dominating news coverage about Florida's U.S. Senate race, Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek would like you to know he's running, too. "A number of the national publications have put this race in a tossup race between Democrats and Republicans," Meek said in an interview with Bay News 9 and the St. Petersburg Times that aired Jan. 10, 2010. "They don't know who's going to win this race." Meek, a Miami congressman serving his fourth term, is seeking the Senate seat originally held by Sen. Mel Martinez and now held by Sen. George LeMieux, both Republicans. Meek is facing former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre in the Democratic primary. Crist, the Florida governor, and Rubio, former speaker of Florida's House, are among the Republican candidates. When it comes to November, are national prognosticators putting Democrats like Meek on equal footing with the GOP? Congressional Quarterly's map lists Florida as "Likely Republican." Stuart Rothenberg, an oft-quoted political analyst, currently has Florida's Senate race as "Clear advantage for incumbent party," or in this case Republicans. Another familiar name in political speculating, the Cook Political Report, lists the Florida race as "Likely Republican." Larry Sabato at the Center for Politics: "Likely Republican." Ken Rudin at National Public Radio: "Republican favored." Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 A group called Intrade says Republicans have a 78.45 percent chance to keep their Florida Senate seat. New York Times: "Likely Republican." At the Washington Post, The Fix's Chris Cillizza does not list Florida among his 10 Senate seats most likely to switch parties. At FiveThirtyEight.com, Florida ranks as the 13th-most likely seat to switch hands in November. Struggling to find the word "tossup" anywhere associated with the Florida Senate race, we asked the Meek campaign for help. They referred us to a blog post from the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 6, 2010. The post, entitled "2010 Tossups: A Rundown of the Most-Competitive Senate Races," includes Florida among 11 other races. About Florida, Susan Davis writes: "So much of the focus in this race has been on the Republican primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio that it's important to remember that either candidate still has to win a general election. Crist — back when Crist was seen as inevitable — was regularly leading likely Democratic nominee Rep. Kendrick Meek in the polls. But the evolving nature of the GOP primary, and what it says about the party and state, means that the Florida race is shaping up to be one of the more interesting and entertaining contests of the midterms." That's the only example Meek's campaign provided and we didn't find any others on our own. Meek spokesman Adam Sharon says the ratings may change based on the shifting dynamics of the Republican primary, where Crist is quickly losing his front-runner status, but we're checking Meek's statement based on current predictions. Meek says a number of national publications consider Florida's Senate race this fall a tossup. That number, however, appears to be just one. The overwhelming majority of pundits who attempt to predict election outcomes all have Republicans favored in the Sunshine State. Maybe the ratings will change. But they haven't yet. We rate Meek's claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"The attorney general requires that rape victims pay for the rape kit. In her campaign to become the next attorney general of Texas, Democratic candidate Barbara Ann Radnofsky is using a crime-victim issue to attack her opponent, GOP incumbent Greg Abbott. In a video on her Web site, Radnofsky makes the provocative claim that "the attorney general requires that rape victims pay for the rape kit" — a reference to forensic examinations given to victims of sexual assault. We wondered whether Radnofsky's statement was true. This is what we found: Under current state law, sexual assault victims in Texas should never have to pay for their forensic exams, which are done by medical professionals to collect physical evidence for the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault suspects. Local law enforcement agencies are responsible for paying hospitals for rape kits in cases in which the victims report the crimes. Those agencies can seek reimbursement of up to $700 through the Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund, which is administered by the attorney general’s office. If a victim chooses not to report the crime, the Texas Department of Public Safety is responsible for paying for the exam and getting reimbursement from the fund. When asked about Radnofsky’s statement in the video, Torie Camp, deputy director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, a victims advocacy organization, said, "That’s not true, and if any rape victims are paying for rape kits, that shouldn’t happen. State law is very clear on this issue, and the attorney general can’t trump state law to make rape victims pay for rape kits." But Texas law hasn't always read that way. In the past, rape exams were done by medical professionals and then paid for by law enforcement agencies only if sexual assault victims reported the crimes. The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, gave states three years to eliminate such reporting requirements so that all victims could obtain free forensic medical exams. In 2009, the Texas Legislature finally changed the law, directing the Department of Public Safety to cover the cost of a rape kit for any victim who chooses not to report. For Radnofsky, that change took too long. She says that Abbott could have -- and should have -- acted earlier to bring administration of the victims' compensation fund into compliance with the federal act. A spokesman for Abbott's office says the attorney general did not have the authority to change a policy that was mandated by state law. When asked if she knew of any instances when victims had paid for their own rape kits, Radnofsky said she did not. But she isn't the first person to wade into this gnarly issue. In May, a Houston television station aired a report, picked up by CNN, that caused an uproar in the advocacy community because it implied that sexual assault victims were being billed for forensic exams, Camp said. In response, both the attorney general’s office and TAASA issued public statements that termed the TV story inaccurate and misleading. The attorney general's office said that as of Jan. 1, the office had paid for 57,702 rape exams since December 2002 and had not denied any requests for reimbursements for the kits from law enforcement agencies. TAASA said the TV report implied that billing victims for their rape kits "was a common practice in Texas despite being told by several sources … that this was not the case. … The problem is there isn’t really a problem." Officials from other organizations that deal directly with sexual assault victims, including SafePlace and the Austin Police Department’s sex crimes unit, also said that they were not aware of any large-scale problems with victims receiving bills for forensic exams. That leaves this question: Before the Texas law was changed, did sexual assault victims who did not want to report a crime have to pay for their forensic exams? No, according to officials contacted for this story. In those cases, victims were not given the exams to begin with, so payment was not an issue. However, hospitals have sometimes mistakenly sent bills to victims for their forensic exams, according to the attorney general’s office. But none of the officials we contacted knew of any data on how often that happens. Summing up: Regardless of whether Abbott took the initiative on this issue and regardless of whether some sexual assault victims have been mistakenly billed on occasion, Radnofsky’s claim is wrong. The attorney general does not require rape victims to pay for rape kits and never has. That's why we give Radnofsky a Pants on Fire. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 15, 2022 in Instagram post Seattle authorities are investigating a string of serial killings. By Michael Majchrowicz • October 17, 2022

Says she has "quadrupled agents to secure our border. A TV ad for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison describes her as a conservative as tough as Texas, who "doesn't just talk tough, but delivers." The ad cites her work against a state income tax, opposing the economic stimulus package and says she has "quadrupled agents to secure our border," among other claims. Although she is correct that the number of agents has quadrupled since she became a senator in 1993 — from 3,600 to more than 18,000 now — much of the increase was prompted by requests from President George W. Bush, who honored his 2004 promise to double Border Patrol agents from 9,000. And Hutchison is only one of 100 senators. We wondered how much credit she can accurately take for all that growth in Border Patrol manpower. Hutchinson's TV ad flashes tiny print from a 2006 San Antonio Express-News editorial endorsing the incumbent senator for another term: "Her influence has been instrumental in securing funding for 1,500 new Border Patrol agents." But that refers to a 2005 boost in funding, not the cumulative increase that took place over time. It's true that Hutchison has pushed for funding and consistently voted to increase Border Patrol since her first year on the Hill, notably joining Congress to pass an immigration bill in 1996 that authorized the addition of 5,000 agents over five years. She's been active on the issue, even if some of her bills didn't pass. In 1995, she introduced the Immigration Reform Control Act that would have added 6,000 patrol agents, but it never made it out of the Judiciary Committee. Nor did the Border Law Enforcement Relief Act of 2008 that she co-sponsored to increase funding for agencies addressing border-related crime. In 2001, she voted for a bill that snagged $180 million for law enforcement on the U.S.- Mexico border, fulfilling Hutchison's requests to hire 570 full-time Border Patrol agents and fund new facilities across Texas for fiscal year 2002. But anyone who votes for an immigration bill — and almost all of the measures include a Border Patrol component — can claim credit for bolstering the patrol force, says Dr. Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas. (The bill Hutchison voted on in 2001 passed 98-1.) We spoke with several experts about which senators have championed legislation to beef up the Border Patrol, and nobody volunteered Hutchison's name. The experts noted that the measures were widely supported on both sides of the aisle — not proving controversial. Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 "The general consensus on Capitol Hill is that we were, and are, understaffed," said T.J. Donner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that represents more than 17,000 border agents and staff. Donner said Bush deserves the credit for stregthening the border patrol. Hutchison has advocated increasing border agents, but she didn't personally quadruple anything. In many cases, the increases were pushed by President Bush and she was one of many who supported them. We find her claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

Says approximately 70 percent of jobs created in the United States in November 2007-2008 were in Texas Gov. Rick Perry frequently celebrates the Texas economy for out-performing those of other states. His message that Texas could be a model for other states has been picked up in articles by Investors Business Daily, Trends Magazine and The Weekly Standard — all of which are touted on Perry's campaign Web site. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022 The articles repeat the claim Perry made in a Jan. 15, 2009 press release stating: "Approximately 70 percent of the jobs created in the U.S. from November 2007-2008 were in Texas."We wondered if this eye-popping claim -- posted online by Perry's office and later echoed by State Comptroller Susan Combs, a fellow statewide officeholder -- was true.Perry's office pointed us to the Texas Workforce Commission, where number crunchers said they started their analysis by adding up the total jobs created in states, including Texas, that had job gains during the one-year period. There were 13 other job-gaining states, plus the District of Columbia. The other gaining states were Oklahoma, Maryland, Louisiana, Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, Alaska and Nebraska.Texas's 221,000 new jobs amounted to 71 percent of the 310,000 jobs gained among those states and D.C. The state's economy was "really kicking," said Ann Hatchitt, the commission's director of communications.But the commission's conclusion comes with a big wrinkle. Hatchitt said the commission did not take into account the new jobs created in 36 other states where job losses overall outnumbered gains.Veronica Sanchez Downey, who analyzes data for the commission, said she'd feel comfortable summarizing the commission's conclusion about Texas job gains this way: "Of all the states that gained jobs in the U.S. including the District of Columbia, Texas accounted for" 67.2 percent of the added jobs from November 2007 to November 2008. The 67.2-percent figure reflects adjustments of the data since the initial research.Perry, of course, didn't say it that way.Two outside experts said the governor's 70-percent claim overstates the Texas share of jobs created nationally.Michael Brandl, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, said the commission's method of calculating the percentage wasn't correct. By excluding all states with net job losses -- regardless of any job gains in those states -- the Texas share of total new jobs in the U.S. was overblown, even "laughable," he said."To say it's misleading is to be kind," Brandi said. "It's just not true."Douglas Hall, director of the Economic Research and Analysis Network at Washington's non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, agreed that Perry's summary was inaccurate. The institute focuses on the economic needs of low- and middle-income Americans.Hall stressed that employment estimates, based on monthly surveys of employers, are frequently adjusted anyway: "On an annual basis, the numbers are revised significantly and what can often happen is that six of the previous 18 months get changed not just in their magnitude but sometimes even in their direction, highlighting the fact that one must always take these numbers with somewhat of a grain of salt." We find Perry's conclusion to be incorrect and highly misleading, especially because the agency that made the calculation quickly pointed out an accurate -- though less dramatic -- way of summarizing its finding. We rate Perry's statement as Fals

Says Bill White is for gay marriage The Republican Party of Texas debuted an online attack ad Dec. 2, 2009, casting Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Bill White, the former Houston mayor, as too liberal for Texas tastes. The GOP's spot muffles the audio from a White advertisement while blaring the Platters' oldie "The Great Pretender" and suggesting White isn't as moderate as he claims. And the ad includes a stab that might wound White's appeal to many Texans: "Favor gay marriage? Bill White's for it." We weren't aware of White's pro-gay-marriage stance. As evidence, the Republican Party pointed to White's vote against a ban on gay marriage that was proposed as a constitutional amendment in 2005. The ban passed statewide with 76 percent of the vote, two years after Lawrence v. Texas, a landmark case that decriminalized sodomy in Texas. White's campaign countered that White has since said that his 2005 vote wasn't a vote for gay marriage. His campaign spokeswoman Katy Bacon said White wasn't available for comment and pointed us to the only public statement White has made about the Republicans' ad, reported in a Dec. 12 article in the Dallas Voice. In an e-mail to the publication, which touts itself as a media source for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, White said his position is the same as that of Barack Obama, who endorses civil unions but does not support same-sex marriage. Obama supports unions that would give same-sex partners legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples on a state-by-state basis, including the right to assist a partner during an emergency, equal health insurance, employment benefits and property rights. Unlike marriage, civil unions aren't recognized in all states. For instance, even if you had joined in a civil union with your partner in Vermont, you wouldn't be able to visit that person in the ICU after a head-on collision in Texas — a state that doesn't honor civil unions. "Contrary to generally held assumptions, civil unions do not provide the same protections as does a marriage in terms of legal and financial rights, benefits and protections," said Yolanda Padilla, a professor of social work and women's studies at the University of Texas at Austin. "These are not minor differences, but indisputably place gay couples in a very vulnerable position." White, who received the Political Equality Award in 2009 for his commitment to the Houston community from gay rights organization the Human Rights Campaign, said as mayor it was his job to work for everyone. For the same reason, he has said he refrained from taking sides in the gay marriage debate. "As mayor, I avoid commenting on state and federal laws and policies I do not influence. I intend to vote 'no' on the proposed state constitutional amendment to protest its use as a wedge issue," White told Houston's GLBT Political Caucus Political Action Committee, according to a 2005 Houston Chronicle article that the Republican Party's video ad cited as evidence of his support for gay marriage. Now that he's running for governor, White told the Dallas Voice that he intends "to represent all Texans, and I expected to be attacked for this." But that isn't the same as championing same-sex marriage. We find the Republican Party's claim False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 23, 2022 in Instagram post California state Sen. Scott Wiener “doesn’t just want to sterilize California kids, but sterilization of kids everywhere!” By Michael Majchrowicz • October 31, 2022

“Illegal immigrants currently occupy 8 million jobs. In response to a new Democratic proposal to overhaul immigration laws, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith noted that a large number of illegal immigrants have jobs in the United States and suggested that one way to reduce the unemployment rate would be to free up those jobs for citizens and legal immigrants. Smith, R-San Antonio, said the illegal immigrants hold 8 million jobs, according to a news release distributed Dec. 15. Arguing against the Democrats’ proposal to provide millions of immigrants a path to citizenship, Smith says U.S. policies should “put American workers, American taxpayers, and American citizens first, not those who are in the country illegally. This is the kind of legislation that foreign governments would promote, not the U.S. Congress.” He added that “allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens and legal immigrants is like giving a burglar a key to the house. Illegal immigrants currently occupy 8 million jobs. Those stolen jobs rightfully belong to citizens and legal immigrants.” Leaving aside the question of whether any of those jobs were "stolen" from their rightful owners, we wondered whether Smith's 8 million figure — about the same as the population of Virginia — was correct. Do illegal immigrants hold that many jobs? Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 Smith’s source for the number is a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, Jeffrey Passel, who analyzed the relevant data for an April 2009 report, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States.” The Pew center is a research organization that seeks to “improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population.” Using March 2008 data, primarily from the U.S. Census Bureau, Passel estimated that the number of undocumented workers in the United States was 7.8 million, so Smith is clearly in the ballpark. But is it fair of the congressman to make his statement about jobs when the data refers to workers? Passel said yes. We found a wrinkle, though. Economic conditions have changed since March 2008. Smith’s statement suggests that the 8 million is a current figure, but the data used for that estimate are more than 20 months old. Since then, millions of people have lost their jobs, including many undocumented immigrants. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate for March 2008 was 5.1 percent; that figure has skyrocketed, to 10 percent, in December 2009. That month, more than 15 million people were without jobs. Immigrants have been hit harder in the economic downturn. The unemployment rate for immigrants, without regard to their citizenship status, has gone up faster than that of natives, Passel said. With huge job losses across all demographic groups, Passel said the number of employed illegal immigrants has most likely dropped. Passel suggested that today the number is closer to 7 million. So Smith is right that millions of jobs are held by illegal immigrants. Yet by citing numbers that were 20 months old, he didn't account for conditions that have caused some of those jobs to disappear. We find his claim Mostly True

Says he "brought 1,200 jobs to Texas by moving his factories here from China. Hair-care mogul Farouk Shami of Houston thinks "Made in the U.S.A. is the strongest brand in the world," and by promising to create new jobs, he's hoping to win the governorship. As a head-start, "he just brought 1,200 jobs to Texas by moving his factories here from China," according to his Nov. 23 TV ad. We decided to follow-up on one of his biggest talking points. The Palestinian-born businessman, seeking the Democratic nomination in the March 2 primary, has created a $1 billion manufacturing company that makes CHI hair irons and BioSilk shampoo, among hair products. Shami cut the ribbon on his new Houston facility CHI USA in late July 2009. Earlier that month, he announced he was moving to Houston overseas production of his hand-held products, like hair irons, and in the process bringing more than 1,000 jobs to that city. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on November 2, 2022 in a video Video suggests GOP voters denied access in general election. By Gabrielle Settles • November 8, 2022 But contrary to his ad, those jobs were created as a result of moving production from South Korea, not China, campaign director and senior strategist Vince Leibowitz said. "That was a miscommunication within our campaign over where those jobs were cut, and unfortunately we got the incorrect information to the talented people who put together our television ad," Leibowitz said. Democratic media firm Devine Mulvey produced the spot. As of Jan. 11, the campaign had changed its commercial to mention only the shift of jobs from Korea. The change happened after our inquiry. Still, on the same day we found the incorrect China reference in a video of the ad (shown to the right) on Shami's Web site, and on the site's homepage. Elizabeth Yong, public relations manager for Houston-based Farouk Systems Group, said CHI USA produces "five to 10" of a total 61 hair care tools, including the original flat iron.Yong said bringing all production stateside will take two years, though "more than 1,000" jobs have already been shifted. Last July, the company said it hopes to shift 4,000 jobs to Texas by 2012, starting with the move of 1,000 jobs from South Korea and China. Leibowitz said that some jobs have been created as a result of relocating production from China, but not the ones advertised as part of Shami's campaign. Perhaps Shami deserves a back slap for admitting his mistake and reworking his ad. Still, incorrect information was left online. We rule his claim Half Tru

"Texas is LAST (50th) in spending for mental health care. Marc Katz, the Austin deli owner running for lieutenant governor, lists health care as his No. 1 campaign issue on his Web site. So it's no surprise that he took a shot at highlighting Texas' struggling mental health system on Twitter. "Texas is LAST (50th) in spending for mental health care," he said in a message on Twitter on Dec. 8. We wanted to know the source for Katz's claim, but he didn't respond to our phone calls or email. We assume Katz was referring to data published by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation for fiscal 2006, which tallied mental health care spending for the District of Columbia and the 50 states. Texas was indeed ranked 50th for spending — per capita — though that was second to last. Spending $34.57 per Texan, the state squeaked ahead of New Mexico, which spent $25.58 and ranked 51st. Florida came in third from last at $38.17, and the national average was $103.53. When you look at total dollars spent, Texas ranked 10th in 2006, spending about $805 million. Aware of the state's shortcomings in health care services, Texas legislators allocated $55 million in 2009 to be distributed during the next year (half of it has been already) to expand services at local mental health centers, and through August this year, community mental health centers will receive another $341.8 million in state money through the Department of State Health Services. Twitter sometimes leads to clunky writing because items are limited to 140 characters per tweet. In this case, though, Katz sliced information to give it more impact. Sure, he was only off by one state, but that was the difference between Texas ranking last and not, an important detail when you're showing Texas' rank in ALL CAPS. We rank Katz's statement Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022

"Why is January 8th an important date in American history? This day in 1835 is the only day in our history when we have not been in debt. U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., has joined the ranks of politicians experimenting with Twitter. LeMieux, who was appointed last year to fill the unexpired term of Sen. Mel Martinez, has sent Twitter messages with his thoughts on health care reform ("neither 'comprehensive' nor 'reform'"), his whereabouts ("visiting our military installations tomorrow") and now, U.S. trivia. "Why is January 8th an important date in American History," LeMieux asked during the afternoon of Jan. 8, 2010. "This day in 1835 is the only day in our history when we have not been in debt." We've all seen pictures of the national debt clock, which is now spinning past $12.3 trillion. In fact, LeMieux has it running on a computer monitor posted outside his Washington office, and mentioned the debt on his first day as a senator. We wondered, was there actually a time, one time, when the clock struck zero? First, just so no one gets confused: Debt does not equal deficit. Deficit is the difference in the money the government takes in and what it spends each year. Debt is accumulated deficits, plus interest. You'd think the United States would have been founded with zero debt. But not so, says the Bureau of Public Debt. The government office, which is under the U.S. Department of the Treasury, says the United States had more than $75 million in outstanding American Revolutionary War debts when the nation was created. From there, the national debt grew some and shrunk some before ballooning to $127 million as a result of the War of 1812. The debt then started a steady 20-year decline, which you can see for yourself here. By Jan. 1, 1833, the national debt stood at $7 million. On Jan. 1, 1835, under President Andrew Jackson, the debt was just $33,733. On Jan. 8 of that year, Jackson proclaimed that the last installment of the national debt had been paid. Jackson had called the debt a "national curse" when he ran for president in 1824. "The Payment of the Public Debt," Jackson wrote in a toast at a party that also marked the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans (another good day for Jackson, who as general, led U.S. troops to victory). "Let us commemorate it as an event that gives us increased power as a nation, and reflects luster on our federal Union, of whose justice, fidelity, and wisdom it is a glorious illustration." According to the 1860 biography Life of Andrew Jackson written by James Parton, Jackson vetoed bills that appropriated money for infrastructure projects, thus quickening the pace that the country's debt was retired by up to five years. It was one of the cornerstones of his administration, said Parton, who added that Jackson thought it his most glorious achievement. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But did it actually happen on Jan. 8? Jackson biographer Robert Vincent Remini said in his book The Life of Andrew Jackson that the extinguishing of the national debt "nearly coincided" with the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, which falls on Jan. 8. That would at least suggest the actual payment may have occurred a few days sooner. Remini doesn't get into more detail. Other accounts, like H.W. Brand's Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times, say the country was debt free closer to Jan. 1, 1835. For its part, the Bureau of Public Debt says that the national debt reached zero on Jan. 8, 1835, a Thursday. LeMieux's office provided PolitiFact with some additional examples (here and here) documenting the U.S. being debt free on Jan. 8, 1835. After Jan. 8, history writers fail to track the debt with precise detail. Jackson biographers Parton and Remini don't discuss how long the national debt remained zero. (In their defense, they use their ink discussing an assassination attempt on Jackson at the end of January 1835). The Bureau of Public Debt also appears fuzzy on how long America was debt free. All the government group notes is that it wasn't long. We talked to Robert E. Wright, a political economy professor and author of One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe. He offered a couple of caveats to this talk about the national debt. Even though the United States was considered debt free, the government still had outstanding loans, Wright said. No one asked for the loans to be paid off however, and the federal government had the money in the bank to pay them if they were. Wright said the country remained debt free for some time -- much longer than a day -- as politicians argued over what to do with government surpluses. "There wasn't a desire to invest in corporations," Wright said. "But there were schemes afloat to divide the money up and give it to the states." Financial panics made those discussions irrelevant. By Jan. 1, 1836, the national debt had grown back to $37,000, according to the Bureau of Public Debt. A four-year depression starting in 1839 resulted in the debt growing to $20 million. Then, it was off to the races. The debt was more than $2.6 billion by the end of the Civil War; almost $27 billion by the end of World War I, and almost $260 billion by the end of World War II. The debt reached $1 trillion in Ronald Reagan's first term as president. It reached $5 trillion near the end of Bill Clinton's first term. LeMieux says that the United States was only debt free for one day in its history -- Jan. 8, 1835. He's right that the United States was indeed debt free on that day. And before and after that, we as a country really never got that close to being debt free. Did it last only one day, however, as LeMieux says? We found "this day in history" stories and blogs that tend to suggest so. But LeMieux's office didn't offer any definitive proof. Jackson biographers don't note it that way. Neither does the government office that tracks the debt. Scholars also say it lasted much more than a day. And since Jackson was bent on retiring the debt, we'd at least expect him to spend a day or two with an empty credit card account before racking up a bill again. We rate LeMieux's comment Mostly Tru

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush. Republican Rudy Giuliani is painting President Barack Obama as weak on terrorism and is longing for the days of former President George W. Bush.Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and a candidate for president in 2008, appeared on Good Morning America on Jan. 8, 2010, to offer his assessment of the Obama administration's counterterrorist operations. He criticized plans to try suspected Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in a Michigan criminal court and questioned Obama's decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Giuliani said U.S. intelligence agencies stand to lose potentially critical information on other al-Qaida operatives and operations if the man at the center of the Northwest flight terror incident is tried in U.S. court. "What he (Obama) should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama," Giuliani said. "Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn't do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected was both Bush's responsibility and Obama's."Giuliani, the mayor of New York City during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, claims there were no domestic attacks under the Bush administration. That's obviously a preposterous statement that would warrant a Pants on Fire rating. We can't help but remember now-Vice President Joe Biden's line during his presidential campaign, "Rudy Giuliani -- there's only three things he mentions in a sentence. A noun and a verb and 9/11."Unfortunately, interviewer George Stephanopoulos never sought clarification on Giuliani's statement. After the interview, Stephanopoulos updated his blog to say Giuliani was wrong to say there were no domestic attacks under Bush, and then later apologized for not pressing him on the misstatement.But let's treat this as if Giuliani meant to say there were no domestic attacks under Bush post-Sept. 11, 2001, and run that past the Truth-O-Meter.The FBI offers a broad definition of terrorism, calling it "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."Even stricter definitions would have to include:The anthrax scare. Shortly after 9/11, letters laced with anthrax began appearing in the U.S. mail. Letters went to U.S. senators and news organizations. Before it was over, five Americans were killed and another 17 were injured. "The nation was terrorized in what became the worst biological attacks in U.S. history," according to the FBI.The shoe bomber. In December 2001, admitted al-Qaida member Richard Reid boarded a plane in Miami with plastic explosives packed in special hollowed-out shoes. The bomb failed to ignite properly and no passengers were hurt. The incident, however, led to Americans having to remove their shoes during airport security screening.The D.C. sniper case. John Allen Muhammad was convicted on capital terrorism charges for his part in the shooting of 16 people in and around the D.C. area in September and October 2002. Muhammad was executed last year. His 17-year-old accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, was sentenced to life in prison.All three events occurred after Sept. 11 and have been considered terror plots by the federal and state governments.Media Matters For America, a liberal group that analyzes the news media, documented other examples of U.S. terrorism:2002 attack against El Al ticket counter at LAX. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet opened fire at an El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people and wounding four others before being shot dead. Media Matters found a 2004 Justice Department report that Hadayet's case had been "officially designated as an act of international terrorism."Campus attack at UNC. In March 2006, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate drove an SUV onto campus, striking nine pedestrians. Reza Taheri-azar reportedly stated in a letter: "I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers, who obtained a doctorate degree." A spokesman for Giuliani attempted to clarify the former mayor's remark several hours after the GMA interview, saying the statement "didn't come across as it was intended" and that Giuliani was "clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil," according to ABC News. It wasn't clear to us, or most of the world. But okay. Taking the literal definition of "on our soil," that would exclude the failed December 2001 shoe bombing incident since it happened in the air. But not the others. If you add the second layer of "Islamic terrorist attacks," the sniper and anthrax attacks could come off the list as well, because it is unclear if extremist Muslim ideology motivated either attack. Hadayet, the shooter in the Los Angeles ticket counter shooting, was killed during the attack by security personnel. So we don't know his motivation. Taheri-azar's own words make his motivation pretty clear. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But now we're getting to a lot of ifs. And more importantly, that's not what Giuliani said on national television. Here's how Giuliani tried to clarify the issue during an interview later that day with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "This is so silly," Giuliani said. "What I usually say when I say that, I usually say we had no major domestic attacks under President Bush since Sept. 11. I did omit the words 'since Sept. 11.' I apologize for that." Giuliani went on to say it's not clear if the anthrax attacks were perpetuated by Islamic fundamentalists. We're not sure if Giuliani's claim that Obama has had only one domestic attack in his first year as president is right, either. Besides the Christmas Day bombing attempt, several U.S. lawmakers have already labeled the November Fort Hood shooting as an act of terrorism. The Giuliani spokesman, whom ABC News did not identify, said the "one" attack that Giuliani says took place during the Obama administration was a reference to the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan. (Again, excluding the Christmas Day bombing plot by using the "on our soil" addendum.) Giuliani ran a presidential campaign based on the leadership he showed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. We would expect him to at least acknowledge that those attacks occurred while George W. Bush was president. But even considering that he was talking post-9/11, Giuliani is just plain wrong to suggest no terrorist attacks happened under Bush's watch. The clarifications added by a Giuliani spokesman are threaded so thin, it sounds like damage control more than anything. We say Pants on Fir

"Most of the people that work in finance make $70,000, $80,000 a year. In a time of public anger over salaries and bonuses on Wall Street, it is a rare public figure who stands up for the financial sector. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- who, not coincidentally, is the founder of a financial news service -- did just that on Meet the Press on Jan. 3, 2010. Discussing what's happened on Wall Street since the sector's near-collapse in 2008, Bloomberg said, "You know, we have -- everybody is bashing Wall Street. (But Wall Street) is one of the big revenue generators for New York and New York City. That's how we pay our teachers, that's how we pay our cops, that's how we pay our firefighters. And I've always thought, if the elected officials in Michigan bashed the automobile industry, or in California, (information technology), or in Texas, oil, they'd be run out of town on a rail. And yet, every day I pick up the paper and everybody, it's kind of hard to find anybody that's not saying -- well, look, there are some excesses. But overall, most of the people that work in finance make $70,000, $80,000 a year. They're hardworking, and we want those industries to be here and not overseas." The part that caught our eye was that "people that work in finance make $70,000, $80,000 a year." Many of us have the impression from the media that people who work on Wall Street earn much more than that. So we talked to experts and looked at the data. The mayor's office referred us to the New York City Economic Development Corp., whose head is appointed by the mayor. A spokesman said that office came up with that figure by using the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey data. We consulted with the Census Bureau on retracing their steps and found that Bloomberg's comment on Meet the Press was indeed accurate. The American Community Survey data -- which can be broken down by city, employer sector and employee earnings -- showed that for the "finance and insurance" sector in New York City, the median earnings in 2008 were $78,451. That figure includes both salary and bonuses -- an important factor in Wall Street compensation, where bonuses often dwarf base salary. A key factor to note is that this is a median number -- that is, the number exactly halfway between the highest earnings and the lowest -- and not an average. In many contexts, calculating the median can be more reliable than calculating the average (or mean), because the median is less likely to be swayed by a small number of very high or very low examples. In this case, using the median rather than the average for the sector minimizes the importance of the very highest paid executives on Wall Street, whose salaries are big enough to skew the entire results. Indeed, if you calculate the average earnings for the sector, rather than the median, the numbers look quite different. Using a separate data set from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks earnings for industries and localities on a quarterly basis, reveals that the average annual earnings for workers in New York City's "financial activities" sector was more than $331,000. (This amount, as large as it sounds, was actually extrapolated from data reflecting the first quarter of 2009, which was Wall Street's low point; it reflects a decline of 35 percent from a year earlier.) In other contexts, the New York City Economic Development Corp. isn't averse to citing the average rather than the median. On its Web site, the office offers a pair of charts that detail average annual wages by sector and borough, based on federal statistics. One chart shows the average wages for 2007 in the the finance-and-insurance sector at $286,158 citywide and $315,481 in Manhattan. Another chart reports an average for the "financial services" sector citywide at $288,213 for 2007. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 A spokesman for the corporation said it was valid for the office to cite median figures in one context and average figures in another, asserting that the mayor was correct when he said that "most of the people that work in finance make $70,000, $80,000 a year." "When the question is, 'What do most people who work in finance make,' the most appropriate data is the median, which literally represents the 50th percentile in the distribution," said the spokesman, David Lombino. "An average would make no sense here. If you ate zero eggs, and I ate two eggs, the average is one egg -- but that is not what 'most' people ate." The other key question is whether the data sets the mayor used are justified or misleading. The census data (as well as BLS data) count anyone who works for a financial firm, regardless of what their job is. A receptionist, an IT staffer, a janitor -- as long as they're employed in-house by a financial services firm, they get mixed in with the high-rollers that author Tom Wolfe called the Masters of the Universe. The receptionists and janitors tend to decrease both the median and average earnings figures for the industry. We had trouble finding specific compensation data for professionals on Wall Street. The Options Group, which publishes an influential compensation survey on the financial services sector, declined to provide data to us. But included in the publicly available pages posted on the firm's Web site is data showing that average salaries for a first-year associate -- a very junior position -- at "global investment banks" in 2009 was $80,000 to $90,000 -- which exceeds Bloomberg's figure right off the bat. Yet those same associates, according to the survey, also get bonuses on top of their base pay that average $65,000 to $75,000. Information on more senior positions was blacked out, but it's safe to assume the numbers go up from there. A lot of professionals on Wall Street "make three-quarters of their pay in annual bonuses," said Michael S. Melbinger, an employee-benefits and executive compensation lawyer with the firm Winston & Strawn. Where professionals are concerned, "I would say [Bloomberg's] figure is the bottom, not the average, even for a boutique firm." But Lombino sees no problem in Bloomberg including the entire spectrum of financial services employees in his statistic. Indeed, that was part of the point that the mayor was trying to make -- that Wall Street supports the livelihoods of ordinary people as well as the super-rich. "It is likely that (janitors and receptionists) enjoy other benefits associated with working for a large financial institution, just like traditional traders and bankers," he said. "It would seem remiss to include them in any other category, and they have to fall in somewhere. If the mayor had said 'bankers,' or 'traders' -- those are occupations within the finance industry and [they would have produced] a different and higher figure. But he specifically said 'people who work in finance,' and that is the whole industry." Bloomberg's artful wording -- "Most of the people that work in finance make $70,000, $80,000 a year" -- was broad enough to include lower-paid employees. And because of that, it is backed up by a credible federal statistic. But we believe a reasonable person hearing his comment would think he was saying that professionals such as bond traders and brokers earn $70,000 to $80,000 per year. So while he may be technically accurate, we find his statement misleading. It's also worth noting that other statistics more fully reflect that Wall Street professionals, even the most junior ones, earn much higher incomes than the amounts that Bloomberg cited. That's enough in our book to lower his statement to a Half Tru

"President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout (health care reform negotiations). Don't mess with Charlie Crist when it comes to open government. It was Crist, as Florida governor, who created something called the Office for Open Government. And we've heard stories of the governor himself ordering agency heads to hand over public records requested by nosy reporters. Now Crist is taking up the cause of the nation's people in a debate over transparency when it comes to the health care reform bill. "It seems that a bill that was crafted in a closed-door, backroom meeting in the White House will end the same way," Crist, who is running for U.S. Senate, said in a statement released Jan. 5, 2010. "President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process, and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid and (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi have only aided in the secrecy with sweetheart deals and dead of the night votes." Crist is claiming that Obama broke a promise when it comes to transparency and health care reform. Lucky for us, we have this thing at PolitiFact called the Obameter , where we are tracking Obama's more than 500 campaign promises. If you'll now turn to Promise No. 517 . To achieve health care reform, Obama said in August 2008, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process." If it only happened ... Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 19, 2022 in a post The diphtheria vaccine is a “poison dart” with side effects worse than the symptoms of diphtheria. By Andy Nguyen • October 24, 2022 While the Senate and House floor debates have been televised on C-SPAN, negotiations have almost always been away from television cameras. ABC's Jake Tapper put the discrepancy in front of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs this week, to see if the final negotiations between the House, the Senate and the president would be televised. "There have been a countless number of public hearings," Gibbs said. "The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1 and 2 in the morning on C-SPAN ... I think what the president promised and pledged was so that you could see who was fighting for their constituents and who was fighting for drug and insurance companies." But, Tapper pressed, the president was talking about negotiations, not votes -- which would hardly be a campaign promise since they would have been televised regardless. "Well, but the bill gets put together on the floor of the Senate," Gibbs said. "That's where the bill got augmented. And I think if you watched that debate ... you'd have seen quite a bit of public hearing and public airing." Despite the action on the House and Senate floors, most of the serious negotiations on the health care bill have been done in the same fashion as other major initiatives in the past -- behind closed doors. From negotiations with the drug companies and health care interests to final assembly of the delicate compromise on abortion, the bulk of the big deliberations and discussions have occurred out of the public eye. The debate over the resulting bill may have been on C-SPAN as Gibbs claims, but the real sausagemaking took place in a private kitchen. That's why we rated No. 517 a Promise Broken. On top of that, C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to House and Senate leaders last week inviting negotiations on the channel. "President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system," Lamb wrote. "Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American." Obama promised an end to closed-door negotiations and complete openness for the health care talks. But he has failed to deliver. When Crist says "President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process," he's right. We rate Crist's claim Tru

"In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson ... got a $25 billion to $30 billion carve-out for Medicare Advantage patients in their state. The Nelsons are becoming whipping boys for Republicans upset with the Senate health care reform bill. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is being targeted for a Medicaid provision in the bill that benefits only his state. ( Read our related item here .) And now Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is being accused of tucking in a special gift for 800,000 Florida seniors. Sen. John McCain calls it the "Florida Flim Flam." Karl Rove prefers the "Sunshine State Sweepstakes." At issue in this case is Medicare Advantage, a program used by nearly 1 million Florida seniors. We'll let Rove, the former adviser to President George W. Bush who was talking on Fox News, explain the rest. "In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson -- no relation to Ben, except in his habits -- got a $25 billion to $30 billion carve-out for Medicare Advantage patients in their state," Rove said Tuesday. "Every Medicare Advantage policyholder in America, except those in Florida, will see a huge cut in the federal support for those policies, and as a result, a dramatic decline in their benefits and an increase in their premiums, except if you live in Florida." Rove, McCain and many Republicans are accusing Nelson of sticking a big, fat goody in the health care bill for the folks back home. And only the folks back home. Is that what's happening? First, a short lesson on what we're talking about, Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is an optional program that lets Medicare recipients 65 and older receive their benefits through private health insurance plans, instead of through the traditional Medicare program. The idea behind the program was to save the government money, but it hasn't worked out that way. Under the program, the government pays Advantage companies a set amount per enrollee, about $10,000, and they make a profit if they keep average costs below that level. The reimbursement amounts to about 14 percent more, on average, than the government spends on a traditional Medicare beneficiary. The extra money allows companies to offer Medicare Advantage members additional services, such as prescription drug, vision and dental coverage at a much lower cost, as well as other perks like gym memberships. About 11 million people are enrolled in the program nationwide. To help pay for changes to the health care system, Democrats are considering deep cuts to Medicare Advantage reimbursements, about $120 billion spread between now and 2019. That proposal has most Republicans, and in this case the Democrat Nelson, nervous. Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin picks it up from here. Nelson opposes Medicare Advantage, and voted against it -- believing it costs too much, McLaughlin said. But in the current debate Nelson was hesitant to strip benefits from seniors who already had them. He asked for the 11 million seniors currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage to be grandfathered into the new system under the old rules. At a cost of $35 billion, Nelson was told that was too expensive. Instead, Senate leaders offered Nelson $5 billion to help protect current Medicare Advantage recipients, McLaughlin said. So Nelson added a provision to the bill that protects seniors most affected by the proposed cuts or changes. Specifically, the money targets communities and areas where the cost of service is highest and allows those people to use the old rules. McLaughlin equates it to a cost-of-living adjustment. The language in the health care bill, which begins on Page 894, never mentions Florida or any specific state. Rather it creates a difficult-to-follow formula to determine just who should be protected from the changes. We should note that Nelson's provision wasn't a last-minute addition to secure his support on the larger bill. The Medicare Advantage exemption was included in the health care reform bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee in October. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 We'll also note that the Senate Finance Committee widened the pool of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries protected from the new rules. The total additional cost is expected to be around $7.5 billion over 10 years, McLaughlin said. Independent analysts at the Kaiser Family Foundation say the protections will cost around $5 billion between 2012 and 2019. So who benefits? Floridians for sure. "Florida will definitely be treated more generously than most other states," said John Rother, executive vice president for policy and strategy for AARP. But not just Floridians. Of the 1 million or so Floridians participating in Medicare Advantage, about 800,000 are expected to be protected from possible cuts. But so are people living in New York and Los Angeles, as well as in Oregon, McLaughlin says. A spokesman for Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., confirmed that New Jersey seniors also will benefit from Nelson's protections to Medicare Advantage. And Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said this: "We got a special protection worth billions of dollars to stop Medicare cuts for 800,000 New York seniors." Menendez said a total of five states would receive protections. To be honest, we're not sure how many states or people will be protected since senators and their staff are using different numbers and estimates. We'll update this item when we find out. But what we do know is this: Nelson's provision in the health care bill will protect some seniors in Florida and others in Oregon, New York, New Jersey and California. A chief critic of the provision, McCain, and the independent Kaiser Family Foundation, both say it will cost about $5 billion. McLaughlin, Nelson's aide, puts the total at about $7.5 billion. That flies in the face of Rove's statement on Fox News, "In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson ... got a $25 billion to $30 billion carve-out for Medicare Advantage patients in their state." ( UPDATE: After our story published, Rove penned a column for the Wall Street Journal that put the dollar figure at a revised $3.5 billion.) Though Florida may see the lion's share of the benefit, Florida isn't specifically carved out of any potential Medicare Advantage cuts. The current Senate legislation includes a complicated formula designed to protect seniors most at risk of big cutbacks. We rate Rove's claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

A Medicaid provision added to the Senate health care reform bill "is not a special deal for Nebraska. It has been called the "Omaha Stakes" and the "Cornhusker Kickback," but was a Medicaid provision added to the Senate health care bill a simple payoff to Nebraska to secure Sen. Ben Nelson's pivotal vote? That was the charge from several Republicans who blasted Nelson, D-Neb., for essentially selling his vote on health care reform in exchange for a special, backroom deal that could save the Nebraska state government millions of dollars in Medicaid subsidies. Nelson came to the floor on Dec. 22, 2009, to defend himself, and accused his attackers of distorting the facts to score political points. "It is not a special deal for Nebraska," Nelson said. We decided to weigh in. At issue here is a tiny clause tucked into a 383-page Manager's Amendment to the Senate health care reform bill. The wording of the paragraph is steeped in legalese (you can read the part that pertains to Nebraska on page 98 if you're into that kind of thing), but it relates to money that states will have to pick up with regard to Medicaid. The Senate bill would expand Medicaid to people below 133 percent of the poverty level. And up until 2017, the federal government will pick up the tab for the added cost that will place on state governments. After that, states will have to start sharing the cost. The provision added in the amendment will exempt Nebraska from that sunset, however, meaning that the federal government would forevermore pick up all of the expense of expanded eligibility to Medicaid in that state. How much money is at stake? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office didn't specifically break out Nebraska, but said the cost of expanding Medicaid eligibility would be about $1.2 billion for Nebraska, Massachusetts and Vermont over the next 10 years. "You’ve got to compliment Ben Nelson for playing 'The Price is Right,'" said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. "He negotiated a Medicaid agreement for Nebraska that puts the federal government on the hook forever. Not for six years, not for 10 years. This isn’t the Louisiana Purchase; this is the Nebraska windfall." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., went on the Today show and called the deal "sleazy." And Attorney General Henry McMaster of South Carolina said he and his counterparts in Michigan and Washington state were investigating whether the special provisions for Nebraska are unconstitutional. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended the deal, saying, "You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It’s about compromise." On the Senate floor, Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said Nebraskans have been embarrassed by all the attention from the controversy and want no part of a special deal. Shortly after Johanns spoke, Nelson came to the floor to defend himself. The provision, he said, was not a "carve-out" for Nebraska. To the contrary, he said, he pushed for the language because he opposes unfunded mandates placed on states by the federal government -- such as this Medicaid expansion -- and saw the exemption for Nebraska as a way to open the door for other states to do the same. "You can twist and you can turn and you can try to distort what happens, but it does not change the underlying facts," Nelson said. "The underlying facts are, this was pursued initially as an opt-in or opt-out for all states. It was impossible to do that at the present time, and so as a matter of fix, there was, in fact, the extension of the federal dollars from the year 2017 on, well into the future, as a marker to lay down so that every state could object to this manner of unfunded mandates." "Each state between now and 2017 — two-thirds-plus of a decade — will have an opportunity to come back in and get this bill changed," Nelson said. "It is not a special deal for Nebraska," Nelson insisted. "It is, in fact, an opportunity to get rid of an unfunded federal mandate for all the states. Let me repeat that: for all the states. There is nothing special about it, and it is fair." Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, agreed that while the provision only mentions Nebraska, it may set a precedent for other states to get the same deal. '"Other governors will be on their congressmen and senators to make sure their states are held harmless," Harkin said. '"Sen. Nelson may have done all the states a big favor." So to summarize, Nelson says the provision was meant as a "marker" to allow all states to fight what he believes is an unfair, unfunded mandate from the federal government. And maybe that's the effect the provision will have. Maybe it will open the door so that in the next seven years, other states will be able to change the law so that they can get the same deal as Nelson got for Nebraska. But for now, Nebraska is the only state in the bill that would get the deal. Other states may fight in the future, but Nelson has already won that battle for Nebraska. And unless or until all states get the same treatment, it is a special deal for Nebraska. We rule Nelson's statement Fals

When Charlie Crist was elected governor, Florida ranked 31st in K-12 education. "Last year ... we went from 31st to 14. And this year, the top 10 in America. Gov. Charlie Crist says Florida has a good story to tell when it comes to K-12 education. His evidence? State-by-state rankings from a reputable education publication. "When I came in three years ago, according to Education Weekly , a well-respected national publication, it said that out of the 50 states Florida was ranked 31st. Thirty-first in K-12 education," Crist told members of the Pinellas Republican Executive Committee on Dec. 14, 2009. "Last year my friends, we went from 31st to 14. And this year, the top 10 in America. "These aren't my statistics. They're not from our Department of Education. They're from objective observers who gave us this ranking." Crist means Education Week , not Weekly, but that's not really important. What is, is his claim that Florida's education ranking has improved dramatically from 2007 to 2009. Does Crist have the rankings right? Each January, Education Week produces a detailed state-by-state report that measures and compares states on a number of education benchmarks. It ranks states based on accountability, K-12 achievement, school finances and other categories. The report, which is published online as well as in print, then produces an overall ranking for each state, both as a letter and a number between 1 and 100. We'll start with the most recent rankings and work backward. In Education Week 's January 2009 report titled "Portraits of a Population," Florida received an overall letter score of B- or a number score of 79.6. As Crist suggests, that score put Florida in a tie for 10th when compared to the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. Check. We then turned to the 2008 report called "Tapping Into Teaching." There, Florida scored a C+ or 79.2 and ranked 14th in the country. Another check. Finally, we looked at the 2007 report "From Cradle to Career." The 2007 report doesn't have the same overall ranking that is available for the 2008 and 2009 studies, but there is a ranking called the Chance For Success Index. The Chance For Success Index, its authors say, was designed to measure the odds of success for a child who grows up in a particular state when compared to other states. Indicators include family income, a parent's education and employment, high school graduation rates, adult employment status, and state annual income figures. On that index, as Crist says, Florida ranked 31st nationwide. That year, Florida also ranked 31st in the publication's K-12 Achievement Index, which focuses explicitly on in-school learning. Featured Fact-check Joe Biden stated on October 23, 2022 in a forum with Now This Student loan forgiveness is “passed. I got it passed by a vote or two. And it’s in effect.” By Louis Jacobson • October 25, 2022 Three reports, three years, three rankings – 31, 14, 10. C-h-e-c… If only it were that simple. Turns out, one of these numbers is not like the others. Christopher B. Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, the not-for-profit organization that publishes Education Week, says Crist is referring to overall rankings for 2008 and 2009. But there is no overall ranking for 2007. That's because the publication never produced one, Swanson says. What was graded and ranked in 2007 are two specific categories, Chance For Success and K-12 Achievement. Those categories were then folded into the overall calculations and rankings for later years, Swanson said. Put another way, the 2007 rankings measured A and B, while the 2008 and 2009 numbers measured A, B, C, D, and so on. Crist shoehorned the numbers together. "We generally advise against making strong statements about year-to-year comparisons because our framework/indicators generally changes at least a little bit," Swanson said. "This would particularly be true in the past couple years since we have made some major revisions to our research and grading framework." But for argument's sake, let's compare years anyway. While it did not publish overall rankings each year, Education Week did publish state rankings for its Chance For Success and K-12 Achievement indexes in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Florida's Chance For Success ranking -- which takes into account state graduation rates, employment opportunities and income potential -- fell from 31, to 32, to 33 (not so good). The state's K-12 Achievement ranking -- which measures only in-school learning -- climbed from 31 in 2007 to 7 in 2008 and 7 again 2009 (very good). We understand this can be confusing. The St. Petersburg Times made the same general assumption Crist did in a report Jan. 7, 2009. In a story called "Schools gain national respect," the Times used Education Week rankings to say how Florida had jumped from 31 to 14 to 10. Which brings us back to Crist's original statement. Crist is right that Education Week ranked Florida 31st in 2007, 14th in 2008 and 10th in 2009. But they're simply not comparable rankings. The publication didn't make an overall ranking in 2007, and says it has adjusted the ratings formula slightly each year. A cursory review would have revealed as much. And even if he missed it, the Orlando Sentinel put the rankings very much in doubt back in September. But there's plenty of good news to be found in the Education Week rankings. Florida's K-12 achievement ranks 7th in the country, and the state ranks 10th overall. That's certainly worth cheering and, we assume, part of the point Crist was trying to make to begin with. On the whole, he gets a Half Tru

Health care reform plans being consided in Congress "will finally reduce the costs of health care. After meeting with Senate Democrats on Dec. 15, President Barack Obama made a number of claims about what the health care bill would achieve if passed. "We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care," Obama said. "Families will save on their premiums; businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future. This plan will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of that program. And because it gets rid of the waste and inefficiencies in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade. "Now, I just want to repeat this because there's so much misinformation about the cost issue here. You talk to every health care economist out there and they will tell you that whatever ideas are -- whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill." Obama's comments came on the heels of a report from Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) -- a nonpolitical civil service employee -- that concluded various provisions of the Senate bill "would have a significant downward impact on future health care cost growth rates." However, Foster continued, those effects would be outweighed by the increased cost associated with expanding health insurance coverage to another 33 million Americans. Specifically, the report estimates that the total national health expenditures under the Senate bill would increase by an total of $234 billion (0.7 percent) between 2010 and 2019. Curiously, both Republicans and Democrats hailed the report as a victory for their side. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the report "shows that health reform will ensure both the federal government and the American people spend less on health care than if this bill doesn't pass, helping get a hold of America's debt and keep more money in people's pockets. This report is yet another clear indicator that we have to act - and act now." Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley said the Foster report showed that the Senate bill "doesn't do anything to reduce the unsustainable growth in health care spending and in fact would make health care costs grow more rapidly." Confused yet? We decided to wade in and sort some of this out. First, we need to acknowledge that when it comes to characterizing the "costs of health care," there are several ways to look at it. The first is how much people would pay in health insurance premiums. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) studied the health care bill proposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and concluded that if passed, most people would see a very modest decrease in premiums by 2016 (compared to what they would pay under the current system). How modest? Best-case scenario - for those in group plans with large companies - about 3 percent better. For a small percentage of people (less than 8 percent of the insured) who would buy insurance on the individual market, and who wouldn't be eligible for federal subsidies, they might actually pay 10 to 13 percent more, though with new federal minimum standards, they'd also be getting more insurance coverage as well. The second way to look at cost is its effect on the national deficit. And here again, the CBO has weighed in on the Reid plan. The CBO concluded that while the plan would be very expensive, the bill is also more than paid for with new taxes and plans to reduce health care spending over time. The net effect, according to the CBO, is that over 10 years, the plan would end up reducing the national deficit by $130 billion. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Which brings us to a third way to look at cost, whether the plan would lower the rate of health care inflation over the long term. Republicans are correct when they say that based on the CMS report, health care spending would increase by $234 billion over the next 10 years. But remember, that's with a plan that is estimated to cover an additional 33 million people. So spending would increase 0.7 percent while adding coverage to roughly 10 percent of the population. In his report, Foster said numerous studies have demonstrated that people with health insurance use more health services than people without insurance. So we'll be spending more over the next 10 years, even more than if we didn't pass the bill, according to the CMS report. But let's talk a minute about the "rate of growth" of health care spending. That's what Obama is talking about when he says he wants to "bend the cost curve." According to the projections in the CMS report, the rate of growth in national health care expenditures will spike a bit in the middle years of the health reform plan. That's when the provisions that result in 33 million more people getting health insurance will kick in. But in the later years of the 10-year projections, the rate of growth rises slower than under current law (albeit only slightly: in 2019, for example, it's the difference between rising at a clip of 6.9 percent under the proposed plan as opposed to 7.2 percent under current law). So when Obama says reforms will lower the cost of health care, what he means is that they will eventually slow the rate of growth of health care expenses. This can be pretty confusing stuff. And we think both sides in the debate are guilty of oversimplifying to score political points. It's also worth noting that while the CMS is a legitimate nonpartisan source, there's lots of difference of opinion among respected economists about how various cost-cutting proposals in the plan will shake out. In other words, these projections are all highly speculative. "There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty about whether what's in the bill will be enough to lower health care inflation," said Josh Gordon, policy director for the Concord Coalition, a group that advocates fiscal responsibility. "No one knows for sure." All of the cost estimates being proffered are "extraordinarily treacherous," because many of the changes being considered are unprecedented in history at this scale, said Henry Aaron, health policy scholar at the Brookings Institution. Still, he said, the bill contains many of the devices that economists say could help to slow the growth of health care spending over time. So when Obama says the plan would cut the cost of health care, it's not a simple answer. If he's talking about cutting people's premiums, the president is backed up by the CBO. According to the CBO, some people would pay more, but on average, most people -- people in employer plans -- would see very modest reductions in premiums compared to what they'd be expected to pay if nothing changes. If he's talking about the deficit, again, he's got support. The CBO estimates the plan would slightly reduce the deficit. But when it comes to cutting health care expenditures, it's a little trickier. According to CMS, spending is expected to rise slightly (0.7 percent), due to adding some 33 million more people to the insured ranks. Obama can make a case that in the later years of the 10-year projection, the rate of growth for health care expenditures would be somewhat slowed. But in attempting to simpify the issue, saying that the plan would reduce the cost of health care, we think Obama sacrifices some accuracy. And so we rate his statement Half True

President Obama has "the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year. It's no secret that President Barack Obama has had a rough first year in office. His approval ratings in the major polls hover just below 50 percent -- a decline from earlier levels that has cheered Republicans and conservative commentators. In a Dec. 16, 2009, Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove -- the mastermind of George W. Bush's two election victories -- riffed off the grade of a "solid B+" that Obama gave himself in a Dec. 13 interview with Oprah Winfrey. In a column headlined, "The President Is No B+," Rove wrote that "Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49 percent approve and 46 percent disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll." We'll begin by clarifying a few points. First, we should note that Rove was guilty of rhetorical excess when he said that Obama's numbers are the worst of "any president" at this point. Gallup's historical data -- the longest-running of the major polling firms -- dates back to Harry Truman, who was the first president whose entire tenure was polled in a fashion that modern experts would consider scientific. So Rove should have argued that Obama's numbers were the worst of any post-World War II president at this point in his term. Second, Rove misspoke when he referred to measuring Obama's ratings at the end of his first year. By definition, those numbers won't be available until late January. But in assessing his statement, we've sidestepped that problem by asking Gallup to provide us the approval ratings for December of the first year in office of the postwar presidents, so that the ratings for each can be compared more directly with the figures we have for Obama. Third, not all postwar presidents came to office equally. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton were all elected, so their presidencies all started at the usual time of the year. By contrast, Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford assumed office after the death or resignation of their predecessor. Johnson's approval ratings roughly a year after taking office were around 70 percent, while Truman and Ford were both around 40 percent at that point in their tenure -- a level lower than Obama's today. But because the comparison isn't exact, independent analysts advised us to exclude Truman, Johnson and Ford from our analysis. So, here are Gallup's December approval and disapproval ratings for all elected presidents since World War II. (For Clinton and George W. Bush, Gallup polled on presidential approval twice a month rather than once a month as previously, so the numbers below reflect an average of the two December scores for those presidents.) • Eisenhower, 69-22 • Kennedy, 77-11 • Nixon, 59-23 • Carter, 57-27 • Reagan, 49-41 • George H.W. Bush, 71-20 • Clinton, 53-39 • George W. Bush, 86-11 • Obama, 49-46 Compared to these predecessors, Obama's numbers are indeed the weakest -- but he's tied with Reagan in that unflattering achievement. The similarities between the approval-rating paths of Obama and Reagan are actually quite striking, wrote Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, in a recent post at the Web site Pollster.com. "Both replaced deeply unpopular predecessors," Franklin wrote. "Both enjoyed significant gains for their party in both houses of Congress. Both faced 'worst since the Depression' economic circumstances. And each in his own very different ways attempted to reshape government in the early months in office." It's worth adding a few words of caution about this kind of comparison. Ratings after one year don't necessarily correlate with ratings throughout one's term. For instance, in December 2001, George W. Bush's 86 percent approval rating was largely due to a wave of support after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bush wound up his second term in the low 30s. Still, if you're making the comparison -- and political observers have been doing precisely these sorts of comparisons for years -- Rove's statement holds up fairly well. Yes, Rove spoke too loosely when he said that Obama's numbers were the worst of any president's, and he failed to mention equally bad ratings for Reagan, a conservative icon whose politics were more in tune with Rove's than Obama. But with the exception of Reagan, every other elected president had clearly higher approval ratings at this point in his tenure than Obama has. So we rate Rove's statement Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Today and every day, an estimated 14,000 Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. During a Senate floor speech on Dec. 13, 2009, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, repeated a talking point that Democrats -- including President Barack Obama -- have cited frequently as evidence that the nation needs to pass a major health care reform bill. "Today and every day," Harkin said, "an estimated 14,000 Americans will lose their health insurance coverage." In July, PolitiFact rated a virtually identical statement by Obama as Mostly True. But because we based that evaluation on unemployment numbers that were current at the time -- and because Democrats have continued to repeat the statistic, including four lawmakers who made floor speeches on Nov. 7, 2009, the day the House passed its version of the health care bill -- we decided the talking point was due for a checkup. Before we look at the statement's validity today, let's recap how the statistic emerged in the first place. In July, the White House told us the number came from a report published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. A chart in the report was headlined, “14,000 People Became Uninsured Every Day in December and January.” This claim was, in turn, based on a model developed by Urban Institute health care scholar John Holahan. Holahan was the co-author, with A. Bowen Garrett, of the January 2009 study, “Rising Unemployment, Medicaid and the Uninsured,” published by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. That study provided the underpinning for the Center for American Progress report by estimating how many people can expect to lose their insurance, and not quickly get new coverage, when the national unemployment rate goes up. Essentially, what Holahan did is set up a model to measure the number of Americans who would lose their insurance when the unemployment rate rises from point A to point B. Holahan and his co-author, using a baseline of 4.6 percent unemployment in 2007, calculated that 2.6 million people would lose coverage if the unemployment rate climbed to 7 percent; 3.7 million if it went to to 8 percent; 4.8 million at 9 percent; and 5.8 million at 10 percent. The estimates took into account people who lost their jobs but then switched to a spouse’s plan or extended their coverage through COBRA, the federal law that guarantees people who lose their job can still get continued health coverage. Applying Holahan's calculations to the actual rise in unemployment from November 2008 to June 2009, we found that the number was right around the 14,000 people per month that Obama cited. We checked with health care experts, and they, too, agreed that the 14,000 number was just about right. But now, five months later, the unemployment situation has changed. We decided to run the numbers for two scenarios, one that started well before the period we had checked in July, and one that started later. • Health insurance lost since the start of the recession . The National Bureau of Economic Research is the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end, and it has declared the start of the current recession as December 2007. So for our first scenario, we looked at figures from December 2007 to November 2009, the last month for which we have unemployment statistics. During that two-year period, unemployment rose from 4.9 percent to 10 percent. In his paper, Holahan had said that a rise from 4.6 percent to 10 percent would leave 5.8 million people without insurance, so the slightly smaller rise in the actual unemployment figures should translate into about 5.5 million people losing insurance over that period. When you divide 5.5 million by 731 days, you get 7,524 people losing insurance per day -- only about half the amount regularly cited by Democrats. • Health insurance lost during the Obama presidency . If you take the period since Obama has been in office (and you count January 2009, even though he was only president for part of that month), the unemployment rate has risen from 7.6 percent to 10 percent. If you estimate the data based on Holahan's model, that would amount to 2.6 million jobs lost over 11 months. Dividing 2.6 million by 334 days, you get 7,784 people losing insurance every day -- a number very close to what we found for the recession as a whole, and, once again, only about half of what Democrats have been saying all these months. Estimates under the model "are very sensitive to the timeframe used," Holahan told PolitiFact. The way the model works, it requires monthly updating to make sure the talking point stays accurate. And we'll even accept a portion of the blame for validating the claim in July without updating it until now. When we made our initial assessment in July, we happened to look at a period of especially rapid job losses. That makes a difference because, under this model, the more the unemployment rate rises in a short period of time, the more Americans lose their insurance on a daily basis. As the rate of job losses has declined since July, the daily rate of Americans losing insurance has declined as well. If the number is now roughly 8,000 -- a number that's still nothing to sneeze at -- then Democrats should be saying it's roughly 8,000. So we rate Harkin's statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The Climatic Research Unit e-mails show that the science behind climate change "has been pretty well debunked. The newest tool in climate skeptics' arsenal: a series of hacked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit, a branch of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. The correspondence, which was stolen from CRU's server sometime around Nov. 20, has some saying that the scientific underpinnings of climate change are false. When asked on Dec. 7, 2009, about the Environmental Protection Agency's recent announcement that it will now consider carbon dioxide a pollutant, a move that clears the way for stricter regulations of the greenhouse gas, longtime climate change critic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., had this to say on CNN's The Situation Room : "We see that that science [behind the announcement] has been pretty well debunked," he said referring to the e-mails. "I remember a long time ago ... I made a speech on the Senate floor where I talked about all these scientists coming in, talking about how they can't get their side on there and the science is all rigged. ... Sure enough, what is happening today in this whole debate is just what we said was happening four years ago." Specifically, Inhofe was talking about data that the EPA used to form its decision. It came from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body that "reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socioeconomic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change." Thousands of scientists contribute data to the organization voluntarily, including scientists at CRU, the group whose e-mails were hacked. We've been following the complicated e-mail controversy for weeks, but there have been a number of issues that make fact-checking claims about the issue difficult. To start, the e-mails were obtained illegally, which raises questions about their validity. Some e-mails simply demonstrate a professional rivalry between scientists, a phenomenon that's nothing new to the profession. Scientists are disputing the meaning of some of the language in the e-mails. Finally, CRU has announced that it is conducting its own investigation into whether data were tossed out or otherwise manipulated unethically; that investigation is not complete. We do know that these e-mails clearly demonstrate some petty professional backstabbing and a degree of skepticism within the CRU circle about opinions that do not match their own. Read our story on the e-mail controversy . We also know this: The e-mails do not prove that climate change is a hoax. Here's why: Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 Independent of CRU's data, agencies and academics all over the world are coming to essentially the same conclusion: Climate change is happening. Just take a recent report issued by the United States Global Research Program , an arm of the government that, since 1989, has been coordinating and integrating federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. The report states that "global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced. ... Warming over this century is projected to be considerably greater than over the last century. The global average temperature since 1900 has risen by about 1.5ºF. By 2100, it is projected to rise another 2 to 11.5ºF." There are other ways to quantify these changes. NASA, for instance, tracks data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder to see how temperatures are affecting the arctic. The most recent data show that 2009 marks the third-lowest Arctic sea ice minimum on record. Similarly, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that sea levels over the past 100 years are rising at an average rate of 1.7 millimeters annually, "which is significantly larger than the rate averaged over the last several thousand years. Since 1993, global sea level has risen at an accelerating rate of around 3.5 mm/year. Much of the sea level rise to date is a result of increasing heat of the ocean causing it to expand." And here's an important point on NOAA's Web site: "A number of agencies around the world have produced datasets of global-scale changes in surface temperature using different techniques to process the data and remove measurement errors that could lead to false interpretations of temperature trends," the Web site says. "The warming trend that is apparent in all of the independent methods of calculating global temperature change is also confirmed by other independent observations, such as the melting of mountain glaciers on every continent, reductions in the extent of snow cover, earlier blooming of plants in spring, a shorter ice season on lakes and rivers, ocean heat content, reduced arctic sea ice, and rising sea levels." In short, temperatures are rising. So, to say that the CRU e-mails debunk the science supporting climate change leaves out the important point that CRU isn't the only organization looking at the issue. Indeed, there are reams of data that show temperatures are increasing and that greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are largely to blame. On this one, Inhofe is Fals

"President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions," but China and India will still be allowed to increase their emissions On Day 2 of the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin decided to weigh in. Her op-ed, published in the Dec. 9, 2009, edition of the Washington Post , enumerated her concerns about a series of e-mails that skeptics say show disagreement over the seriousness of climate change and President Barack Obama's plan to pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels. We wrote a separate story on the e-mails . Here, we'll look at the emissions questions. Palin argues that developing countries, like India and China, should at least be equal partners in the effort to slow global warming; it's unfair for the United States to shoulder the burden. "Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions," she wrote. Is that really what is happening? Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 On Nov. 27, 2009, China announced it will lower emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That may sound like a lot, but it's important to read the fine print here. China is talking about lowering carbon intensity. It's a measurement of how much energy it takes to produce a given amount of economic output. Climate experts say this means emissions from China will likely continue to grow along with its economy, but not as quickly as they would have otherwise. "Let's say you commit to an intensity target of -6% per year in carbon/GDP," wrote climate scientist Jonathan Koomey, professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "If your GDP grows at 10% per year, that means your carbon emissions will still grow 4% per year. So you're improving your carbon efficiency but absolute emissions are still increasing." Indeed, China's GDP is growing rapidly. In the third quarter of this year, it grew 8.9 percent, likely bringing the total annual growth to 8 percent. On Dec. 4, India offered a similar proposal. Officials there say the country is prepared to cut carbon intensity from 20 to 25 percent by 2020. It's a landmark announcement for India; traditionally, the country has argued that it cannot afford to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But like China, India's economy is growing rapidly, and with it its carbon emissions. Obama, on the other hand, is arguing for a cut large enough that the United States would see an absolute reduction in emissions, explained Koomey. (Obama's plan to trim emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is part of a cap-and-trade change bill pending in the House of Representatives. A Senate bill would require a 20 percent cut.) Koomey, like many climate scientists, say overall cuts -- even from developing countries -- are necessary to really slow down climate change. While the United States' proposed cuts are more stringent than those proposed by China or India, they're less aggressive than the 25 to 50 percent emissions reduction scientists say countries must adopt to hold global average temperature increases to about 2 degrees Celsius. So, where does that leave Palin's claim? She's correct that China and India's plans will allow them to increase emissions, while the United States would have to cut back. For this claim, Palin gets a Tru

A recent drop in the unemployment rate is questionable because it was calculated "over two days of the Thanksgiving week. On his Dec. 8, 2009, radio show, conservative host Rush Limbaugh mocked President Barack Obama's claim that the job market is stabilizing. Limbaugh played a tape of Obama giving a speech on the economy and jobs earlier that morning at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Finally," Obama said, "we're no longer seeing the severe deterioration in the job market that we once were. In fact, we learned on Friday (Dec. 4) that the unemployment rate fell slightly last month." Then Limbaugh interrupts. "Stop the tape. That's because the figures were taken over two days of the Thanksgiving week where people were not working, were not looking for work, were not filing claims and so this -- wait 'til that number is revised. Wait 'til the number ends up being revised. It's going to go up." To determine whether the timing of a holiday could disrupt a long-standing federal statistic, we'll start by looking at the figures Obama was referring to. The numbers released Dec. 4 were the ones that most people think of whenever they think of unemployment statistics -- namely, the "unemployment rate" as calculated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics using the Current Population Survey. Using in-person and phone interviews, Labor Department officials track a sampling of households to determine each member's status in the work force, then use that raw data to help calculate the unemployment rate. On Dec. 4, officials announced that unemployment in November had edged downward, to 10.0 from 10.2 percent in October. That is the slight fall that the president referenced in his speech. But experts say this data couldn't have been skewed by Thanksgiving week, for two reasons. First, the Current Population Survey interviews always refer to someone's employment status during week that includes the 12th of the month. This November, that was the week of Monday, Nov. 9, to Friday, Nov. 13 -- two weeks before Thanksgiving. Second, the data from the Current Population Survey is "seasonally adjusted." That means that before the numbers are released, officials adjust them to smooth out any fluctuations caused by the calendar. Even though the term "seasonally adjusted" makes it sound as if officials only adjust the numbers to reflect variations tied to winter, spring, summer and fall, the adjustments also take into account factors that could make a particular week an oddity. The Labor Department and economists say that the seasonal adjustments are based on well-established trends and would take into account any quirks from the presence of a holiday during the data-collection week. So Limbaugh is incorrect that the unemployment rate cited by Obama could have been skewed by what was happening during Thanksgiving week. That said, Limbaugh's assertion isn't entirely out of left (or right) field. There's another unemployment statistic that typically gets some coverage in the media, though less than the unemployment rate: the number of initial jobless claims. This statistic is compiled by a different part of the Labor Department -- the Employment and Training Administration -- and reflects all available data on residents who are applying for unemployment insurance for the first time. And this year, just a day before the unemployment rate was announced, an initial jobless claims number was released ... using statistics collected during Thanksgiving week (although not just on two days of that week, as Limbaugh said). As it happened, those numbers fell slightly as well. Some economists say that having a holiday fall during the data collection week is at least a potential problem for statistical reliability. Adolfo Laurenti, deputy chief economist and managing director of Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said that the survey's reliance on 50 different state agencies for data makes it somewhat more susceptible to anomalies, such as the timing of a holiday. But the numbers for the initial jobless claims, like the Current Population Survey figures, are seasonally adjusted, based on the Labor Department's years of experience with recurring patterns. So the fact that Thanksgiving fell during this week should not make a difference with this data, either. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 One final note: On Dec. 10, 2009, the initial jobless claims numbers for the week ending Dec. 5 were released, and they were higher than they were the previous week. Limbaugh can perhaps take a measure of vindication, but it should not obscure the fact that his claim of holiday bias is incorrect. Skepticism about the seasonal adjustment methodology could lead someone to believe that the initial jobless claim numbers were skewed by the holiday week. But it would be a stretch for Limbaugh to argue that he was referring to initial jobless claims rather than the unemployment rate. Not only is the unemployment rate the most commonly cited unemployment statistic, but Obama, in the taped lead-in, clearly refers to the "unemployment rate." Since this statistic uses data about what was happening two weeks before Thanksgiving -- and since both measures are seasonally adjusted to eliminate factors such as holidays -- we rate Limbaugh's statement Fals

The "post-Soviet industrial meltdown is responsible for most of the progress in reducing carbon emissions that Europe is able to claim. This week, world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to hammer out a global climate accord. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson had this to say about the upcoming summit in his Dec. 1, 2009, column: "When the Copenhagen climate summit convenes next week, the European nations that have led the crusade against global warming will be able to report that the continent has met the targets for carbon-emission reductions set in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. There may be shoulder dislocations from all the self-congratulatory back-patting," Robinson wrote. "But the Kyoto targets were well on the way toward being met before they were even established. The targets are based on 1990 emissions levels -- after the Soviet Union and the East Bloc had been fouling the air for years with their antiquated, carbon-spewing heavy industries. When the communist regimes -- and their creaky economies -- collapsed in a heap, emissions from the former Soviet-dominated zone fell by nearly 40 percent. ... This post-Soviet industrial meltdown is responsible for most of the progress in reducing carbon emissions that Europe is able to claim." Like Robinson, we expect the next 10 days to be full of complicated discussion about carbon emissions and reductions -- and a lot of boasting by the United States, Europe and other countries about all they're doing to slow climate change. So his claim about emissions reductions in former Soviet territory intrigued us. But before we dig into this statement, a little background on the meeting in Copenhagen will be useful. It's arguably the most important climate gathering since 1997, when participating countries adopted the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan. Collectively, 38 industrialized countries -- otherwise known as Annex B countries -- committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels. At the time, 15 of those countries were members of the nascent European Union. The rest included Canada, Australia, and a handful of Eastern European countries recently liberated from the former Soviet Union; the protocol refers to these nations as "economies in transition." The United States never ratified the treaty. In fact, according to data from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Web site -- an international treaty written in 1992 meant to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations -- our emissions have increased 17 percent over 1990 levels. The protocol went into force in 2005, and it expires in 2012. So, world leaders are gathering in Copenhagen with the hope of laying the groundwork for the next round of emissions reductions. However, it's unclear what will actually be accomplished at the meeting. Congress has been slow to act on a cap-and-trade bill , which was initially considered the United States' strongest bargaining chip. And negotiations haven't been helped by news of hacked e-mails between climate scientists at Climate Research Unit that skeptics say show disagreement on the seriousness of global warming. Historical data from the UNFCCC show that greenhouse gas emissions in Eastern Europe dropped dramatically after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. For example, Ukraine's annual carbon dioxide emissions dropped from 715 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 1990 to 426 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 1994. All the experts we spoke with agreed this drop was due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. They also told us that a specific drop of "nearly 40 percent" was also in the ballpark. We asked Robinson, and he pointed us to this post on the Green Grok, a respected blog about environmental issues maintained by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, that includes a chart of emissions reductions derived from the most recent UNFCCC data. Indeed, in 2007, emissions from eastern European countries were still about 37 percent below 1990 levels, according to the blog. They agreed that Robinson's second point -- that the "post-Soviet industrial meltdown is responsible for most of the progress in reducing carbon emissions that Europe is able to claim" -- has some truth to it. But they also told us that the story is more complicated than Robinson makes it seem. Emissions in Europe have fallen for several reasons, said Michael Levi, director of the program on energy security and climate change for the Council on Foreign Relations. For example, during the 1990s, the United Kingdom switched from coal energy to natural gas, which helped trim emissions. And Europe's population has remained relatively flat. But more importantly, Europe has had some pretty serious policies in place to reduce emissions, Levi said, including a carbon trading plan and incentives for alternative energy production. "Overall, [Robinson's] point is correct, but it's overstated," he said. Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor at Nicholas School, agreed. "The essence of the claim by Eugene Robinson is indeed correct," he wrote us in an e-mail. "According to the latest year of reporting (2007), emission reductions in the EU-15 were driven largely by large reductions in Germany and the U.K. Part of the large reductions in Germany were driven by reunification with East Germany and part of the large reductions in the U.K. were driven by switch from coal to natural gas due to reforms of energy markets." Those variables paired with new climate change policies have reduced emissions in Western European countries by 4 percent, according to UNFCCC data. In an e-mail, Robinson agreed that he may have glossed over that point. "The EU countries did reduce emissions by 4 percent; I gave them credit for holding emissions down but perhaps not enough credit for the actual reduction." We also think it may have been more accurate for Robinson to clarify that the "Europeans" included the transitioning economies from the former Soviet bloc. But Robinson argued that his overall point stands. "The point I was trying to make, and I still believe it's valid, is that the Soviet bloc collapse created a huge, one-time fall-off in emissions that makes the numbers look better than they otherwise would against the Kyoto targets," he wrote. With that point, we concur. Our experts tell us that it's widely understood that the fall of the Soviet Union meant major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. But they also said that Robinson glosses over important points in his statement, including that many European Union countries have taken key steps to slow climate change. We give Robinson a Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022

"To use money from the TARP fund in the manner that is being discussed by the White House and congressional Democrats would be a violation of the law. In a speech at the Brookings Institution on Dec. 8, 2009, President Barack Obama proposed a whole new batch of economic stimulus initiatives -- everything from tax breaks for small businesses to investments in roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. And Obama said the programs could largely be paid for with money realized by new forecasts that the cost of the bailout of financial institutions last fall, otherwise known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), will be $200 billion less than anticipated earlier this year. Some of that money would go toward reducing the deficit, Obama said, but some could offset the cost of the new programs. Many Republican leaders cried foul, saying any money unspent or paid back to the TARP program must go to pay down the national debt. U.S. Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Conference, went one step further, saying Obama's plan would violate the law. "The TARP legislation actually rightly demanded that any money not used to purchase toxic assets in the bill be used to pay down the national debt," Pence said from the floor of the House on Dec. 8, 2009. "The legislation specifically says that any leftover TARP money goes to deficit reduction." "Let me be clear on this point," Pence added. "To use money from the TARP fund in the manner that is being discussed by the White House and congressional Democrats would be a violation of the law, and it would betray the trust of the American people." Does the law really bar Congress from spending that TARP money on the kind of economic stimulus described by the president? Here's what the TARP legislation states in Section 106, Part D: "Revenues of, and proceeds from the sale of troubled assets purchased under this Act, or from the sale, exercise, or surrender of warrants or senior debt instruments acquired under section 113 shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." But budget experts say there are ways Congress could get around that, legally. Congress could rescind the TARP money and then, in a separate action, use the savings to offset the stimulus, said Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "So technically, it would not be TARP money," Riedl said. "But in all honesty, it'd be a shell game to use what would have been used for TARP to offset these expansions of government. If they do it this way, I believe it would be legal, although it would definitely go against the spirit of the TARP program." Congress could also opt to simply change the TARP legislation it made last year, said James Gattuso, a senior fellow in regulatory policy at Heritage. But no matter how it's done, he said, to use money from TARP for economic stimulus would grow the national debt. "To say this is deficit-neutral is ignoring reality," Gattuso said. Legislators who proposed TARP never anticipated it'd lose all of the money. Dean Baker, an economist and co-director of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, assumes Congress would simply spend the new stimulus money as if the TARP program never existed. "The TARP money automatically reverts to the Treasury under the law," Baker said. "So when Obama says that he will use TARP money to pay down the deficit, he is just saying that he does not intend to violate the law. "Congress can of course vote to spend new money on anything it wants," Baker said. "If it votes to spend new money that it wants to call 'TARP money,' it is free to do so also. That seems to be what is going on here." For his part, Obama addressed the concerns about not putting the TARP money entirely toward direct debt reduction. "There are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits on the one hand, and investing in job creation and economic growth on the other," Obama said in his speech at Brookings. "This is a false choice. Ensuring that economic growth and job creation are strong and sustained is critical to ensuring that we are increasing revenues and decreasing spending on things like unemployment insurance so that our deficits will start coming down. At the same time, instilling confidence in our commitment to being fiscally prudent gives the private sector the confidence to make long-term investments in our people and in America." But our question is whether Congress can legally pull off what President Obama has proposed. Pence is correct that there is a provision in TARP that prohibits the government from directly spending TARP funds on some of the programs Obama outlined. But even conservative budget analysts say there are legislative ways for that money to be legally recycled back into federal coffers and then applied to economic stimulus projects. And so we rate Pence's statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/8678f709-274e-47fc-a449-86cb41553c

"I'm predicting (the Saints) will go not only undefeated, but all the way through the Super Bowl -- something that's never been done before. After the New Orleans Saints squeaked by with an overtime win over the hapless Washington Redskins on Dec. 6, 2009, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was apparently feeling pretty confident about his undefeated Saints. "I'm predicting we'll go, not only undefeated, but all the way through the Super Bowl -- something that's never been done before," Jindal said in an interview with radio station WWL in New Orleans the day after the game. "I think the Saints are going to set a national record right here." Clearly, Jindal, who has been talked about as a presidential contender, has not seen the annual -- some would say obnoxious -- champagne celebration by some members of the 1972 Dolphins after the last undefeated NFL team falls. Led by coach Don Shula and quarterback Bob Griese, that Dolphins team laid claim to the first and only "perfect season," going 14-0 in the regular season and then going on to win the Super Bowl. "With all due respect to Governor Jindal, our fans in Louisiana and elsewhere will be disappointed to learn that he forgot about the most accomplished team in NFL history -– the 1972 'Perfect Season' Miami Dolphins," Harvey Greene, the team’s senior vice president of media relations, wrote in an e-mail to Politico , which detailed Jindal's misstep. "We wish the Saints, and the Indianapolis Colts, who are also undefeated, the best of luck in their attempt to match our undefeated season, and we will be the first to congratulate either team if they accomplish that feat. But until then, we remain the only perfect team in NFL history, an achievement our players and coaches rightly are proud of." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 That's the kind of measured response we might have expected from the Dolphins' front office. But with the Saints still only 12-0 (they'd need to win four more regular season games and three playoff games to finish perfect), we think this smack talk from former Dolphins running back Mercury Morris, uttered when the New England Patriots made a run at a perfect season in 2007, is perhaps more appropriate: "Like I said, don't call me when you're in my town, call me when you're on my block and I see you next door moving your furniture in." We're all for hometown boostering, especially from a guy like Gov. Jindal who said he suffered through the Saints' many bad years too, but we're all about the facts here, and he fumbled this one. We rate his statement False

Labor union president Andy Stern is "the most frequent visitor" at the White House. Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck recently found another rhetorical weapon to use against President Barack Obama: White House visitor logs. In a Dec. 3, 2009, broadcast, Beck decried that Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, appears more times in a White House visitor log release than anyone else. "You've got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country," Beck said. "If I would have told you instead that the most frequent visitor of the White House, over the secretary of state and everybody else, is a labor union president [Stern] who has repeatedly said workers of the world unite ... would you have believed it?" (For the record, "Workers of the world, unite!" is the popular, if unofficial, translation of the final exhortation in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto .) We found the source of Beck's claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including Clinton, who was listed three times. But that's not the whole story. Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment). Among those who visited more frequently than Stern, according to the combination of the two logs, were Lewis (Lee) Sachs, counselor to Treasury Secetary Timothy Geithner, with 92 visits; associate attorney general Tom Perrelli, with 49; Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski with 47; Spencer Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general, with 38; and Health and Human Services office of health reform director Jeanne Lambrew, with 27. (Stern visited twice more during the period covered by the second batch of data, giving him a total of 24 visits.) Another complication is that the first batch of data -- covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead -- is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, that name would not appear in the database. So there's no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public. (All records dated after Sept. 15, 2009, will be released, the White House says, with exceptions for issues of national security, personal safety and a few other caveats.) Finally, there are a lot of important people whose visits are not ordinarily captured by the White House log system -- most notably, Cabinet members, like the one Beck mentioned, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. While the visitor logs show a mere three visits by Clinton, we were able to confirm at least 26 separate White House visits by the secretary of state by using three public Web sites -- the White House's own site, the White House Flickr site and the State Department's site. Our sources column at the right includes the full list of Clinton's 26 visits, with links to the documentation. Since the White House has said that it cannot fulfill our request for a full listing of Clinton's White House visits, it's possible that the number of Clinton visits is actually higher. (And we have not included instances in which Clinton met with the president in locations away from the White House itself, such as flights aboard Air Force One and foreign travel, even though we found evidence documenting those sorts of visits as well.) So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect. We rate his statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

When Obama was interviewed by American reporters in Asia, "Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. At a jobs summit at the White House on Dec. 3, President Barack Obama closed his remarks with criticism of the media and the political culture in Washington, D.C. Obama was responding to comments from the chairman and CEO of Ethan Allen, a furniture company, who said that the bad economy has forced companies to reinvent themselves and compete globally. Obama said the United States needs to rediscover "a sense of seriousness of purpose" when it comes to education, to government managing money properly and to executives having an obligation to workers. "It is important to understand what's at stake and that we can't keep on playing games," Obama added. "I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip, thinking about the economy. When I sat down for a round of interviews, not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about, had I read Sarah Palin's book? True. But it's an indication of how -- how, you know, our political debate doesn't match up with what we need to do and where we need to go." Obama's audience laughed when Obama mentioned Palin, the Republican Party's 2008 vice presidential nominee. We decided to check the transcripts to see what Obama was asked on his trip. We wanted to see if it was true that he hadn't been asked any questions about the economy or Asia. Obama gave a round of brief interviews while traveling in Asia, with most of his comments airing on American television Nov. 18. The coverage shows that four reporters got roughly 10 minutes each with the president. We reviewed the transcripts and found several examples to contradict Obama's statement. On Asia, Chuck Todd of NBC News asked Obama about human rights in China, and Major Garrett of Fox News asked Obama about trade agreements with South Korea. Both Todd and Garrett asked about the administration's efforts to create jobs. Todd asked how the announced jobs summit would actually create jobs, and Garrett asked if job creation efforts would add to the deficit. Todd did not ask about Palin, though Garrett did. The other interviews we found were with Ed Henry of CNN and Chip Reid of CBS News. Both of them also asked about Palin. Henry also asked a viewer question about what Obama was doing to hold banks accountable for lending to startups and refinancing mortgages. Every interviewer spoke with Obama about making a decision about troop levels in Afghanistan, and most of them also asked about health reform. (ABC News did not join the round of interviews.) Yes, three of four reporters asked Obama about Sarah Palin. A recent Washington Post poll showed Palin to be the top choice of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Palin garnered 17 percent, followed by Mike Huckabee with 10 percent and Mitt Romney with 9 percent. Her memoir was released the day before the interviews aired. Obama said at the Dec. 3 jobs forum that when he was in Asia and granted interviews to reporters, "not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy." That is clearly an exaggeration. We found that two reporters asked him about Asia, two reporters asked him about job creation, and another reporter asked him about mortgages and lending. He said "not one" did, implying that the interviews lacked substance. We rate his statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"In the past year, more than 20 percent of Americans have changed their mind about the war in Afghanistan. They conclude we shouldn't be there. President Barack Obama gave a major speech Dec. 1 to make the case for increasing troops in Afghanistan. But antiwar Democrats still say it's the wrong decision. One of those Democrats is Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida. The night before Obama's speech, Grayson appeared on MSNBC's The Ed Show to argue against sending more troops. "We have people now who are in first grade and second grade who have never known an America their entire lives that was an America at peace. And I think it's time we thought about that, thought about what we're like as human beings and as a country. We need to pursue peace," Grayson said. Host Ed Schultz asked Grayson what should be done to oppose the policy. "What we always do," Grayson said. "Organize, organize and organize. Tell the president, tell our elected representatives, and hope that we can build bridges among enough congressmen so that we can tell the president honestly that this war should be over. And I've been following the polls and I've seen that, in the case of Afghanistan, the polls are shifting. In the past year, more than 20 percent of Americans have changed their mind about the war in Afghanistan. They conclude we shouldn't be there. And that's what we need to do. We need to change people's minds." We wondered if Grayson was right about a dramatic shift in the polls on the war in Afghanistan. As usual with polls, a lot depends on how you ask the question. We asked Grayson's staff what polls he was referring to, and they pointed us to a USA Today/Gallup poll taken from Nov. 20-22, 2009. The poll question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan?" The poll showed a 20-point drop in approval for Obama. In July, 56 percent of respondents said they approved of how he was handling Afghanistan. In November, 35 percent approved. But we don't think approving of Obama's handling of Afghanistan is quite the same as saying Americans "have changed their mind about the war in Afghanistan" and think we "shouldn't be there." More on point might be the Gallup poll that asked the question, "Thinking now about U.S. military action in Afghanistan that began in October 2001, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan, or not?" The answer to that question has been relatively stable. In November, 60 percent said no, we didn't make a mistake. In July, it was 61 percent, and in August 2008, it was 63 percent. We also found this question from the ABC News/Washington Post poll: "All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, or not?" In November, 44 percent said yes, it has been worth it. In July that number was 51 percent, and last December it was 55 percent. That's a decline of about 11 points, not more than 20. In reviewing a number of polls about Afghanistan, the approval for Obama's handling of Afghanistan has seen a particularly wide swing this year. This could be because he's displeasing both antiwar Democrats and more conservative Republicans. We should also note that these polls were before his speech, and that it's possible such a high-profile speech could improve Obama's ratings. Grayson said, "In the past year, more than 20 percent of Americans have changed their mind about the war in Afghanistan. They conclude we shouldn't be there." But that 20 percent number represents displeasure with Obama and not the dropoff in support for the war, which is at just 11 percent. And another measurement -- whether people believe the United States made a mistake by sending forces to the country -- has remained stable. So we rate the statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"We're going to have more troops (in Afghanistan) . . . than the Russians had. 0

"In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. President Barack Obama has decided to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and he made the case for the increase in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. "I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Obama said. "This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. "This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al-Qaida can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on al-Qaida, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region." An alert reader asked us about Obama's comments on capturing extremists in the United States who had been sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was apparently referring to the case of Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Colorado resident whom authorities arrested on Sept. 19, 2009. Zazi was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Authorities say Zazi received training from al-Qaida in Pakistan on how to build explosives and was constructing a bomb from chemicals he purchased at a beauty supply shop in Colorado. Zazi then traveled to New York City on Sept. 10 "in furtherance of the criminal plan," according to the Justice Department. Authorities say he left the city after being tipped off that he was under surveillance; he was arrested a short time later. Zazi is actually a legal resident of the United States. His family arrived in the United States in the early 1990s, according to news reports, and Zazi went to high school in New York City, speaks fluent English, and ran a coffee cart for several years in lower Manhattan. Zazi has traveled to Pakistan several times to visit friends and family, and authorities say it was during his last trip at the end of 2008 that Zazi went to an al-Qaida-run training camp and received instructions in explosives and weapons. His attorney said Zazi did travel to Pakistan and purchase items at the supply shop, but neither of those activities are illegal, and that the government has not indicted anyone else to prove charges of conspiracy. (Zazi's father and another man were arrested on charges of lying to investigators.) Prosecutors told a judge on Dec. 3 that they expect to file additional charges soon. Obama said during his speech, "In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror." Is it fair to say Zazi was "sent here" from the border region? We could argue this point, since Zazi lived in the United States for many years, but it seems trivial: If people receive training in al-Qaida camps in the border region to commit acts of terror, does it really matter if they were originally from that region or just visiting temporarily? We'll note here for clarity's sake that Zazi was a U.S. resident who allegedly visited the training camps before returning to the United States. We don't believe it's quite accurate for Obama to flatly state that the arrested men were intent on committing "new acts of terror" when the trial has not yet started. In fact, there are many questions surrounding the case, most notably who Zazi's co-conspirators might have been. The other two men arrested so far were charged with lying to investigators, not committing acts of terror. If a court had convicted Zazi, we would likely rate Obama's statement True. The Justice Department is backing Obama's statement, but these men have not been convicted. Given that, we rate Obama's statement Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Less than 10 percent of Obama's Cabinet appointees "have any experience in the private sector. Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck has seized on a claim circulating on the Internet to argue that the Obama administration has little understanding of American business and is too focused on expanding government. "History has proven over and over again — and so has the post office, for that matter — that government is not the answer," Beck said on his Nov. 30, 2009, show. "You need to unleash the people. The entrepreneurs. And if you are wondering how it is that the government can't see that — how they can be pondering even bigger stimulus packages as they stare the failure of the first one right in the face — I'll show you. Here are the past presidents and the number of appointees in their Cabinets with private sector experience — folks that have done more than write on the chalkboard; they've been out there, in the real world. Let's compare President Nixon — he's over 50 percent — with President Obama: Under 10 percent of his appointees have any experience in the private sector." We did a little digging and found that the claim is based on a study by Michael Cembalest, the chief investment officer for J.P. Morgan Private Bank. In a Nov. 24, 2009, column titled "Obama's Business Blind Spot" and published on Forbes.com, Cembalest wrote, "In a quest to see what frame of reference the administration might have on this issue, I looked back at the history of the presidential Cabinet. Starting with the creation of the secretary of commerce back in 1900, I compiled the prior private-sector experience of all 432 Cabinet members, focusing on those positions one would expect to participate in this discussion: secretaries of State; Commerce; Treasury; Agriculture; Interior; Labor; Transportation; Energy; and Housing & Urban Development." He continued, "Many of these individuals started a company or ran one, with first-hand experience in hiring and firing, domestic and international competition, red tape, recessions, wars and technological change. Their industries included agribusiness, chemicals, finance, construction, communications, energy, insurance, mining, publishing, pharmaceuticals, railroads and steel; a cross-section of the American experience. (I even gave [one-third] credit to attorneys focused on private-sector issues, although one could argue this is a completely different kettle of fish.) One thing is clear: The current administration, compared with past Democratic and Republican ones, marks a departure from the traditional reliance on a balance of public- and private-sector experiences." In an accompanying chart, Cembalest reported that in the Obama administration, fewer than 10 percent of the Cabinet appointees counted under those rules had private sector experience. According to the chart, all other administrations going back to Theodore Roosevelt's had rates in at least the high 20s, with the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations approaching 60 percent. (He wrote in a footnote that the data came from a number of sources, including capsule biographies of Cabinet members posted on the Web site of the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs.) The chart — typically reprinted by itself, without Cembalest's accompanying narrative — circulated in the conservative blogosphere for a couple of days before eventually being picked up by Beck. We wondered if the claim was right, so we did some math of our own. In Obama's Cabinet, at least three of the nine posts that Cembalest and Beck cite — a full one-third — are occupied by appointees who, by our reading of their bios, had significant corporate or business experience. Shaun Donovan, Obama's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, served as managing director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., where he oversaw its investments in affordable housing loans. Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed the electronics research lab at one of America's storied corporate research-and-development facilities, AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work won a Nobel Prize for physics. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in addition to serving as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator, has been a partner in his family's farm for decades and, with his wife, owned and operated a Dairy Queen and radio stations in his home state of Colorado. Three other Obama appointees had legal experience in the private sector. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke spent part of their careers working as lawyers in private practice. Clinton and Vilsack worked as private-sector lawyers at the beginning of their careers, while Locke joined an international law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, after serving as governor of Washington state. At the firm, Locke "co-chaired the firm's China practice" and "helped U.S. companies break into international markets," according to his official biography. That sounds like real private sector experience to us. Finally, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm that advises international corporations on political and economic conditions overseas. The occupants of the two remaining Cabinet posts cited in the chart do not appear to have had significant private-sector experience: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Obama's Cabinet has even more private-sector experience if you go beyond the nine. Two of the Obama appointees could be considered entrepreneurs — the very people Beck would "unleash." Vice President Joe Biden, officially a Cabinet member, founded his own law firm, Biden and Walsh, early in his career, and it still exists in a later incarnation, Monzack Mersky McLaughlin and Browder, P.A. (The future vice president also supplemented his income by managing properties, including a neighborhood swimming pool.) And Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag founded an economic consulting firm called Sebago Associates that was later bought out by a larger firm. It's also worth noting that if you examine a larger group of senior Obama administration appointees, you'll find that more than one in four have experience as business executives, according to a June study by National Journal . That compared with the 38 percent the magazine found eight years earlier at the start of George W. Bush's administration. That's at least three times higher than the level claimed by Beck. We tracked down Cembalest to ask about his methodology. He said any effort to address the topic is heavily subjective, and he expressed regret that his work had been used for political ends, saying that it was not his intention to provide fodder for bloggers and talk show hosts. Cembalest said that he did discount the corporate experience of the three lawyers we identified — Clinton, Vilsack and Locke — and added that he awarded nothing for Donovan, Chu or Salazar, even though we found they had a fair amount private sector experience. Cembalest acknowledged fault in missing Salazar's business background, saying he would have given him a full point if he had it to do over again. But he added that the kind of private-sector experiences Chu and Donovan had (managing scientific research and handling community development lending, respectively) did not represent the kind of private-sector business experience he was looking for when doing his study. "What I was really trying to get at was some kind of completely, 100 percent subjective assessment of whether or not a person had had enough control of payroll, dealing with shareholders, hiring, firing and risk-taking that they'd be in a position to have had a meaningful seat at the table when the issue being discussed is job creation," Cembalest said. Cembalest said he has "written 250,000 words in research over the last decade, and every single thing I've ever done — except this one chart — was empirically based on data from the Federal Reserve" or another official source. "This is the one time I stepped out into making judgment calls, and I assure you I won't do it again. ... The frightening thing about the Internet is that people copy one chart from what you write and then it goes viral. So I've learned a lesson here that these kinds of issues are best left addressed by the people who practice them day in and day out." Which brings us back to how Beck used Cembalest's data. We'll acknowledge that rating someone's degree of private-sector experience is an inexact science, and it's true that Beck accurately relayed the information contained in Cembalest's chart. But at PolitiFact we hold people accountable for their own words. So we rate Beck's claim False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The Senate health care bill does not contain limits on medical malpractice lawsuits Republicans have a lot of concerns about the Senate health care bill, and one of their biggest is that it does not include any language to rein in lawsuits against doctors. On Day 2 of the chamber's health care debate, Republican leader Mitch McConnell spoke about the issue on the Senate floor as he encouraged colleagues to send the bill back to committees for some major changes. "Then we could start over and end junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals that drive up costs, something the majority didn’t find any room for in their 2,074-page bill — not a word about controlling junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals," McConnell said Dec. 1, 2009. That claim has been echoed by other conservatives, including Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. Their argument for limiting malpractice cases or their awards — supporters call it "tort reform" — involves saving money. If doctors are not scared of being sued, they're less likely to order unnecessary tests and procedures for their patients, thus reducing medical costs. Indeed, a Congressional Budget Office report from 2004 says health care premiums have risen recently in part "because insurance companies have faced increased costs to pay for claims (from growth in malpractice awards)." More recently, the independent budget office said that medical malpractice reform could save up to $54 billion over the next 10 years. President Barack Obama addressed the issue at a June meeting of the American Medical Association, saying, "I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits. ... I understand some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable." Nevertheless, Obama said malpractice awards should not be capped, as many Republicans want, because he believes the caps can be unfair to people who are wrongfully harmed. Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, a physician, gave some insight into the issue when it came up in a Virginia town hall meeting last summer. "Here's why tort reform is not in the bill: When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that the more stuff you put in it the more enemies you make," Dean said. "The reason tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth." So, Democrats have not included medical malpractice limits in either the House or Senate version of the bills. Instead, the administration has said it will give some states $3 million grants to test new approaches for limiting lawsuits. The two bills don't completely ignore the issue. The Senate bill includes nonbinding "sense of the Senate" language on page 1,858 that "states should be encouraged to develop and test alternatives to the existing civil litigation system as a way of improving patient safety, reducing medical errors, encouraging the efficient resolution of disputes ... while preserving an individual's right to seek redress in court." The House bill establishes an incentive for states to adopt alternatives to traditional malpractice lawsuits, but those proposals cannot include provisions to limit attorney fees or impose caps on damages. So, back to McConnell's claim. He said that the Senate bill does not include limits on medical malpractice litigation, and he is clearly correct. We rate his claim True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Under the Democratic health plan, families "will be forced to spend an additional $2,100 a year to keep their current health care. One of the big questions for health care reform has been how the legislation would affect insurance premiums for consumers. On Nov. 30, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, released a detailed analysis on how health insurance premiums might be affected by the Senate Democrats' health care bill. The CBO is a nonpartisan budget agency that calculates how much bills in Congress will cost the government. Their budget projections often make for solid political ammunition from proponents and opponents of various bills. So Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana cited the report as evidence that the Democrats' plan would drive up family premiums. "The CBO has confirmed what every American already knows, the Democrats' plan for a government takeover of health care will dramatically raise health care costs on working families," Pence said in a Nov. 30 press release. "This latest CBO study reveals that the health care bill before the U.S. Senate will raise individual insurance premiums by up to 13 percent. That means every family that refuses the government's one-size-fits-all plan, will be forced to spend an additional $2,100 a year to keep their current health care." The key qualifier in there -- likely missed by many not versed in insurance parlance -- is "individual" insurance premiums. The CBO broke its analysis of effects on premiums into three categories: • those in the small group market (generally people who get their insurance through businesses with up to 50 employees), which would make up about 13 percent of the total insurance market; • those in the large group market, which would account for about 70 percent of people; • those in the nongroup market, who would purchase their insurance as an individual through the government's health insurance "exchange," which may or may not include a public option. Pence is talking about that last group of people, the nongroup market, which is expected to grow to about 17 percent of the insurance market in 2016. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 According to the report, the CBO estimates that the average premium per person in new nongroup policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage under current law. More specifically, the average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies (up from $5,500 under current law) and $15,200 for family policies (up from $13,100 under current law). In other words, Pence is right that for some of this subset of Americans, their premiums could rise as much as 13 percent. But Pence fails to mention two key qualifiers. First, as the CBO report notes, the majority of nongroup enrollees (about 57 percent) would receive federal insurance subsidies, which on average would cover about two-thirds of the total premium. So for nongroup people getting subsidies, the amount they'd pay in premiums would be about 57 percent lower, on average, than what they would pay for nongroup coverage under current law. There's another flaw in Pence's statement. He says families would pay $2,100 more to keep "their current health care." In fact, much of what is driving up the cost of premiums in the nongroup market is that the government would require insurance companies in the exchange to offer a broader scope of benefits than most individual plans now include, an "essential health benefits" package that would match the benefits provided in most employer plans. So new nongroup policies would be required to cover a lot of things they don't currently cover -- things like maternity care, prescription drugs, and mental health and substance abuse treatment. Bottom line, it may cost more, but those people will be getting more insurance, and their out-of-pocket expense for medical needs should be smaller. According to the CBO report, an "apples to apples" comparison of the average price of equivalent insurance under the Democrats' plan would translate to an average premium of about 7 to 10 percent less than under current law. But our bigger problem with the Pence statement is the implication that the 13 percent rise in family health insurance premiums would apply to a larger group of people than it actually would. He says it would dramatically raise healthcare costs on working families. For the vast majority of people -- the five out of six nonelderly people who get their insurance through their employer -- the Democrats' plan would have a much smaller effect on premiums, the CBO concluded. In the small group market, employers with 50 or fewer workers, the CBO estimates the change in premiums would range from an increase of 1 percent to a decrease of 2 percent in 2016. In the large group market, premiums are projected to be zero to 3 percent lower in 2016 (relative to current law). In his press release, Pence takes a poke at President Barack Obama for failing to stick to his campaign promise to lower family premiums by $2,500. And on that front, Pence is accurate. The CBO analysis of the Senate Democrats' plan shows no such savings. We dealt with that claim separately on our Obameter, which tracks the progress of Obama's campaign promises. And we ruled it Stalled. But in this item, we're focused on Pence's claim that under the Democratic health plan, families "will be forced to spend an additional $2,100 a year to keep their current health care." That's only true for the roughly 8 percent of the market that purchases nongroup plans through the exchange and who don't receive a federal health insurance subsidy. According to the CBO, the vast majorty of working families -- who get their insurance through a large employer -- would actually see a slight decrease in premiums. It also does not account for the fact that the government would require individual policies to include better (more) coverage. And so we rule Pence's statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f1db323b-6621-4343-a2e4-27037bc8f8

A new Republican litmus test "would have resulted in (the GOP) kicking out Ronald Reagan. To enforce ideological purity, a proposal before the Republican National Committee would deny party funding to any GOP candidate who bucks the party's stance on at least three items from a 10-point checklist of issues. The idea has sparked controversy within the Republican Party, and Democrats have seized on it as ammunition for their claim that the GOP has become too rigidly doctrinaire to appeal to many American voters. Keith Olbermann, the liberal host of Countdown on MSNBC, welcomed the proposal on his Nov. 23, 2009, show as evidence that Republicans are out of the mainstream. Olbermann told viewers that the resolution -- which invoked the name of former President Ronald Reagan six times in its preamble -- would have effectively blackballed Reagan himself had it been in place during his political career. By Olbermann's count, the late conservative icon would have scored a measly four out of 10 -- just half of the eight he would have needed to secure financial backing from the party. As we looked at the Republican proposal, we were struck by how specific its 10 items are to today's political environment. Reagan didn't have to consider wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the prospect of gay marriage, for example. As a result, just a few of the checklist items can be directly compared to the issues Reagan faced, first during two terms as California governor and then as a two-term president. Because of this uncertainty, we won't rate Reagan -- or Olbermann -- in detail on each of the 10 issues. But if three problematic issues for Reagan exist, we think it's fair to say that he'd lose funds under the terms of today's proposal. We'll start by pointing out the one issue of the 10 that presents a clear case of Reagan overstepping today's Republican orthodoxy: • "We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants." In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which provided a path to amnesty for illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been in the United States for a certain period of time. Case closed. In the meantime, we settled upon six issues that we don't think can be used as fair comparisons, even though Olbermann did cite a few of them as examples of Reagan's unorthodox behavior on related issues. They are: • "We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government-run health care." • "We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation." • "We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check." • "We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges." • "We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat." • "We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act." While health care, energy policy, labor rights, military strategy, foreign affairs and gay rights were issues in Reagan's day just as they are today, we concluded that the battles in Reagan's time, and in ours, had enough unique factors that it's impossible to be sure what his actions then would have meant about the policy debates of today. That leaves three issues to determine whether Olbermann is right that Reagan would have been denied GOP funding. One is: • "We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion." Six months into his governorship in 1967, Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which has been widely described as the most liberal abortion law in the nation before the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade . Among other things, it permitted California's government-run Medicaid program to pay for abortions. "Reagan later admitted that abortion had been 'a subject I’d never given much thought to,'" wrote Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, co-authors of "The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand" in the National Review , a conservative magazine. "Moreover, his aides were divided on the question. ... Years later, Reagan remarked that he did 'more studying and soul searching' on the issue than any other as governor." Ultimately, Kengor and Doerner wrote, Reagan signed the bill, fearing that the Legislature would be able to override his veto and pass an even more sweeping measure. But that was far from the end of the story. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon told PolitiFact that "one of the reasons that Reagan became an opponent of abortion is that so many abortions were performed under the Therapeautic Abortion Act of 1967" -- more, even, than the bill's sponsors had envisioned. So, during the remainder of his political career, Reagan used his bully pulpit aggressively to oppose abortion. His presidential administration made some tangible antiabortion moves, such as instituting the "Mexico City policy," which denied foreign aid funding to groups that "perform or actively promote" abortion. The second is: • "We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership." As governor in 1967, Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which forbade the carrying of weapons in public. Later, in a 1991 speech, the former president spoke in favor of the Brady Bill -- a measure aggressively opposed by gun-rights groups that would establish a waiting period for gun purchases, so that law enforcement officials could conduct a background check on the purchaser. The law was named for Reagan's former press secretary, James Brady, who was seriously injured in John Hinckley's 1981 attempt on Reagan's life. (The bill was first introduced in Congress in 1987 and never made it to Reagan's desk during his presidency; Bill Clinton eventually signed it in 1993.) Despite these two actions, Reagan, as president, was generally a supporter of gun rights. Upon his death in 2004, the National Rifle Association eulogized him as a "hunter, rancher and outdoorsman," as a life member of the group, and as the first sitting president to address the NRA at an annual meeting. In addition, he signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, which included some provisions that tightened rules on gun ownership but which also eased many existing rules on firearms. It is generally considered a victory for the NRA rather than for gun-control forces. On both guns and abortion, then, Reagan unquestionably broke with today's Republican orthodoxy on one or more occasions -- but he also did things that were fully consistent with that orthodoxy. Finally, we'll look at the item dealing with fiscal policy. It's a bit complicated because it contains four parts: • "We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s 'stimulus' bill" Reagan gets unalloyed credit for sticking to the Republican principle of lowering taxes. When he entered office, the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. By the time he left office, it was 28 percent. Measured another way , the effective individual income tax rates dropped for Americans in many tax brackets, not just the richest. Judging whether Reagan promoted "smaller government" is trickier. For starters, "smaller government" could be defined to include such intangible factors as decreased regulation rather than just federal outlays. But even looking at federal spending, the trendlines are somewhat contradictory. Overall federal outlays increased by 57 percent over eight years, or about 7 percent a year. However, much of that increase was driven by defense spending. Looking at nondefense discretionary spending, the rise was much more modest -- 16 percent over eight years, or about 2 percent a year. Because that was less than the average rate of inflation during his presidency, some economists would consider that a cut. That said, it's pretty clear that Reagan didn't stick to the other two elements of this item -- deficits and debt. The average annual deficit during Reagan's presidency was $167 billion, with shortfalls ranging from $79 billion to $221 billion. By contrast, his two immediate predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never ran a deficit larger than $74 billion, and the president before them, Richard Nixon, never produced a deficit bigger than $23 billion. (Nixon even recorded a modest surplus in 1969.) As for the national debt, it rose from about $953 billion when Reagan took office to roughly $2.7 trillion when he left -- a bit less than three times its initial size. So on this item, too, both sides can pick and choose their evidence to show that Reagan did, or didn't, adhere to Republican fiscal orthodoxy. It's possible to draw at least two conclusions based on Reagan's example. One is that Reagan -- perhaps unhappily for ideologues on both the right and the left -- did not have immutable principles throughout his entire political life. He was a politician -- one who had to respond to his constituents, as well as to the specific demands and constraints of his office, whether it was governor or president. The other conclusion to draw is that parties themselves do not necessarily have immutable principles. Reagan's biographer Cannon points out that at the time the California Legislature passed the abortion bill, "more Republicans supported it than Democrats. That's because the issue was then seen almost entirely in religious terms, and there were more Roman Catholics among the Democratic legislators than the Republicans. In 1967, most Republicans agreed with the mantra of keeping the government out of the bedroom and the boardroom. ... So Reagan went along with the prevailing doctrine of his party at the time." Similarly, when the Legislature passed the Mulford Act, it won the support not just of liberal gun-control advocates but also of conservatives, who saw it as a way to weaken the growing power of the radical Black Panther movement, according to Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, Volume 1 . When Reagan signed both the gun bill and the abortion bill, then, one can easily argue that he was actually adhering to the conservatism of the time, even as he bucked the conservatism of today. This contrast underscores the challenges facing Olbermann and others who seek to discredit the RNC proposal. Indeed, the lead sponsor of the RNC resolution, James Bopp Jr., acknowledged as much after liberal attacks like Olbermann's began to emerge. According to the New York Times ' Caucus blog, Bopp "noted that the principles would change over time. ... Many of these were not issues in the 1980s, like cap and trade, card check, stimulus bill, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obamacare. So these were not measures that Reagan took a stand on, but I have no doubt that he would be right on each one. If we were proposing this resolution in 1981 for the 1982 election cycle, we would list, strategic missile defense, Reagan’s tax cuts, etc. He was right on those issues." But our mission here is not to critique the usefulness of Bopp's 10-point checklist; it's to judge whether Olbermann is right to say that Reagan would have fallen short on three or more items. On one item (amnesty for illegal immigrants) Reagan definitely broke with today's conservative orthodoxy. But on three others (abortion, gun control and fiscal policy) evidence exists in either direction. So, deciding whether Reagan qualifies under the rules of the resolution ends up being a tough call with evidence for both sides. We rate Olbermann's assertion Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"If you want to talk firsts for Bush, this was the first time in American history that a president took us into a war and cut taxes. With President Barack Obama scheduled to make a speech on Dec. 1 on how the United States will proceed with the war in Afghanistan, war spending was the topic du jour on the Sunday political talk shows. Some Democratic officials have even talked of a war surtax to pay for the expense of additional troops. Depending on how many more troops Obama decides to send, the cost could top $30 billion. "This is a lot of money," liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Nov. 29, 2009. "And the point is, we should have been paying for these wars to begin with, right from the beginning. I mean, this was, if you want to talk firsts for Bush, this was the first time in American history that a president took us into a war and cut taxes." As the talk about the price tag for the war in Afghanistan heats up, we thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at Krugman's claim about Bush being the first to cut taxes after leading the country into war, and to add some context. Generally, we found, taxes and wars have followed a fairly predictable pattern: Taxes rise during wartime and then come back down in the years afterward. We'll start with the Civil War. Congress enacted various income and excise taxes to meet the rising cost of the war, most of which were repealed in the years after the war. During World War I, the 1916 Revenue Act and the War Revenue Act of 1917 increased tax revenue from $761 million in 1916 to $3.6 billion in 1918. After the war, in the 1920s, Congress cut taxes five times. The same was true during World War II. Tax increases over several years raised revenues from $8.7 billion in 1941 to $45.2 billion in 1945. Again, tax cuts followed the war. It's worth noting, however, that during all of those wars, the war expenses were much larger than today, relative to the size of the economy. Congress hasn't formally declared war since then, but we think it's fair to consider the wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Iraq. However, we have decided not to include the armed conflicts in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 due to their much smaller cost, length and scope. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 17, 2022 in una publicación en Facebook "Ministros de Defensa de OTAN deciden invadir a RUSIA para prevenir ataque de Putin”. By Maria Ramirez Uribe • October 17, 2022 So those are the wars. But what about major tax cuts? That's a smaller and somewhat more subjective list. Some of the most notable tax cuts have come during peacetime, such as the Reagan tax cut that took effect over the years 1982-84, and the smaller capital gains tax cuts under Carter and Clinton. The one notable exception is the Kennedy tax cuts, which took effect in 1964. The conflict in Vietnam stretched from 1959 to 1975, but when the Kennedy tax cuts were implemented, the Vietnam War did not have much of an impact on the U.S. budget. Within 18 months, when the tax cuts were in full bloom, the United States was spending plenty in Vietnam. The tax rates were phasing down just as our commitment in Vietnam was ramping up, said William Ahern of the Tax Foundation. "That would maybe be a counter example (to Krugman)," he said. But many argue the Kennedy tax cuts shouldn't count in Krugman's example because they came at a time when the United States did not anticipate the escalation of the war that followed. "The Kennedy tax cuts were proposed, and then adopted by Congress, before the Vietnam war was a big expenditure item," said Gary Burtless, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. "Vietnam initially did not require much in the way of additional outlays; it was not like either World War II or the Korean War, which started out with a huge runup in military spending. It was not until 1968 that the Johnson administration proposed the surtax to help pay for the Vietnam War. ... Still, the Vietnam era surtax went into effect within five years of major spending on that war. We are now more than eight years into the 'war on terrorism,' and we’ve had only tax reductions; no tax hikes." We think Krugman is on firm ground. Aside from the Kennedy tax cuts during the Vietnam War, which were adopted before Vietnam became such a major fiscal issue, taxes have gone up during war. "Traditionally countries raise taxes to pay for wars, then cut taxes by a portion of the amount raised once peace descends," agreed J.D. Foster, senior fellow in the economics of fiscal policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But Foster noted two caveats. One, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 came during a jobless recovery period after a recession. And the economic stimulus package championed by Obama includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years -- also in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Curious though," Foster said, "whether Krugman is arguing we should have raised taxes when the economy was experiencing a jobless recovery (and by implication arguing we should raise taxes now), or whether he is trying to say Obama is just like Bush since if Bush was the first to do this, then Obama was the second." Krugman has not advocated a tax increase to deal with the war in Afghanistan. And we think Krugman also has some wiggle room on that second point, because he said Bush was the first president who "took us into a war" and cut taxes. Both wars were inherited by Obama. Again, there are many different political and economic realities now than there were when taxes generally rose during wars, but Krugman is still mostly right. We dock him some points, though, because the Kennedy tax cuts technically came during the Vietnam War and rate the statement Mostly Tru

"The Congressional Budget Office -- supposedly non-partisan -- estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four (from cap and trade) will be $6,800 per year." Critics of the Democratic cap-and-trade proposal have many complaints about the plan, but their biggest is cost. They say it will cost so much that it will be a significant burden on a typical American family. The latest variation of this comes in a chain e-mail that contends the cap-and-trade plan will require more energy-efficient homes (a claim we rated Pants on Fire ). The e-mail says, "The Congressional Budget Office -- supposedly non-partisan -- estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded." We've spent a lot of time looking into claims about how much the cap-and-trade plan could cost families, and one thing's for certain: There's no consensus. The Environmental Protection Agency says it could cost as little as $80 per year while the conservative Heritage Foundation says it could cost as much as $1,241 annually in higher energy bills. We've explained the pros and cons of the various estimates in those previous items, so here we're going to look into the chain e-mail's claim that the CBO estimates cap-and-trade will cost a family of four $6,800 a year. The bill in question is called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. It is sponsored by Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, and aims to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Companies, particularly utilities, would have to either buy pollution credits or adopt cleaner technology. Critics say that either way, the cost of energy will go up, and that cost will be passed on to the consumer. The CBO is a key player because it is a widely respected nonpartisan branch of Congress that calculates cost estimates. In June 2009, the CBO released an analysis of the House bill, saying that the economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion -- or about $175 per household. The individual cost would vary depending on your wealth. Low-income consumers could expect to save $40 a year because of credits from utilities, while high-income consumers would see a net cost for energy of $235 to $340 annually. It's also important to note that the costs are expected to vary year to year because of the way the law would be phased in. The CBO chose 2020 as a milestone for its analysis because it's a point at which the program would have been in effect for eight years, giving the economy and polluters time to adjust. But had the CBO chosen a later date, the cost per family may have been higher because the government would gradually be charging polluters more. We traced the $6,800 estimate back to a report from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has been very critical of the cap-and-trade plan. In the report, the group criticizes the CBO for failing to consider the harm that the cap-and-trade plan could do to the economy. The conservative group says the law could cause companies to produce less, which would reduce the GDP in 2020 by $161 billion in 2009 dollars. By 2035, it would be $650 billion lower, which works out to about $6,800 per family of four per year. So the chain e-mail has taken the estimate from a conservative think tank and falsely attributed it to the CBO, a nonpartisan branch of Congress. There are many legitimate questions that can be raised about the cost of cap-and-trade, but it's simply incorrect to say the CBO came up with the $6,800 figure. We find this claim False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022

"Ninety-eight percent of the American people will not see their taxes go up" due to the House health care bill Republicans have frequently criticized the Democrats' health care bills by saying that they will make Americans pay more. On Nov. 20, 2009, MSNBC host Ed Schultz fired back, arguing that "98 percent of the American people will not see their taxes go up because of this bill." On the show, Schultz didn't specify whether he was referring to the House or Senate health care reform bill. However, a spokeswoman contacted by PolitiFact said he was referring to the House bill, so we will judge him on that basis here. We looked at analyses of the House bill and found one big tax -- the so-called "millionaire's tax" -- and a few more modest ones that would hit individuals. Let's address the millionaire's tax first. Starting in 2011, the House bill would impose a 5.4 percent tax on individuals making more than $500,000 a year and on couples earning at least $1 million. This measure is expected to collect $460 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But the number of taxpayers hit by this tax would be fewer than 1 million people, or less than 1 percent of tax filers, according to Internal Revenue Service statistics. (Technical note: When calculating the percentages of Americans, the IRS uses a baseline of almost 143 million tax returns filed in 2007, rather than individual people. So we will do the same.) It should be noted that the number of people paying the "millionaire's tax" is likely to rise, since the tax thresholds are not going to be adjusted for inflation. This means that, barring widespread economic calamity, more people will be hit by the tax every year. Still, the exact amount of the increase is hard to determine, so if we stick to the published numbers, Schultz is correct. In fact, he's given himself a margin of error, saying it would be 2 percent when in fact it would be 1 percent of Americans. But there are a few other taxes in the bill that could hit individuals either directly or indirectly, and while the dollar amounts they collect are much smaller than what the "millionaire's tax" collects, the pool of people they would affect is much wider. The most notable of these taxes is a penalty assessed on people who decline to buy their own health insurance. According to the bill, people would have to pay a 2.5 percent tax on their income or the dollar amount of a basic coverage plan, whichever is lower. Some people, especially those who are young and in good health, will choose to forgo insurance and pay the tax instead, because doing so will save them money. In its analysis of the House bill, the CBO estimated that this provision would add $5 billion to $6 billion to the federal coffers annually between 2014 and 2019 -- about one-tenth the amount that the "millionaire's tax" kicks in during those years. But even though the dollar amounts involved are smaller, the number of individuals expected to pay the penalty is potentially much larger. The CBO provided the total amount of penalty revenues rather than an estimate of the number of people paying the penalty, but it's possible to reverse-engineer the number of penalty payers. Depending on the method used, the number of people paying the penalty -- assuming CBO's assumptions are right -- could range from 2.5 million to 10 million, according to our estimates and consultations with tax experts. One estimate pegs the number even higher. Working backward from the 23 million people that the CBO expects to be uninsured in 2019, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently estimated that most of the 18 million who are uninsured and who aren't illegal immigrants would be paying the penalty. Two other taxes in the bill bear mentioning. One is a 2.5 percent tax on most durable medical devices, which the Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan arm of Congress, expects to generate $2 billion to $3 billion most years -- approximately one-twentieth of the amount collected by the "millionaire's tax." But while this is technically a tax on companies, it would almost certainly be passed along to consumers, and the number of people affected would be substantial. Because many people use medical devices in any given year, this tax would likely hit more than 2 percent of the population, even accounting for overlap with the other taxes included in the bill. The other tax worth noting is on employers who do not offer health insurance. This, like the medical device tax, is a direct tax on businesses, but much of the cost would probably be borne by employees (in lower wages) or consumers (in higher prices). The CBO expects this tax to generate between $15 billion and $25 billion a year. Experts disagree on whether it's fair to include these two taxes in the larger equation, because they hit taxpayers only indirectly, and because it's hard to quantify how many people will pay them. In the meantime, some would argue that the individual penalty isn't really a tax, because it's voluntary. For the purposes of our analysis, we think it's fair to include the individual penalty, because, like the "millionaire's tax," it will be administered through Americans' tax returns. But because we don't have good data on the device tax or the employer tax, we'll keep those out of our final equation. So, Schultz is right that less than 2 percent -- indeed, less than 1 percent -- of Americans would be subject to the millionaire's tax, at least at the beginning. But while making estimates is tricky, it's likely that many more people will choose to pay the individual penalty, most likely pushing the numbers above the 2 percent level Schultz cited. And if we had chosen to include the device tax, the percentages would climb higher still. So we rate his statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

"I have never voted for a tax increase. Marco Rubio is all of the sudden a darling of the American conservative movement in his U.S. Senate primary run against Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Consider his bona fides: Rubio opposes publicly run health care and is against abortion. He has been highly critical of the president's $787 billion stimulus plan. He is open to expanding oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee and coverboy for the right-leaning National Review . To top it off, there's this: "I have never voted for a tax increase," Rubio says on his campaign Web site . "While I generally support tax cuts, I believe meaningful tax reform that simplifies our tax code, makes it easier to understand and is more fair to the taxpayer should be our ultimate goal." In almost nine years in the Florida House, the last two as speaker, Rubio was an outspoken critic of tax hikes. Rubio twice opposed a tax increase on cigarettes only to have the $1-per-pack hike signed into law by Crist after Rubio left office. And Rubio, along with Crist, led an effort in 2007 to lower property taxes. Rubio went as far as to propose eliminating property taxes on primary homes altogether, replacing them with a state sales tax increase. That measure ultimately failed, but the idea still won him style points. Grover Norquist, a national conservative figure and president of the anti-tax advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, called Rubio the most pro-taxpayer legislative leader in the country. "Runaway property taxes threaten the standard of living of millions of homeowners and renters and the bottom lines of businesses big and small," Rubio said during the property tax debate of 2007. The rhetoric clearly is anti-tax. But does the voting record -- he said "never" -- always match? Rubio's tax record PolitiFact scoured Rubio's nine-year voting history as a member of the Florida House. We also looked through votes Rubio cast in his two years as a member of the West Miami City Commission. As a city commissioner, Rubio voted twice to raise property taxes. And in the Florida House, while he pushed to cut property taxes collected by local governments, he also repeatedly voted to force school districts statewide to collect more property taxes, his record shows. Here's how: As part of the state budget each year, lawmakers set an amount the state's 67 school districts are required to contribute to education funding. The amount is set as a dollar figure. The state Department of Education then takes that dollar figure and turns it into a corresponding property tax rate for each school district. The process is called the "required local effort." From 2000 to 2008 -- the years Rubio was in office -- the required local effort from Florida's school districts rose about 102 percent, from $4.08 billion to $8.25 billion. Rubio voted for the budget, and the schools tax, each year. Some of that increase was created by new construction, but at least $2.5 billion came in additional property tax payments made by Floridians. Two important caveats: • In 2008, the Rubio-led House originally passed a budget that did not raise the schools tax -- the increase came later during budget negotiations between the House and Senate. Rubio praised that year's final budget as being balanced "without raising taxes." • And in eight of Rubio's nine years, the corresponding tax rate went down. But because of increasing property values, the actual dollar amount -- the figure the Legislature sets -- grew. The best example of this comes in 2007. As Rubio, Crist and the Legislature were pushing to reform the state's property tax system, they also were passing a budget that increased school property tax collections about $340 million, excluding increases for new construction. Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 In an interview with PolitiFact this week, Rubio offered two rebuttals: First, that he was only one member of the Legislature. And second, that he wasn't prepared to vote against the entire state budget only to make a point about the schools tax. Earlier this year, Rubio offered another explanation of his schools tax vote, saying that it wasn't a tax increase because the tax rate didn't go up. "Anybody who voted against those budgets, would have voted against massive tax cuts," Rubio said. "Somebody could have made that claim. That a 'no' vote on the budget was a vote against tax cuts." But in 2007, Rubio was given a proposal that would have allowed him to support the budget and prevent a school property tax increase. After Crist vetoed about $459.2 million from the 2007-2008 budget, then-House Democratic leader Dan Gelber wrote Rubio asking the Legislature to use that money to reduce the school property tax increase. Rubio balked, saying it would require a change to state spending practices. "I share your distaste for the property tax," Rubio wrote in a formal response. "In fact, I wish it would go away totally, at least on homesteaded properties. But as you know public education funding in Florida is a partnership between the state and local school boards. The property tax is the only method of generating revenue we have given school districts." Though he voted for the increases, Rubio did attempt to replace the required local effort with an increased sales tax in 2007 as speaker. The plan went nowhere in the Legislature, and a constitutional amendment for the tax swap plan was thrown off the ballot the following year by a Florida circuit court judge. State legislators aren't forced to hold public hearings and publicly acknowledge a tax increase like local governments. Some tax bills refer to the tax only as "School-state" or "School-state law." Other tax bills don't break the state tax out at all. It's a system, says state Rep. Adam Fetterman, D-Port St. Lucie, that helps perpetuate a belief that Tallahassee lawmakers aren't raising taxes, when they actually are. Fetterman authored a bill this year requiring tax collectors to tell residents if state legislators were raising school property taxes. The bill was never heard. "We had some folks in Tallahassee beating their chest, and nearly breaking their arms, shouting about the largest tax cut in Florida history," Fetterman said. "Then they turned around and forced local governments, specifically school boards, to increase taxes. I am tired and fed up -– as are most of my constituents -– of the saying of one thing and the doing of another thing in Tallahassee." Old city votes Rubio also voted in 1998 and 1999 for increases in property tax collections as a member of the West Miami City Commission, West Miami records show. PolitiFact tracked down the final budget resolutions for both years. Without getting too technical, they say the city of West Miami, without raising tax rates, was increasing property taxes -- 1.402 percent in 1998 and 5.545 percent in 1999. The roll call has then-Commissioner Rubio as voting "Y" both years. It's worth noting that Rubio later argued as a member of the Legislature that local governments were raising taxes while being able to claim they were keeping the tax rate the same. Rubio said this week it's a sign of a flawed system. Something he attempted to correct. "The essence of our campaign is that property taxes are an inherently unfair way to generate revenue," Rubio said. "There were very likely years that people were taxed more even though they were earning less." Back to Rubio's original statement. Though he claims to have never voted for a tax increase, we found that he has several times. First, as a commissioner in West Miami when he approved an increase in property tax collections, then as a state legislator when he voted year after year for budgets that forced school districts statewide to collect more property taxes. School districts were simply the middleman, in charge of collecting the money, but they did it at the behest of legislators. Maybe the votes could be considered appropriate. Or reasoned. Or even necessary. But they were votes to raise taxes -- and he did say "never." We rate his claim Fals

Recovery.gov listed congressional districts that "do not exist. The Obama administration has promoted its Web site Recovery.gov as a bold new step in government transparency and a convenient way for voters to see that the economic stimulus program is working. Some Republicans say the site is filled with unreliable propaganda. Florida Republican Rep. Jeff Miller ridiculed the site in a newsletter Nov. 19, writing about how he looked on Recovery.gov and found jobs created in Florida's 34th, 53rd, 86th, and "00th" districts. "The problem is, these congressional districts do not exist," Miller wrote. "Florida only has TWENTY-FIVE congressional districts. "We know that the Administration is pulling a 'jobs created or saved' number out of thin air despite the fact that the unemployment rate remains high," Miller wrote. "The people of Florida know. We know that although Democrats represent only 10 of Florida’s 25 districts, their districts received 60% of the stimulus funds. These numbers reek of partisanship and potential corruption." Miller was right that Recovery.gov did have incorrect information on it. Officials blamed it on errors entering the data and have since replaced the erroneous districts with the notation "unassigned congressional district." ABC News broke the story on Nov. 16 and the corrections were made about two days later. The error caught our attention here at PolitiFact, and we archived the Florida page that confirms Miller's observations on bad district data. We also looked into whether Democratic districts received more money than Republican districts , and rated that statement Barely True. Here, we're verifying Miller's statement that Recovery.gov listed congressional districts that do not exist. That was indeed the case until news reports brought attention to the wrong data. Officials removed the data the evening before Miller posted his newsletter, so that now the jobs and money are attributed to "unassigned congressional district." So we rate Miller's statement Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Under the cap-and-trade bill, homes would have to be retrofitted to meet energy and water efficiency standards before they could be sold Here's one way to get our attention. Send us a chain e-mail with this subject line: "We don't make this up." The e-mail, which we have received in several forms over the past few months, has to do with a cap-and-trade bill making its way through Congress and how it would treat energy efficiency in existing homes. According to the e-mail, "Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the 'Cap & Trade' bill passed by the House of Representatives." "A year from now you won't be able to sell your house," the e-mail goes on. "Yes, you read that right. The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it." Home sellers will require a government license to put their home on the market, according to the letter. The claim has gone viral on the Internet, and versions of it have been repeated by Republican lawmakers, including House Republican Leader John Boehner . Our friends over at FactCheck.org looked into Boehner's claim over the summer and found it to be false. We've explored many aspects of the bill, including how much it would cost and whether it would create or cut jobs . So here we will examine what the bill says about making existing homes more energy efficient. Here's how cap-and-trade would work. Under House legislation, the target of the chain e-mail's criticism, the government would be required to set an overall cap on carbon emissions in an effort to slow climate change. More specifically, the bill aims to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Companies would either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits -- also known as allowances -- to continue polluting. Initially, most allowances would be given out free. But eventually companies would have to buy those permits from the government. There's lots of language in the bill regarding building efficiency. Section 201, for instance, requires building energy codes for new homes to be 30 percent more efficient than current standards when the bill goes into law and 50 percent more efficient by 2016. States and local governments will be responsible for enforcing the new codes, but will receive government allowances to cover the cost of developing and adopting the improvements. And Section 202 of the bill would establish a program that would allow states to help homeowners finance energy-efficient home retrofits; the more energy a retrofit saves, the more money the homeowner would get from the government to subsidize the work. Finally, Section 204 would require the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a model program that states could voluntarily adopt to label new buildings for their energy performance. This "license," as the chain e-mail calls it, is only applicable to new construction and would be completely voluntary. In fact, that's a point the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel that has jurisdiction over the cap-and-trade bill, makes over and over in its summary of the legislation: "Nothing would require a homeowner to audit or retrofit their home to ensure that it meets building code requirements," the document says. Lane Burt, a building efficiency expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has blogged about the issue, says the e-mail is false. "The anti-efficiency crowd have alleged that the [cap-and-trade] bill is going to require Americans trying to sell their homes to undergo some sort of energy inspection or meet some sort of green requirements -- 'or else,' " he wrote of the supposed requirement in the bill. "Of course, when I have heard and read this claim there isn't a provision cited, and for good reason -- it doesn't exist!" William Fay, executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network -- a coalition including The Alliance to Save Energy, Duke Energy Corp. and the National Association of State Energy Officials among other organizations -- called the e-mail an "urban myth." "The bill certainly does not require a retrofit, or an energy label for an existing home," Fay said. "It does not make them a condition of sale." This fact-check is clear-cut. There's nothing in the bill that would require homeowners to retrofit their homes to meet new efficiency standards or get a government "license" before putting their home on the market. Homeowners who do want to retrofit their homes can do so voluntarily and with the help of government funding. This chain e-mail gets a Pants on Fire! Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Senate health care legislation will "levy a new 'abortion premium' fee on Americans in the government-run plan. Republicans have found another flaw in the health care bill: They say Democrats are trying to impose a monthly abortion fee on anyone enrolled in the public health care option. "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) massive, 2,074-page bill would levy a new 'abortion premium' fee on Americans in the government-run plan," wrote House Republican Leader John Boehner on the GOP's Web site. The House version of the health care bill included an amendment promoted by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to prevent abortion from being offered through the public plan, as well as additional restrictions for insurers who sell on the exchange. But the Senate version of health care reform represents a clean slate and includes a provision similar to one added by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., to the original version of the House legislation that would prevent the government from spending federal dollars on abortion procedures. Here's how the Senate bill would treat the issue: Health insurance companies participating in the insurance exchange, a virtual marketplace where consumers could compare and shop for insurance plans, could decide whether to offer abortion coverage. In each state, there would have to be at least one plan that offers the insurance and one that does not. People who get federal subsidies to help pay for coverage through the exchange could buy plans that offer abortion insurance. But the bill includes accounting rules to ensure that no tax dollars are used to pay for the procedure. The government can only pay for abortions in instances of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, but the Health and Human Services secretary could decide to include abortion coverage beyond that. In any case, the public plan would be subject to the same rules. We've covered the many claims from the left and the right about how abortion would be treated under health care reform, and you can read all of them here . But Boehner's claim that the Senate bill includes a monthly "abortion fee" was new to us. Intrigued, we went directly to Page 122 of Section 1303 of the bill, the language Boehner is concerned about. That section deals with measures the government will take to ensure that no plan offered through the exchange will use federal dollars to cover abortion procedures. If a plan through the exchange does offer abortion coverage, "the issuer of the plan shall ... segregate an amount equal to the actuarial amounts determined under subparagraph for all enrollees," the language says. The Health and Human Services secretary "shall estimate the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on an average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health plan." Finally, the secretary "shall estimate such costs as if such coverage were included for the entire population covered; and may not estimate such a cost at less than $1 per enrollee per month." All that legalese means this: Because insurance companies participating in the exchange may not use tax dollars to pay for abortion procedures, they must ensure that an adequate amount of private funding -- which will come from private premiums -- is set aside. Per premium, that funding can be no less than $1 dollar a month; otherwise, it's up to the insurance company. All this is to ensure that there's enough private premiums to pay for abortions should participants need them. So, the bill does require that abortion coverage through the exchange be paid for with private premiums. But does the bill language dictate an abortion fee as Boehner says? Usha Ranji, a policy analyst for the Kaiser Family Foundation, says no. "I don't understand what [Boehner's] reference is to," she said. The provision simply "outlines some technical direction of how you would establish cost of an abortion benefit." Lara Cartwright-Smith of George Washington University's public health school concurred, adding that everyone participating in the exchange would have the option of choosing a plan that does not include abortion. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 So, back to Boehner's claim. The bill does not require a fee, or a charge above and beyond the premium cost specifically to cover abortions. And technically speaking, we don't know whether the public option will offer abortion coverage or not. Instead, it gives the Health and Human Services secretary a minimum for estimating the cost of covering abortions. So we give Boehner a False

The Senate health care bill "would leave 24 million people without insurance coverage. Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, whom Democrats had once hoped to woo for bipartisan support of a health care bill, attacked the version put forth on Nov. 18, 2009, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Like the Pelosi bill, the Reid bill is government-centered, not patient-centered," Enzi said "It’s chock-full of new taxes and higher health care costs that would threaten jobs, weaken our economy, punish families and small businesses trying to make ends meet, and stick our children and grandchildren with the bill." That's all pretty standard fare from Republican opponents of the Democratic health care plans being debated in Congress. But we were intrigued by another criticism leveled by the Wyoming senator, that the Senate bill "would leave 24 million people without insurance coverage." That uninsured figure cited by Enzi comes from an analysis of the Reid bill by the Congressional Budget Office. The report concludes that under the Reid bill, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent. Specifically, the report estimated that the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 31 million by 2019, leaving about 24 million nonelderly residents uninsured. So who are those 24 million who would be left uninsured? About a third of them are illegal immigrants, the CBO report states. So who are the other two-thirds (16 million) left uninsured? We asked three health care experts: John Holahan at the Urban Institute; Leighton Ku, a professor of health policy at George Washington University; and Kathleen D. Stoll, director of Health Policy at Families USA. They said those people mostly fall into several main categories: • People who are deemed able to afford health insurance but simply decide the tax penalties are not high enough to persuade them to buy it. Some young, healthy people, for example, may decide it's cheaper to simply pay the tax penalty rather than purchase insurance, Stoll said. The same is true for some wealthy people who are self-insured. "These are basically people who say, 'It's not worth it to me,' " Ku said. • People exempt from tax penalties because the cost of health insurance comes to more than 8 percent of their income, even if they are getting federal subsidies. These are generally people with a lower income, but not so low as to qualify for Medicaid. Without a penalty, many of those people may decide to continue not to buy insurance. "These are people on the lower end of the income scale, but not the poorest of the poor," Ku said, generally people who make anywhere from 133 percent to 300 percent of the poverty level. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 • People who are eligible for Medicaid, but simply don't sign up. Some people just think it's a hassle to sign up for insurance, even when it's free, Ku said. About 60 percent of people eligible for Medicaid today simply don't sign up, Holahan said. "People with very low incomes don't always know how to navigate a lot of things in life. People don't necessarily value health care, and they don't take the time to fill out the necessary paperwork." • Then there are those who are in transitional stages of life -- perhaps a job change -- and don't take steps to close the insurance gaps between jobs. The CBO report found that the Senate bill was less effective in reducing the number of uninsured compared to the version of the health care bill that passed the House. While the Senate version was estimated to reduce the number of uninsured by 31 million (leaving 24 million uninsured), the House plan was estimated to reduce the number of uninsured by about 36 million, leaving about 18 million uninsured. That's largely because the House tax penalty for not getting insurance is a lot harsher. Under the House bill, people who refuse to purchase health insurance will be hit with a tax penalty equivalent to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income. The Senate plan calls for a tax penalty of $95 in 2014, going up to $350 in 2015, $750 in 2016, and graduated up in ensuing years based on inflation adjustments. Given differences between the House and Senate bills that cause the Senate plan to leave more uninsured, we certainly think it's fair for a senator to criticize the plan in that regard. But since this criticism comes from a Republican senator, we would be remiss if we did not point out several other political realities. A CBO analysis of the main Republican health care plan, which was put forward by House Republican leader John Boehner, concluded it would reduce the number of uninsured by only about 3 million people (as opposed to 31 million in the Reid plan). "It has not been a particularly high priority for the Republican Party to expand the number of people who get health insurance coverage," Ku said. Again, a third of the people who would remain uninsured under the Reid plan are illegal immigrants. You may recall that many Republicans criticized Democrats for not taking enough precautions to ensure that illegal immigrants are barred from a public option and also argued that illegal immigrants ought to be prohibited from buying insurance in any government-sponsored health insurance exchange. And the biggest factor accounting for fewer uninsured in the Reid plan, as opposed to the House plan, is that the Senate plan has less severe penalties for those who do not buy insurance. But many conservatives have criticized Democrats for the mandate, arguing that the government ought not get involved in requiring health insurance. Still, the bottom line is that Enzi said the Reid plan would leave 24 million people uninsured, and the CBO confirms that figure. We rate his statement True.

If you look at last year's presidential campaign, "you can't find a mention of public option. Democrats hoping to pass health care legislation through the Senate need 60 votes to begin consideration of the bill and, ultimately, to pass it. That means every Democrat and the two independents who generally vote with them need to approve. One of those independents is Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman favors health care reform but opposes the public option. He told Politico that he was keeping "all my options open" when it comes to votes on health care. He said the public option has only recently become a key part of Democratic plans for a health care overhaul. "It's classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can't find a mention of public option," Lieberman said. "It was added after the election as a part of what we normally consider health insurance reform — insurance market reforms, cover people, cover people who are not covered." Politico pointed out, correctly, that Lieberman was wrong about the public option being added after the election. It was part of Obama's plans released publicly during the campaign. But we wanted to check his statement that during the 2008 presidential election, "you can't find a mention of public option." Here at PolitiFact, we covered the Democratic primaries and examined the candidates' plans for health care reform in great detail. The most contentious issue during the primary was support for what is known as the individual mandate -- the requirement that everyone have health insurance or face a tax penalty. We don't recall any significant discussion of a public option, nor did we do any Truth-O-Meter items on it during the campaign. To make sure we weren't missing anything, we conducted a database search of campaign coverage by all news outlets. We found very few news reports during the campaign that mentioned the public option or a public plan as part of Obama's health proposals, with the notable exception of a New York Times story published on May 30, 2007, headlined, " Obama calls for wider and less costly health care coverage. " Here's what the Times reported: "Mr. Obama would create a public plan for individuals who cannot obtain group coverage through their employers or the existing government programs, like Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Children would be required to have health insurance. Subsidies would be available for those who need help with the cost of coverage. "He would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange, a regulated marketplace of competing private health plans intended to give individuals other, more affordable options for coverage. The public plan would compete in that Insurance Exchange, advisers said." The Obama campaign mentioned the public option briefly in its health position paper and on its Web site. A typical description went like this: "The Obama-Biden plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase new affordable health care options if they are uninsured or want new health insurance. Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it. ... The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and meet the same standards for quality and efficiency." But there was little discussion about the public option. The debate in both the primary and the general election focused on the mandate, costs and covering the uninsured. We found the public option mentioned in only 70 articles or transcripts during the entire campaign and months prior to the inauguration. It wasn't until after Obama took office that there was sustained attention to the issue. There were 50 items published between January and May and then coverage exploded this past summer. Major newspapers produced about 650 significant stories or op-eds on Obama and the public option in June, July and August. Lieberman was wrong that the public option was added after the election, but he makes a valid point that it wasn't emphasized or discussed much during the campaign. Lieberman said, "It's classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can't find a mention of public option." We found a few mentions, but the public option was not at all a significant point of debate during the presidential campaign. So we rate Lieberman's statement Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The Senate health care bill is longer than Tolstoy's 'War and Peace. They are both epic works of literature. One begins like this: "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news." The other starts like this: "Part A of title XXVII of the Public Health Service 10 Act (42 U.S.C. 300gg et seq.) is amended (1) by striking the part heading and inserting the following: 13 ‘‘PART A—INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP MARKET REFORMS’’; (2) by redesignating sections 2704 through 2707 as sections 2725 through 2728, respectively (3) by redesignating sections 2711 through 2713 as sections 2731 through 2733, respectively . . . " The first passage comes from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace . The second comes from Harry Reid's health care bill. Republicans have been comparing them to make the point that the Democratic plan is big and will lead to a bloated bureaucracy. In a Nov. 19, 2009, news release, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that the 2,074-page bill was "longer than Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace ." We decided to see if he was right. The Oxford World's Classics paperback edition of War and Peace weighs in at 1,392 pages, according to Amazon.com. By that measure, the 2,074-page Senate bill would indeed be longer. But using pages as the benchmark is misleading. The page layout of a Senate bill is much different from a novel. The bill uses much larger type, on 8.5-by-11-inch paper. The margins are larger and there are wider spaces between the lines. On balance, then, fewer words fit on a page of the Senate bill than fit on the page of the paperback novel. So for an accurate comparison, you need to count words. That's not perfect either, since the Senate bill (like its House counterpart, which checked in at just under 2,000 pages) has lots of line-by-line numbering, section headers, and various forms of coding that complicate the process of word counting. But it's still the best method available. To count the words in War and Peace , we relied on a feature on Amazon.com called "Search Inside!" that quantifies the books it sells on various measurement scales. That function found that the Oxford paperback version of War and Peace , an English translation, has 561,893 words. (In an accompanying chart, Amazon notes that 0 percent of books it studied have more words than that, so Hatch has picked the the right epic novel for his comparison.) As for the bill, we cut and pasted it into a Microsoft Word document and found that the bill contained 384,067 words. Just to make sure that Word wasn't choking on such a large file, we did a sampling of word counts on individual pages, then multiplied the typical one-page count by the total number of pages in our Word document. The single pages we checked tended to have a bit fewer than 300 words per page in Word. So, with our document running to 1,372 pages -- shrinkage that illuminates how spread-out the text of the Senate bill is -- we came up with a ballpark estimate of 411,000 words. That last estimate is a bit higher than what the Microsoft's word count function found, but not by much. Either way, Reid's health care bill is actually shorter than War and Peace . So while Hatch is right if you simply count pages, when you use a more accurate comparison -- the number of words -- War and Peace is actually longer. In other words, he is right by one measurement, but not by the best measurement. So it turns out that Democrats aren't as wordy as a Russian novelist. Who knew? Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 We find his claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

Obama "closed offshore tax safe havens. We got a chain e-mail recently that purports to list 90 accomplishments from President Barack Obama's first six months in office. Unlike most chain e-mails we get, this one was signed by its author, Robert Watson, a professor of American Studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Watson said he spoke last spring at Democratic political clubs and was asked by some members to compile the list as talking points to balance some of the claims about the Obama administration coming from Republicans. The list has since gone viral, and now Watson fields several calls and e-mails every day challenging him on some of the entries. We decided to look into a handful of items on the list to see if they check out. Here, we look at No. 46, that Obama "closed offshore tax safe havens." On May 4, 2009, the White House issued a detailed, six-page plan to curb overseas tax havens and remove tax incentives for companies to shift jobs overseas. The plan to "get tough" on overseas tax havens included eliminating loopholes for certain offshore subsidiaries; cracking down on the abuse of tax havens by individuals; and putting more resources into IRS enforcement to help close the international tax gap. And in late October, the House and Senate introduced the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009, which seeks to crack down on Americans hiding their assets in overseas tax havens. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The president promptly issued a statement in support of the legislation. "Shortly after taking office, I laid out a set of proposals to crack down on illegal overseas tax evasion," Obama stated. "The legislation introduced today would fulfill that promise, putting a stop to billions of dollars worth of abuses. I look forward to working with Congress to turn these proposals into law so that honest Americans no longer shoulder the burden of the few individuals and businesses that put profit before responsibility." Although the legislation enjoys the support of the White House, it is likely to face strong opposition from corporations that do considerable business overseas. According to a story in the New York Times , "about 200 companies and trade associations, including Microsoft Corp., General Electric Co. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, signed a letter stating that the proposed changes to the tax code would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals." In other words, it's premature to put this one in the "Obama Accomplishments" column. Watson acknowledged as much when we spoke to him on Nov. 19. "The president started it, and Congress is now looking at it, but it's not a done deal," he said. And so we rate this one Half True

Obama has "visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office. We got a chain e-mail recently that purports to list 90 accomplishments from President Barack Obama's first six months in office. Unlike most chain e-mails we check out, this one was signed by its author, Robert Watson, a professor of American Studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Watson said he spoke last spring at some Democratic political clubs and was asked by some members to compile the list as talking points to balance some of the claims about the Obama administration coming from Republicans. The list has since gone viral, and now Watson fields several calls and e-mails every day challenging some of the entries. We decided to look into a handful of items on the list to see if they check out. Here, we look at No. 34, that Obama has "visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office." In the first six calendar months of his presidency, Obama did far more international travel than his previous five predecessors, according to an analysis by Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy, for the White House Transition Project. In all, the study found, Obama traveled to 13 countries in his first six months in office. That's far more than George W. Bush, seven in 2001; Bill Clinton, one in 1993; George H.W. Bush, nine in 1989; Ronald Reagan, one in 1981; and Jimmy Carter, two in 1977. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Obama has also met with more heads of state. According to Doherty's analysis, seven of Obama’s 13 stops were bilateral visits with the head of state of another country; while 15 of the 20 journeys made by Obama's five predecessors combined were bilateral meetings with other heads of state. "Examination of the first six months of President Barack Obama’s international and domestic travel reveals an active chief executive," Doherty concluded. "His record-setting pace of travel abroad reflects the many international challenges facing the United States at the beginning of his administration." The U.S. Department of State posts historical data on presidential travel abroad, which allowed us to look back even further, to the 13 presidents before Carter, all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt. None come even close to Obama's international travel record for the first six months. According to a Nov. 11, 2009 story by CBS News' Mark Knoller, who keeps meticulous records on presidential travel, Obama has traveled abroad more in his first year in office than any other president in history, and the year isn't even finished yet. According to Knoller's story, "Foreign travel by American presidents is a relatively new practice. No sitting U.S. president left the country until Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. He made a single foreign outing: a three-day visit to Panama in November of that year to inspect construction of the Panama Canal." Including his most recent Asia trip, Knoller notes that Obama has taken eight foreign trips to 20 countries. Make what you will of Obama's globe-trotting, Watson's e-mail is correct that Obama has visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office. We rate it True

52 jobs have been saved or created in Florida's 34th Congressional District The Obama administration has promoted its Web site Recovery.gov as a bold new step in government transparency and a convenient way for voters to see that the economic stimulus program is working. The Web site makes the case that the stimulus has created tens of thousands of jobs by listing money spent and jobs created or "saved." It uses sophisticated mapping to show where the projects are located. But it's also been a target for stimulus critics who contend that the site uses sloppy bookkeeping and overly generous assumptions to present data that they say is simply political propaganda. The critics were quick to highlight an ABC News report that the Web site shows jobs for Congressional Districts that don't exist. The Obama administration acknowledged the mistakes and said that some of the data was entered incorrectly. Two days after ABC News reported on the problem with Congressional districts, the Recovery.gov Web site had changed the data from imaginary district numbers to "unassigned" districts. But we were intrigued by ABC's report and decided to dig into the data a little deeper. We selected the state of Florida and noted, before the data was changed, that it listed congressional districts that don't exist. There are 25 Congressional districts in the state, but the site listed projects in the 34th, 35th, 53rd, and 88th districts. It also listed one project in the "00th" district. (See the page we archived here .) For our fact-checking purposes, we decided to select one of the non-existent Florida districts at random and see if we could discover what was going on. We selected the 34th District, which listed 52 jobs and $1,810,857. After searching Recovery.gov a few different ways, we finally found the project: It was for the Hialeah Housing Authority, an agency in South Florida, to modernize and update its public housing. "This funding can be expected to result in providing employment for construction workers and product manufacturers," said the project page on Recovery.gov. It said the money was being used for roofing and bathroom work and cabinet installations. The Congressional district was listed as 34, but it actually belongs in the 21st, which is represented by Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart. We couldn't reach anyone with the Hialeah Housing Authority. But there were four major contractors listed for the Hialeah Housing Authority's project, and we were able to find one of them, Greystroke Construction Inc. Owner Gustavo Blazquez confirmed his work for the authority, and said he assigned about six employees to the project. The work -- replacing cabinets in individual public housing units --had been going on for three months and he expected it to go for three more. Blazquez confirmed the project details listed on Recovery.gov, including that he was one of several contractors who got a piece of the grant. Hialeah is near Miami, and the construction industry there has been hit hard by the housing bust, he said. "We've got a bare bones crew, and we're trying to survive," he said. "It's helped us keep a small amount of employees, but for how long?" Blazquez said he's in the process of bidding for more work from the housing authority. The Hialeah project highlights some important caveats -- some might consider them flaws -- in the Obama administration's accounting. The concept of jobs "saved" is nebulous and raises questions. Those six people Blazquez employs are listed as jobs "saved or created" on the Recovery.gov Web site, but it is a contract for short-term work. Those six people could very well be out of a job in three months -- even though the Obama administration touts them as holding new jobs. Counting jobs "created or saved" is also under scrutiny from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that does investigations for Congress. The legislation that created the stimulus also charged the GAO with monitoring jobs reported, and the GAO filed its first report on Thursday. The report found that while agencies and employers were making good-faith efforts to report data, there was evidence that data reporting has been inconsistent. "Even recipients of similar types of funds appear to have interpreted the reporting guidance in somewhat different ways and took different approaches in how they developed their jobs data," the report said. The guidelines require employers to report full-time equivalents, or FTEs, on a quarterly basis for the duration of the project. That means the total hours worked divided by the number of hours in a full time schedule, as defined by the recipient. This is to account for people who work part-time. The GAO report said that some employers and government agencies have been confused by the process and haven't followed the guidelines for determining FTEs, particularly using different time periods to calculate FTEs. In some cases, agencies didn't specify a time period to use. Housing authorities in particular had trouble because they have little experience with reporting employment data, according to the report. We can't independently confirm whether the Hialeah Housing Authority appropriately reported its data on jobs created. But we do know they misreported their Congressional district. Still, it appears to be construction work that should have some stimulative effect. When you hear the Obama administration cite the number of jobs saved or created, you may get the impression that they are referring to long-term, permanent jobs. But that is not the case. In many cases the jobs on Recovery.gov and cited by the administration represent contract jobs that are full-time but end after a short period of time. We should also note this isn't the first time that we've seen problems with the Obama administration's aggressive counting of jobs created or "saved" under its stimulus plan. Back in May, President Barack Obama said the economic stimulus has " saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs " in its first 100 days. That was an estimate created by White House economic advisers, and independent economists we interviewed said that it was far too early to create a definite projection with a high level of accuracy. So we rated his statement Barely True. On the other hand, our reporting has also found the stimulus is properly credited for contributing to 3.5 percent growth in the Gross Domestic Product during the third quarter. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh said all that was due to Cash for Clunkers and a homebuyers tax credit , but we found that Half True. Recovery.gov is a useful Web site for finding information on specific projects funded by the stimulus, but its rah-rah claims for job creation need some important context and explanation. We are not trying to suggest that the stimulus is doing nothing, but we don't believe that a six-month temporary job is what most people think of when they hear of a job saved or created. In the claim we're examining here, Recovery.gov reported that 52 jobs have been saved or created in Florida's 34th Congressional District. The 34th District doesn't exist, and that's the result of a data entry error. The jobs are actually in the 21st District, and we know that work is being done there after we spoke with one of the contractors. But those still are short-term construction jobs. In the example we chose, we've seen enough questions about the data to give us significant pause. We rate the statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

In the House health care bill, "Something like 2 percent of the people would [be] eligible even to get the public option. The House health care bill, with its exchanges, public option and nearly 2,000 pages of densely worded text, isn't the easiest thing to comprehend. So it's not surprising that even a senator with years of experience in health care policy can make a mistake while explaining it. In a Nov. 17, 2009, appearance on MSNBC's Morning Meeting With Dylan Ratigan , Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he's trying to prod Senate leaders into including a version of the public option that goes further than what's in the House bill. The public option would be a government-run plan offered as one of many alternatives on the new health care "exchange." The exchange is designed to help uninsured Americans, as well as those who don't work for an employer who offers health coverage, find reasonably priced health insurance. Beyond some startup money from the federal government, the public option would be paid for entirely by patient premiums. Wyden argued during his MSNBC appearance that a public option that reaches more Americans than the one in the House bill would have a better chance of ensuring competition for private insurers. And that, in turn, would promote cost control and improve customer benefits. In explaining how limited the current House bill version is, Wyden said, "Something like 2 percent of the people would [be] eligible even to get the public option." That's not correct. The Congressional Budget Office -- the nonpartisan group whose estimates on the cost and impact of proposed bills are considered definitive -- said otherwise in an Oct. 29, 2009, letter to Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The CBO estimated that by 2019 -- the final year of the office's 10-year forecast -- 30 million people would be insured through plans offered on the exchange. But the CBO predicted that most of those 30 million would choose plans from private insurers. Only 6 million, or one of every five people buying on the exchange, would select the public plan, according to the CBO's estimate. (Anyone who's eligible to purchase insurance on the exchange would be able to choose either the public option or a plan offered by private insurers.) Now, 6 million people buying the public option amounts to just over 2 percent of the 282 million Americans who are under age 65 (that is, the 282 million Americans who aren't eligible for Medicare, the universal health insurance program for the elderly). But contrary to what Wyden said, it's not that 2 percent of Americans will be eligible for the public option in 2019; it's that 2 percent will choose the public option that year, according to CBO's estimate. The actual number of people eligible to choose the public option would be the entire pool of 30 million Americans in the exchange -- almost 11 percent of the under-65 population, or five times the proportion that Wyden indicated. When we spoke to Wyden's office, a spokeswoman immediately acknowledged that the senator had misspoken. In fact, when he returned to a different MSNBC program that night -- Countdown with Keith Olbermann -- he said, correctly, that the public option "has 6 million people in it." So while we applaud Wyden for correcting himself after the fact, his original comment was incorrect. So we're rating his statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The United States has a supply of "more than 100 years of natural gas. With Congress debating cap-and-trade legislation, we've seen a lot of television ads promoting the benefits of various fuels: coal, wind, solar -- you name it. Recently, an ad sponsored by America's Natural Gas Alliance caught our eye. In it, a mother tells her daughter that the United States has "more than 100 years of natural gas." That's a lot of natural gas, so we decided to look into the claim. America's Natural Gas Alliance, a group backed by the top natural gas producing companies in the nation, told us the figure came from a June 18, 2009, report by the Potential Gas Committee, a panel associated with the Colorado School of Mines and financially supported by the natural gas industry. According to the committee, the nation has about 2,074 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Most of it is in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, the Atlantic Coast and the Midwest. That figure includes 238 trillion cubic feet of proved gas reserves as established by the Energy Department and about 1,836 trillion cubic feet of what the school calls technically recoverable natural gas. Let's pause to go over some energy nomenclature. The phrase "technically recoverable" has to do with how much natural gas is available using current technology; this is the amount of natural gas the Potential Gas Committee looked at. The term "proved reserves" is used to describe natural gas that is economically viable, and usually reflects sources that have already been tapped by natural gas companies. Proved reserves are tracked by the government through Securities and Exchange Commission filings because natural gas companies list their sources as capital assets. Recently, reserve estimates have been on the rise due to the extraction of gas from shale deposits, rock that holds natural gas and was, until recently, relatively expensive and difficult to harvest. If you multiply 23 trillion cubic feet, the amount of natural gas used annually in the United States, by 100, you get 2,300 trillion -- roughly the amount the Colorado School of Mines has estimated. So, by one standard, America's natural Gas Alliance is in the ballpark. However, by another standard the group is pretty far off; the United States Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Survey say there's only about 1,162.7 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas available, a total of 1,400 trillion metric tons when paired with the government's proved reserve estimate. Using the same math, there's only about 61 years of natural gas in the United States. What's more, energy experts we spoke with said that America's Natural Gas Alliance's use of technically recoverable estimates should come with an important caveat. "Right now, we are awash in natural gas," said Vincent Matthews, Colorado's state geologist. "But it's not about the reserves or resources. It's about how fast we can get it out of the ground and whether it's economically viable." Indeed, the price of natural gas has hovered around $4 per million British thermal units over the last few months, while the price of the same unit of oil has been as high as $9 more during the same period, according to the Energy Information Administration. So, relatively low natural gas prices might be good for consumers, but they don't make production cost-effective for producers, Miller said. Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, echoed the concern. One hundred years "is a hugely inflated number," he said. "What price does natural gas have to be at to justify extraction? It needs to be $8 or more." So, by one estimate, the natural gas industry is correct that we have about 100 years' worth of natural gas. But another estimate disputes that total. Furthermore, geologists and energy experts warn that the higher number is somewhat misleading because it includes natural gas that is not economicaly viable to extract. Given that those important elements were not mentioned in the commercial, we give America's Natural Gas Alliance a Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The McCain campaign "did not elaborate" on Obama's ties to ACORN In her book Going Rogue , Sarah Palin laments her campaign not hitting harder on Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN. "On the campaign trail many had been hesitant to talk about legitimate fears that Obama's past comments and associations with anti-capitalist radicals would influence his economic policy," Palin wrote. "The press gave the impression it was the wrong thing to do. I was 'going rogue" when I answered reporters' questions about candidate Obama's associations and pals. I wish we had talked more about them, and about Obama's close relationship with ACORN, the voter-fraud specialists. But we did not elaborate on any of that during the campaign." That didn't jibe with our recollections from covering the campaign. So we did a quick search of our e-mail inbox to refresh our memory. Here's some -- but not all - of what we got from the McCain-Palin campaign: Oct. 10, 2008 : MEMO: Barack Obama & ACORN This is a memo from the McCain-Palin campaign that begins, "Today, the McCain campaign outlined the intimate and longstanding relationship between Barack Obama and the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). Given ACORN’s recent efforts to engage in voter fraud and to disrupt our political system, Obama’s affiliation with this group raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to lead this nation." It goes on to highlight Obama's efforts directing Project Vote in 1992 as well as his work as a lawyer handling a case for ACORN. (We took a look at a few of the claims from Republicans about Obama's alleged ties to ACORN and found some were more legitimate than others .) Oct. 10, 2008 : McCain-Palin 2008 Launches New Web Ad : "ACORN" The ad describes Obama as a man with vast ambition whose "ties to ACORN run long and deep. He taught classes for ACORN. They even endorsed him for president." The ad also accuses the Obama campaign of paying more than $800,000 to an ACORN front for get-out-the-vote efforts. "Too risky for America," the ad concludes. Oct. 11, 2008 : All: Please see statement by McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb on Barack Obama and ACORN In it, Goldfarb responds to a statement from the Obama campaign the previous week that "Barack Obama never organized with ACORN." Goldfarb repeats many of the same ties alleged before, adding "he and unrepentant terrorist William Ayers funneled nearly $200,000 (to ACORN) from the Woods Foundation." Says Goldfarb: "It is clear that Barack Obama is not being honest about his association with ACORN, just as he has not been honest about his association with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers." Oct. 15, 2008 : Subject: Obama Misleads on ACORN Tonight This is the campaign's "fact-check" based on a statement made by Obama during a debate with McCain, that "The only involvement I've had with ACORN is, I represented them alongside the US justice department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs." The response, sent by Brian Rogers of the McCain campaign, includes five points highlighting the "full extent" of Obama's relationship with ACORN. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 25, 2022 in an Instagram post The documentary “2,000 Mules proves” Democrats “cheated on the 2020 elections.” By Jon Greenberg • October 28, 2022 Oct. 16, 2008 : All: Please see statement by campaign manager Rick Davis on FBI investigation of ACORN. An excerpt from the statement: "To date, in public announcements including last night's debate, Barack Obama has attempted to conceal and distort his and his campaign's relationship with a group that is currently engaging in systematic voter fraud. Barack Obama's campaign must fully disclose the true nature of his association with ACORN, including: · The total disclosure of all funds, including $832,000 from Barack Obama's campaign to ACORN and ACORN affiliations like Citizens Services, Inc. · Any and all information the Obama campaign has related to ACORN's database of registered voters compiled during this election cycle. · The total disclosure of coordination between Barack Obama's campaign, ACORN, and ACORN affiliations over the entirety of this election cycle. · The truth behind ACORN's hiring of get-out-the-vote workers on Barack Obama's behalf in Ohio during this election cycle." Oct. 17, 2008: All: Please join us for a conference call at 11:30am ET with campaign manager Rick Davis to discuss Barack Obama's association with ACORN and the nationwide investigation of ACORN's practices. Oct. 30, 2008 : Press release: McCain-Palin 2008 will hold a press conference call with Rick Davis, McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager, to discuss the true extent of Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN and yesterday's sworn testimony of a former ACORN employee. In addition to these e-mails, we note that McCain three times raised the issue of Obama's alleged ties to ACORN during the third presidential debate on Oct. 15. Said McCain: "We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. The same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for 'lighting and site selection.' So all of these things need to be examined, of course." And then later: "Well, again, while you were on the board of the Woods Foundation, you and Mr. Ayers, together, you sent $230,000 to ACORN." And lastly: "All of the details need to be known about Sen. Obama's relationship with them and with ACORN and the American people will make a judgment." In her book, Palin says she wishes the campaign had talked more about "Obama's close relationship with ACORN. ... But we did not elaborate on any of that during the campaign." So let's recap. The McCain-Palin campaign: sent out a memo to the media detailing Obama's alleged ties to ACORN; launched a Web ad about it; released several statements from campaign staffers; sent out "fact-checks" about it after a debate; held media conference calls with campaign staff to discuss it; issued several press releases about it; and McCain mentioned the issue several times during a debate. That sounds like a lot of elaborating to us. We rule Palin's statement False

A cap-and-trade plan promoted by Barack Obama would hit hardest "those already struggling to make ends meet. In her new book, Going Rogue , Sarah Palin says President Barack Obama's support for a cap-and-trade plan is "misguided." "The president has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet. So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year." Before we examine her claim, here's a quick summary of cap and trade for those who aren't familiar with it: To slow climate change, the government would set a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, companies such as electric utilities must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits — also known as allowances — to continue polluting. Companies can buy and sell the credits as necessary to conduct their business. We were familiar with Barack Obama's original quote from his campaign for president. It came from a videotaped interview he did with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board very early in the campaign in January 2008. "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," Obama told the Chronicle . "Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." (Separately, we rated Palin's statement on this comment True .) Ordinarily, higher electricty rates would hit hardest those "already struggling to make ends meet," because it's awfully hard in this day and age to do without a basic level of electricity. But the actual legislation being considered in Congress now takes that into account, and includes measures intended to lower electricity rates for consumers. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, Democrats from California and Massachusetts, respectively, wrote the bill that passed the House in June. Their goal is to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Under their plan, most pollution permits initially would be given to companies for free. But eventually, they would have to buy those permits from the government. Under the bill, 30 to 40 percent of the revenues raised would go back to electric utilities to be passed on to consumers to offset higher rates they would have to pay. The money would be passed to consumers through rebates or expanded efficiency programs, and an additional 15 percent of the revenue would go directly to low-income consumers. So how much would rates go up for consumers? It's hard to say. There has been much debate about the costs, and it's been difficult to come up with a reliable number because the bills have been changing as they move through the House and the Senate. Republicans have cited numbers as high as $3,000 per year, a claim that when it was combined with a falsehood on health care, earned our Pants on Fire rating. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency are much lower — between $80 and $340 a year, depending on income. But we do know that the bill seeks to offset those higher costs through rebates for low-income consumers. In fact, the poorest people might see a net benefit from cap and trade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan, independent arm of Congress. It analyzed the effect on rates by household income in 2020 and found that the lowest 20 percent of households would see a net benefit of $40 per year. The next 20 percent of households would see an added cost of $40 per year. The middle 20 percent would pay $235 a year more; the second-highest 20 percent would pay $340 a year more, and the top 20 percent would pay $245 a year more. (The top tier does a little better because of credits for businesses.) The House bill is not the final version of cap and trade; the Senate still needs to consider its own bill. Palin is correct in that lower-income households would feel the impact of higher utility costs, but the House bill contains significant offsets to help people of modest means. Thanks to its offsets, the plan is not entirely regressive because the lowest one-fifth of households would see a net benefit. So we rate Palin's statement Half Tru

Obama has admitted a cap and trade plan would cause electricity bills to "skyrocket. In her new book, Going Rogue , Sarah Palin said President Barack Obama's support for a cap and trade plan was "misguided." "The president has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet," she wrote. Here, we're looking at Obama's comments on electricity bills. First, though, here's a quick summary of cap and trade for those who aren't famliar with it: To slow climate change, the government would set a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, companies such as electric utilities must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits — also known as allowances — to continue polluting. Companies can buy and sell the credits as necessary to conduct their business. We were familiar with Obama's original quote from his campaign for president. It came from a videotaped interview he did with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board very early in the campaign in January 2008. "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," Obama told the Chronicle . "Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." Obama also said the biggest challenge would be making sure voters understand why such a plan is necessary. "The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important," Obama said. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 Obama was talking in general about cap and trade, but there is now a specific bill making its way through Congress, written by Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, Democrats from California and Massachusetts, respectively. Their goal is to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Under their plan, most pollution permits initially would be given out for free. But eventually, companies would have to buy those permits from the government. The latest version of the bill includes a number of measures to offset higher utility bills for consumers. Revenue from the permits would be passed to consumers through rebates or expanded efficiency programs, and an additional 15 percent of the revenue would go directly to low-income consumers. Legislators have opted to give 85 percent of the polluting permits away for free instead of putting them up for sale, as Obama pledged to do on the campaign trail. In theory, this approach should reduce costs to consumers. So how much would rates go up for consumers? It's hard to say. There has been much debate about the costs, and it's been difficult to come up with a reliable number because the bills have been changing as they move through the House and the Senate. Republicans have cited numbers as high as $3,000 per year, a claim that when it was combined with a falsehood on health care, earned our Pants on Fire rating. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency are much lower — between $80 and $340 a year, depending on income. So the climate debate has changed substantially since Obama sat down with the Chronicle nearly two years ago. Despite those potential cost cuts, there's still little disagreement that consumers will pay for cap-and-trade, whether it's $3,100 a year or $340. Because that hasn't changed since Obama first said that utility rates would "necessarily skyrocket," and because Palin got Obama's words right, we give Palin a Tru

Says she couldn't take stimulus money because it required "universal building codes. Sarah Palin has been a vocal opponent of the economic stimulus package ever since it was proposed by President Barack Obama, and she makes that point again in her new book, Going Rogue . Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Back in March 2009, then-Gov. Palin called the stimulus plan a "bribe" intended to "grow government" and she vowed to turn down as much as a third of the money available to Alaska. But the Republican-controlled Alaska Legislature fought her on it, and she ultimately accepted all but 3 percent of the more than $900 million available to Alaska. The 3 percent that she vetoed was $28.6 million in federal stimulus money for weatherization and other projects to make new and existing homes and buildings more energy efficient. She claimed then, as she does again in her book, that the money had not just string but "ropes" attached to it that would require the state to adopt universal building codes. Here's how she described it in the book: "The documents clearly stated that acceptance of the funds required the adoption and enforcement of energy building codes," she wrote. "Universal building codes -- in Alaska! A practical, libertarian haven full of independent Americans who did not desire 'help' from government busybodies. A state full of hardy pioneers who did not like taking orders from the feds telling us to change our laws. A state so geographically diverse that one-size-fits-all codes simply wouldn't work." At PolitiFact, we looked at that claim in some detail back in early June after she said the money would require "universal energy building codes for Alaska, kind of a one-size-fits-all building code that isn't going to work up there in Alaska." Many state legislators in Alaska said Palin was overstating things. Even a number of Republicans in the Alaska Legislature said Palin was wrong. In fact, Anchorage Republican Rep. Mike Hawker was quoted in the Anchorage Daily News saying that he believed Palin "had to do something to save face" after initially promising to turn away a third of the stimulus money, but then vetoing just 3 percent. But Palin stuck to her claim, and pointed to a provision in the stimulus that tied the energy efficiency money to assurances that the state or local governments "will implement" a "building energy code for residential buildings that meets or exceeds the most recently published International Energy Conservation Code, or achieves equivalent or greater energy savings" as well as building energy codes for commercial buildings throughout the state that meet federal standards. She vetoed the funds even after getting a clarifying letter from Steven G. Chalk of the Department of Energy, who stated that the stimulus provision recognizes that not every state has statewide building codes, and that the governor does not have the authority to force local governments to implement building codes. In those cases, Chalk wrote, it's sufficient for the governor to simply "promote" the codes. It is enough, he wrote, for the state to work with local governments to create model energy efficiency standards, but no municipality would be forced to adopt any new codes. As for Palin's claims of "one-size-fits-all" building codes, Chalk wrote that the provision "provides flexibility with regard to building codes" and "expressly includes standards other than those cited so long as the standards achieve equivalent energy savings." In August, the Alaska Legislature voted in an emergency session to override Palin's veto of the energy money, an unusual event that requires 75 percent approval. As for Palin's claim that Alaska is a "practical, libertarian haven full of independent Americans who did not desire 'help' from government busybodies," the Associated Press noted recently that for a state that doesn't "desire" help from the federal government, they get an awful lot of it. A study by the Tax Foundation of federal taxes paid versus spending received, by state, in 2005 -- the latest year available -- found that Alaska received $1.84 for every federal tax dollar it sent to Washington (ranking Alaska third in the nation that year). It was the 20th year in a row that Alaska got more back from the government than residents paid in federal taxes. The wording in the stimulus bill related to the weatherization money may have left room for Palin's concerns, but the letter from the Department of Energy made clear that universal building codes were not going to be forced upon state and local governments as a condition for accepting the federal money. Palin's opposition to the funding may give her license to claim she opposed the stimulus plan -- even though it was only a small portion of Alaska's funding -- but her reasoning doesn't jibe with the assurances from the Department of Energy. We rule her claim Fals

"The Stupak Amendment doesn't just say you can't use your federal insurance subsidy to pay for an abortion, it says, if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money. An amendment to the House health care bill about abortion coverage continues to inspire political passions, driving a wedge between abortion-rights supporters who are outraged at what they consider a major loss for women's rights, and Democratic lawmakers who dread seeing their long-awaited reform effort potentially stalled due to the highly controversial debate. We've examined the role of abortion coverage in the health care debate numerous times, specifically as it relates to this amendment, including a recent claim by Rep. Nita Lowey . But on Nov. 12, 2009, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow addressed the issue again, and we thought we'd take another crack at it. "Congressman Stupak and his supporters say that this Stupak Amendment would simply maintain the status quo," Maddow said on her show. "It should be noted that that's baloney. The Stupak Amendment doesn't just say you can't use your federal insurance subsidy to pay for an abortion, it says, if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money. That's the first bit of dishonesty going on here." The amendment, sponsored by Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Joe Pitts, R-Pa., was a last-minute addition to the House legislation and passed due to support from Republicans and antiabortion Democrats. It establishes restrictions on how abortion can be covered under the bill's virtual health insurance "exchanges." These exchanges are designed to help people buy coverage if they are not currently insured, or if they work for businesses that are too small to offer health coverage to employees. Essentially, the Stupak-Pitts amendment bars abortion coverage for those who choose the "public option," which is the House bill's federally administered, but privately funded, insurance plan. (Cases of rape, incest or a danger to the life of the mother are exempted.) The amendment also prevents anyone who accepts federal subsidies for health coverage from purchasing a plan with abortion coverage on the exchange. However, the amendment does allow people purchasing insurance on the exchange to choose a plan with abortion coverage if they pay for it without federal subsidies. Those who do accept subsidies can purchase an abortion "rider" -- that is, a separate policy covering abortion -- as long as they pay for it entirely with their own money. Many supporters of abortion rights argue that the amendment represents a severe infringement on a procedure that has been upheld by the Supreme Court. They say that relatively few women will be able to buy insurance on the exchanges without subsidies, making the exception for unsubsidized purchases close to meaningless. And they say that the idea of a "rider" isn't all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, abortion-rights supporters argue, women won't be likely to purchase separate coverage for a procedure they never expect to need. In addition, they say, insurance companies will be unlikely to offer abortion coverage because of the bill's logistical hurdles. For instance, the bill requires that insurers offering plans on the exchange that cover abortion also have to offer an identical plan that does not cover abortion. All of these factors, abortion-rights supporters say, indicate that insurers will simply take the path of least resistance and decline to offer abortion coverage. If this happens, the law could end up diminishing the abortion coverage options for people on the exchange. In our previous ruling, we drew a distinction between what the law does and what might possibly happen in the law's wake. The law spells out quite clearly that abortion coverage can be obtained on the exchange, even by those who are subsidized. By contrast, the notion that low demand for, and low supply of, abortion coverage could hamper women's access to abortion struck us as a different matter. We concluded that it's too speculative to say that this scenario will definitely come to pass. As we look at Maddow's statement, we'll start by giving her credit for using more careful wording than have many of her fellow abortion-rights supporters, including the subject of our prior fact-check, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. Whether by design or not, Maddow hewed quite closely to the actual language of the amendment when she said that "if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money." In fact, the amendment text does, on eight separate occasions, make a distinction between a "plan" and "supplemental coverage." Specifically, the amendment says that people who buy subsidized insurance on the exchange cannot buy an insurance "plan" that includes abortion coverage. But the amendment does allow subsidized people to purchase "supplemental coverage" that covers abortion, as long as they do it with their own money. We believe that Maddow's failure to mention the option of buying "supplemental coverage" -- a rider -- undercuts her broader argument that "if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money." We'll concede that the amendment's language does draw a distinction between buying a "plan" and buying "supplemental coverage," but the difference is likely to be lost on viewers without expertise either in the insurance business or in legislative drafting. We ran our argument by Maddow. She gamely disagreed. "I absolutely stand by my comment," she wrote in an e-mail. "Get real, you guys. It's crazy to argue that the real impact of the Stupak Amendment will be that women receiving federal subsidies (probably the vast majority of women in the exchange) will just buy 'abortion insurance,' since abortion wouldn't be covered as health care under their health insurance anymore. Women are really going to get a specific insurance rider that they'd pay for every month, for a procedure no one ever plans on having or thinks they'll ever have to have? Really? Come on." But we think her response only strengthens the argument that the law isn't, itself, barring abortion coverage. Saying, as she does, that the burden of purchasing or not purchasing "abortion insurance" would fall to women tacitly confirms that the law does indeed allow subsidized women on the exchange to buy abortion coverage. Meanwhile, contrary to suggestions that insurers won't offer abortion riders, our research shows that they do exist in at least three of the five states that already have rules similar to the Stupak amendment on the books. In Oklahoma and Kentucky -- both of which which bar insurers from offering elective abortion coverage as part of a comprehensive plan -- regulatory officials told PolitiFact that such riders do exist, because insurance companies must file paperwork with the state before they sell such policies. In addition, Paula Gianino, president and chief executive for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region, told the St. Louis Beacon that she estimates 7 percent to 10 percent of the roughly 6,000 abortions provided annually at its St. Louis facility are covered by private insurance. Since companies in Missouri are banned from purchasing plans with abortion coverage except by rider, these examples show that some abortion riders are being purchased in that state. However, none of these states keeps track of how many companies offer the riders, or how many people have purchased them. Ultimately, we'll give Maddow credit for linguistic care, but we continue to hold that the Stupak Amendment does not, as she suggests, prevent subsidized women on the exchange from buying abortion coverage. They can buy a rider that adds that coverage. We rate Maddow's statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

"The public option is not funded with public money. It's funded with private insurance premiums. Amid debate over a health reform bill, the House adopted new restrictions on funding abortions, and Democratic congresswoman Diana DeGette is not happy about the development. As chairwoman of the Pro-Choice Caucus, DeGette of Colorado is upset that under the bill low-income individuals would not be able to use federal subsidies to buy abortion coverage through a health insurance exchange. Furthermore, a government-run health insurance option would not offer abortion coverage except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is endangered. Here's what she had to say about the issue on the Nov. 9, 2009, episode of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. "Nobody in the public option would be able to get an insurance policy that offered abortion coverage," she said. "And we need to remember, the public option is not funded with public money. It's funded with private insurance premiums. So, let's say you have a small business owner who goes in to the public option because they can't get insurance anyplace else, and they want to buy a policy with their own private money, no federal money, that they would be banned from doing that." We've already explored the second part of DeGette's claim, that small businesses and individuals would not be able to buy abortion coverage through the exchange, and found it to be False. In fact, insurers can still offer abortion coverage through the exchange so long as the administrative structure behind it is not supported by federal money, and individuals can buy abortion coverage through the exchange so long as they use their own money. So, for this fact-check, we'll focus on DeGette's other point -- that the public option is funded by private insurance premiums, not public money. The public option has turned out to be the most controversial part of the health care reform. It's a government-run option for people buying insurance on the individual market, not through their employer, and it would be one of many plans offered through a new insurance exchange -- think of it as a one-stop shop for consumers where they can compare costs and benefits between plans. The hope is to increase competition and accountability within the insurance industry. So far, the Senate version of the bill does not include a public option, but Democratic Leader Harry Reid says the bill that comes to the Senate floor will likely include such a plan. The public option has become a flashpoint between Republican opponents of the bill and its Democratic advocates, in part because members of the GOP see it as a government effort to socialize medicine and too expensive. And now that the House has adopted an amendment that officially severed any ties between the public option and abortion coverage, tension between lawmakers on both sides of the abortion debate has only intensified. DeGette's point is that the public plan isn't really public at all because it will be sustained through premiums paid by consumers, so it should not exclude abortion coverage. We looked into exactly how the public option would be funded, and here's what we found: According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the plan, the public option would be administered through the Department of Health and Human Services, and it would negotiate rates with providers in the public option. To make sure the public plan doesn't have an unfair advantage, the bill requires that the plan be self-sustaining; funding would come from the premiums consumers pay to get coverage. But the feds aren't exactly off the hook. The government will front the operation $2 billion to cover initial administrative costs and claims, though lawmakers expect that sum will be recouped after the program has been in operation for 10 years. So DeGette is right and she's wrong. In the long-term, the public option is meant to be self-sustaining. But first, it will require a big chunk of of public money to get started. We give her a Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"In the health care bill, we're now offering insurance for dogs. We're months into this health care debate and frankly a lot of the claims we've been fact-checking from opponents and proponents alike have gotten a little stale. So we were thrilled to hear a new one on the Glenn Beck radio program on Nov. 12, 2009: "Do you know in the health care bill, we're now offering insurance for dogs," Beck said. "Do I need to say any more?" Actually yes. Keep going. "If you are somebody who is like, 'Well, I just, I'm struggling and we're barely making ends meet,' I'm not paying for your dog cardiologist!" Beck said. "Not gonna do it. I'm sorry, the dog goes nighty night." There was some discussion between Beck and his executive producer about their own dogs' medical issues, whether or not they have pet insurance, and whether the Obama administration is putting animals on par with humans. Like so many claims in the health care debate, Beck has taken a kernel of something in the bill and spun it to an absurd conclusion. Included in the House bill is the creation of a Public Health Workforce Corps to address shortages in the public health workforce. The program would provide scholarships and education loan repayment assistance for public health professionals serving in areas of need. Veterinarians are included among those public health professionals. "The rationale is that with mad cow disease, swine flu and other animal-borne diseases and issues, there is logic in helping to create more and better trained individuals to treat animal health," said Vincent Morris, spokesman for the House Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. But the inclusion of veterinarians in the health bill didn't sit well with Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who noted on the House floor on Nov. 7, 2009, that the loan repayment program will cost $283 million over five years. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "So the real question I have for you folks (Democrats): Why are veterinarians part of this health care bill?" Stearns asked. Rep. Slaughter responded: "Have you ever heard of swine flu? Have you ever heard about food safety? Have you ever heard that 70 percent of all of the antibiotics produced in the United States are given to cattle and poultry even though they are not ill? But swine flu should make you worry a little bit, don’t you think?" The bill also would provide funding for fellowships to support public health training, and again, veterinary medicine is included in the mix. Lastly, the bill would create an advisory committee to assess the health workforce and to make recommendations to ensure that workforce is meeting the nation’s needs. The bill says that would include public health professions "including veterinarians engaged in public health practice." In other words, not the local vet who gives your dog heartworm pills. Two other things about the scholarships and loan assistance programs. In order to qualify, the bill says applicants must "have demonstrated expertise in public health" and as quid pro quo must serve for a period equal to their scholarship in a public health program assigned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Again, not your pet vet down the street. "Veterinarians are a part of the public health workforce, especially those that deal with disease outbreak," said Brian Cook, press secretary for Pete Stark, D-Calif., chair of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. "We have a shortage of veterinarians right now who are trained to deal with disease outbreak." Still, scholarships, loan assistance and fellowships to veterinarians is one thing. Providing government health insurance to dogs is quite another. "We are not offering insurance for dogs," Morris said. We pored over the bill and came to the same conclusion. There is no health insurance of any kind for dogs -- no public option for Rex, no death panels for Fido. So we've got to put Beck in the doghouse for this one -- Pants on Fir

"There were more people at the Air and Space Museum" than at a rally against the health care bills Counting people at Washington protests has always been a tricky business. Groups have always boasted of huge crowds, but police estimates were often much lower. That sparked such controversy that police don't do the counts anymore. Without an official police count, organizers are free to claim big numbers, with only the news media to offer an independent assessment. Such was the case for a protest against the Democratic health care bill on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 5, 2009. The weekday event featured dozens of Republican members of Congress and a boisterious crowd that carried, among other things, a banner showing a photograph of dead Holocaust victims with the label, "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945." As usual, there was debate about the size of the crowd. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., a conservative firebrand who urged her supporters to attend, told Fox News' Sean Hannity on the day of the rally that 20,000 to 45,000 people attended. In the blogosphere, meanwhile, liberals dismissed the idea that more than a few thousand people showed up. A few days after the rally, Bob Beckel, a Democratic consultant and Fox News contributor, said Bachmann's estimate was inflated. "Well, I was down at that thing," Beckel said on Hannity's Nov. 9 show. "You said there were 20,000 people there. There were more people at the Air and Space Museum that day than were [at the rally]." We wondered if Beckel was right, so we checked with the National Air and Space Museum. A spokeswoman told us there were 9,771 visitors that day. Estimating the size of the rally is more difficult. We called the Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction over the area where the rally was held, and a spokeswoman said that the department did not make a crowd estimate. So we are left with reports in the news media. A news story in the Washington Post put the number at "an estimated 10,000," while Dana Milbank, a columnist with the Post , said 5,000. Politico , a daily publication that that covers politics, said there were "at least 10,000" attendees. Most other newspaper accounts, including stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, pegged attendance at "thousands" of people. We asked two reporters who covered the event how they came up with their number. Politico 's Jonathan Allen explained his methodology for us in considerable detail. "I used a pretty simple method for my estimate," Allen told PolitiFact. "The biggest portion of the crowd on the lawn was penned into a stone-walled area that looks a bit like the top part of a trapezoid. I counted people, roughly ticking off by tens, across the narrow top and got to 180. Then I went down one leg of the wall to count how deep the full line of people went, getting to between 50 and 60. I multiplied 180 by 55, knowing that because I was dealing with an angle greater than 90 degrees at the junction of the walls that my number would actually undercount the people in the space. The product of the two numbers is 9,900. I added because of the shape of the area and because there was another section of the crowd numbering in the low hundreds." He concluded that "it was at least – but not too much more than – 10,000," adding, "I had another reporter with me, who agreed with the methodology. For anyone watching on television, it should be remembered that it’s a huge lawn that takes tens of thousands of people to fill. If it looked empty, that’s because it’s a big space. I’ve been going to sporting events and political rallies for more than 30 years, and I have a pretty good sense of crowd size. That said, if someone can produce an aerial shot and count the people and prove me wrong, I’m happy to correct the error." We also talked to Noam Levey, who covered the event for the Los Angeles Times . "We based our estimate on a combination of observation and interviews," Levey said. "Particularly helpful was Clark McPhail, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, who has been doing crowd estimates on the Mall for years by calculating densities in set areas of the Mall. At our request, Clark looked at photos of the event to come up with his estimate that about 5,000 people were there." We followed up with McPhail. He said that the only elevated photograph of the rally that he was able to secure led him to estimate a crowd of 5,000, but McPhail added that the photograph he used was imperfect. It was not taken from as high an angle as he would have liked, and it was unclear whether it had been taken at the moment of maximum attendance. When we explained Allen's methodology to McPhail, he praised it as being statistically sound. "It's absolutely a credible way of counting," McPhail said. "In fact, I train observers to do it that way." We find no support for the much larger estimates from Bachmann, who did not respond to our e-mails. And as a leader of the rally, she would benefit from a larger estimate. So, in the absence of an official count, we'll take McPhail's lead and give Allen's methodology some credence. That means the number of people attending the rally and visiting the Air and Space Museum was about the same. If he's right, it's by just a small margin. If he's wrong, it's also by a small margin. So we find Beckel's claim Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The House of Representatives does not have a prochoice majority One of the more interesting twists in health care reform came on a recent vote in the House of Representatives on abortion coverage. An amendment restricting abortion coverage authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, won the votes of all Republicans and 64 Democrats to become part of the health care reform bill passed by the House on Saturday. His measure further tightened rules about how insurers could offer abortion coverage, requiring them to offer separate policies in many instances. (Read our detailed explanation of the Stupak amendment here .) Abortion rights advocates should not have been surprised, said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat from California, on the MSNBC show Morning Joe . Sanchez, who favors abortion rights, said that "progressives are really angry" because they believe poor women should have the choice to get an abortion if they want one. "On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that the House of Representatives is not a majority prochoice," Sanchez said. "And I've told that to a lot of pro-choice groups. I would count maybe about 150 prochoice votes. You need 218 to get to pass a bill." We wanted to know if Sanchez was correct that "the House of Representatives is not majority prochoice." We first turned to an organization that favors abortion rights. NARAL Pro-Choice America rates members of Congress and has compiled its own profile of the current Congress. It labeled 185 members "prochoice." Then we turned to the National Right to Life Committee, a group that opposes abortion. It doesn't rate the entire Congress in the same way, but the group has rated four abortion votes during the current Congress and created percentage ratings for each member. A 100 percent rating means a member fully agreed with the positions of National Right to Life; a 0 percent rating means they did not agree at all. We crunched the numbers, looking for members who never voted with the position of National Right to Life -- 185, the same as NARAL's "prochoice" members. Other numbers tend to support Sanchez's conclusion, but they also reveal the complexity of the issue and the fact that every member doesn't fall neatly into a yes-or-no category. NARAL labeled 203 members "antichoice." National Right to Life gave only 179 members 100 percent ratings. NARAL labeled 47 members "mixed choice," while National Right to Life found that 71 members voted with the group some of the time. So do those numbers add up to the conclusion that there isn't a "prochoice majority" in the House? NARAL spokesman Ted Miller agreed with Sanchez's comments. "It is accurate to state that antichoice lawmakers outnumber our prochoice allies," Miller said in an e-mail interview. "While the numbers are challenging, we have managed to win some key votes this session (family-planning vote and lifting D.C. abortion ban) by gaining support from some mixed- and even antichoice members." National Right to Life spokesman Douglas Johnson, on the other hand, downplayed the idea that antiabortion sentiment is growing in the House. His side does win some votes, he said, and the Stupak amendment was "the clearest vote on abortion that we've had in the current Congress." But he doubts that Congress would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade , a major precedent establishing abortion rights. "If you had a vote in the House on whether or not to overturn Roe vs. Wade , I believe that the majority would affirm that they would support it," Johnson said. In fact, a few members of Congress who voted for the Stupak amendment otherwise receive low ratings from National Right to Life. We counted 34 members who voted with the group on Stupak's amendment but against it on other issues. Indeed, the Stupak amendment represents a classic gray area: The measure does not forbid insurers from covering abortion, but it requires them to offer separate policies for people who pay for plans with their own money (as opposed to those who pay part of their premiums with government subsidies). Those who favor abortion rights say this will discourage insurers from offering coverage that includes abortion, and perhaps it will. But that's a business decision on the part of the insurers, not a government prohibition. We should add here that the Stupak amendment might not make it to the final bill, once the Senate considers its own version of health care reform. Getting back to Sanchez's statement: She said, "the House of Representatives is not a majority prochoice." Her claim is supported by counts from both sides that show only 185 members are solidly in favor of abortion rights. It's worth noting that the number of antiabortion House members is less than a majority, too. But as for Sanchez's claim, she is right. We rate her claim True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Guantanamo Bay detainees will get the H1N1 vaccine The Obama administration's handling of the H1N1 vaccine has given conservatives plenty to complain about. First, the government got behind schedule with its massive vaccination plans. And then came reports that the Pentagon was planning to vaccinate the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sean Hannity complained of the hypocrisy on his Nov. 2, 2009, show. "So you were hoping to get the H1N1 vaccine," he said. "Well, if the vaccine hasn't reached a doctor's office near you, that might be because it's on its way to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That's right. A military spokesman announced Gitmo detainees will receive the vaccine sometime this month. That's well before it's expected to be available to the public at large. Seems the Obama administration has its priorities straight. Doesn't it?" Given the confusion over the program -- and a White House denial about the Guantanamo vaccinations -- we decided to look into Hannity's claim. It all started on Oct. 30, when CNN ran a story quoting Maj. Diana R. Haynie, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay, who said the Pentagon would be offering the H1N1 vaccines to people held at the camp. "Detainees at JTF Guantanamo are considered to be at higher risk and therefore they will be offered the H1N1 vaccination," she told CNN. "JTF Guantanamo conducts safe, humane, legal and transparent care and custody of detainees. As such, we must provide detainees the medical care necessary to maintain their health." The Associated Press ran a similar story on Nov. 2. The news sparked an onslaught of criticism from lawmakers of both parties. They said pregnant women, children and the elderly should have priority access to the limited supply of vaccines over the Guantanamo detainees. On Tuesday, Nov. 3, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a press briefing that, "There is no vaccine in Guantanamo and there's no vaccine on the way to Guantanamo." But the same day, a Pentagon spokesman said that a shipment of vaccines would eventually be sent to the prison, although he said the detainees would get the vaccine only after it was given to active-duty troops, contractors and others working for the government. The most recent news reports say that about 300 vaccines arrived at the installation on Monday, Nov. 9. According to the Associated Press, it's unlikely those vaccines will be given to prisoners. Instead, they are meant for military personnel, contractors and U.S. workers at the base. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "We have an obligation to provide for the health of [the detainees], but we're faced with a situation where we have a limited amount of vaccines at this time," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told PolitiFact. Assuming there are enough supplies, the detainees would eventually be given the vaccine, he said. The White House told us that, to date, no prisoners have been vaccinated, but that priority for the vaccine would follow this order: U.S. forces, deployed health care workers (civilian and contractor), civilians, detainees and non-US Defense Department contractors. So, Hannity is correct. Current plans say that the vaccines will eventually be offered to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We rate his claim Tru

Claims that Obama said, "For those who oppose our policies, you should just shut up and go away. Back in his Florida district, U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young decided to toss some red meat at the feet of a group of eager Republicans. Taking the microphone at Monday's meeting of the Pinellas Republican Executive Committee, Young said that President Barack Obama, during a recent campaign rally for a Democratic candidate running in Virginia, told Republicans to "go away." "He said, 'For those who oppose our policies, you should just shut up and go away,' " Young said to an overflowing crowd of Republican Party activists and insiders. "Well, we ain't gonna shut up and we ain't going away." When Young relayed Obama's message, some people in the audience gasped. Could the president have said that? Almost every word the president utters in public is saved, recorded or typed somewhere. That makes separating truth from fiction when it comes to Obama's public statements pretty easy. Let's get one part out of the way: After an exhaustive review of transcripts, newspaper stories and videos of Obama's recent campaign speeches, Obama never said the sentence exactly as Young attributed it to him. We did find the speech Young was referring to, however. It was given by Obama on Aug. 6 on behalf of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, and was referenced in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by James Taranto a few days later. At one point while writing about the speech, Taranto describes "Obama's petulant demand that his critics shut up and get out of the way." That's pretty much what Young relayed to the crowd of Pinellas Republicans. So we tracked down the transcript from the speech itself. The Virginia speech focused heavily on the economy and the president's support of a $787 billion stimulus package. He joked with the crowd that some Republicans are trying to blame him for the country's economic woes. "You've got folks on the other side of the aisle pointing at the federal budget and somehow trying to put that at our feet. Well, let's look at the history. When I walked in, we had a $1.3 trillion deficit. That was gift-wrapped and waiting for me when I walked in the Oval Office," Obama said. "Without my policies we'd have an even higher deficit going forward. The one exception is the recovery package that we had to do in order to get this economy moving again." Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 Obama continued, "So you can't go out there and charge up the credit card, go on ... shopping sprees on things that didn't grow the economy, hand over the bill to us, and then say, 'Why haven't you paid it off yet?' I got that bill from (Republicans). So we've got some work to do. I don't mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I'm the president. But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking. Am I wrong, Virginia?" The last half of the quote, the "get out of the way," was picked up by the local newspapers covering the speech and spread from there. Conservative commentators like Taranto said it showed Obama's unwillingness to work with Republicans on bipartisan solutions. But the broader context shows that Obama's criticisms were more targeted. Specifically, Obama was criticizing Republicans who blame him for the country's economic problems, when -- he says -- many of the problems were created while Republicans were in power. That's a far cry from Young's report of Obama's statement -- "For those who oppose our policies, you should just shut up and go away." Young's statement is much more sweeping and dismissive than anything the president said. We rate Young's claim Fals

"I signed the largest single tax cut in the history of Florida, a $25 billion tax cut over five years, directed at property tax cuts. It's become part of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's firewall when confronted with criticism that he isn't conservative enough. "I signed the largest single tax cut in the history of Florida, a $25 billion tax cut over five years, directed at property tax cuts," Crist said while speaking to a group of Michigan Republicans in September. "My state goes back to 1845; the largest tax cut since 1845 in the Sunshine State." Crist touts his tax-cutting record over and over, in news releases, political speeches and in the first radio ad for his U.S. Senate campaign. The line is good politics. But is it true? The property tax changes proposed by Crist and the Legislature in early 2007 were sold as the antidote to citizens' complaints that local government spending had spiraled out of control. Crist famously predicted taxes would "drop like a rock." On June 21, 2007, the governor signed House bills 1B and 5B — the two-pronged tax package. House Bill 1B required local governments to reduce their property tax rates to 2006 levels and mandated deeper cuts based on how much a local government collected in property tax dollars. The reported savings to taxpayers: $15.6 billion over five years. House Bill 5B, meanwhile, let voters consider further property tax changes. Also known as Amendment 1, the changes — which included an additional homestead benefit, limited property value increases for non-homesteaded property and created portability for Save Our Homes — were approved by voters in January 2008. The savings: $9.3 billion over five years. Combined, that's the $25 billion Crist is talking about. We have to address two questions to see if Crist's claim is right: Are the estimates correct? And do they constitute the largest state tax cut ever? Caution: The following information is considered highly wonky. Crist's tax math To estimate the financial impact of the 2007 and 2008 property tax changes, analysts at the governor's office first forecast a future as if the changes had not occurred. The process was relatively simple. Analysts estimated five years of statewide property tax collection information by multiplying a tax rate, which they did not change, by taxable property values, which they grew at 3 to 5 percent a year. The calculation, analysts said, attempted to replicate the billions of dollars in property taxes Floridians would pay each year if nothing else happened. With that baseline, analysts next built a world post-tax changes, multiplying an estimated new tax rate by the same property values. The difference between Year 1 of the first calculation and Year 1 of the second constitutes the governor's estimate of the savings to Florida taxpayers. They did the same math for years 2 through 5, and voila — $25 billion in savings. Simple? No, says David Gamage, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in taxation. The governor's estimates would be accurate only if property tax values increased as analysts predicted and local governments failed to reduce their tax rates, Gamage says. We will never know what governments would have done to their tax rates, but we do know about property tax values: They've gone down. Taxable property values dropped 15 percent in 2008, according to figures from county property appraisers. Property values are expected to drop again in 2009. "Even if this policy hadn't been enacted, the future would look different than today," Gamage said. It's the same reason that a recent Florida Association of Counties report concluded that of the $1.5 billion trimmed from property tax collections at the county level in the past three years, almost half is a result of falling property values, not the Crist-led changes. When questioned by PolitiFact, the governor's office admitted that its original savings estimates are now likely high and it has not rerun the analysis. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 What we do know is this: the Department of Revenue said that as a result of the legislative-mandated tax rate rollbacks, the state's property tax collections fell about $300 million ( page 9 ) from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2008. And property tax collections in total fell an estimated $745 million ( page 163 ) from fiscal year 2008 to 2009, the first year the Amendment 1 changes took effect. That's a $1.05 billion reduction in property taxes. The governor's estimate predicted $6.1 billion in savings during that same period. If property values fail to increase, the gap will only widen since the changes are estimated to have a bigger impact in later years. Part of the difference in the numbers is that the governor's office counted future, theoretical increases in tax collections as part of its estimated "tax cut." And part of the difference is that falling property values wrecked the governor's projections. Is it the biggest? Despite inaccurate projections, the governor's office says the 2007 and 2008 tax cuts are still the state's largest. But what else competes? The governor's analysts point to the repeal of the intangibles tax. The intangibles tax — created during the Depression — was paid on investments, and at its peak, sat at 2 mills ($2 for every $1,000). The tax was cut under Gov. Lawton Chiles and repealed entirely in 2006 by Gov. Jeb Bush. At its height in 1999, it provided the state about $1.2 billion in revenue, according to the Department of Revenue. Adjusted for inflation, that translates to about $1.5 billion in 2007. That's a bigger tax break than what the Crist-led changes delivered in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, but not more than Crist's rosy projection. We wondered if anyone previously has claimed to be Florida's tax cut king. Bush did. In 1999, Bush and the Legislature passed what they called "the largest tax cut in state history." The $1.01 billion plan included further cuts to the intangibles tax, as well as the repeal of a per-drink tax on alcohol, a rollback in the school property tax rate and a reduction in unemployment taxes businesses pay, among other things. Kurt Wenner, director of Tax Research at Florida TaxWatch, suggested a third tax change that could be considered the state's largest: Save Our Homes. The amendment to the state Constitution proposed and approved by citizens in 1992 limited increases to the property value of homesteaded property in Florida. While there is debate about whether those savings were offset by people without homestead exemptions, the savings to homesteaded property owners is quantifiable. From 1996 to 2008, almost $1.9 trillion in property value went untaxed because of Save Our Homes. Using a conservative tax rate of 17 mills, that equates to $32 billion less in property taxes paid — or about $2.66 billion per year without adjusting for inflation. In 2007, the savings was about $7.27 billion and from 2004 to 2008 the estimated savings was more than $26 billion. Those numbers certainly are bigger than the Crist cuts so far, in reality and in projection. The governor's office said it did not consider Save Our Homes when it made the claim that the Crist tax changes constitute the state's largest. Officials then provided data that showed the saving in the first years of Save Our Homes was modest. But that's because the large savings came in later years as Save Our Homes protected against increases to properties' taxable value. Failing to consider Save Our Homes didn't sit well with Ken Wilkinson, the Lee County property appraiser who led the push for Save Our Homes — and supported the Crist-led changes. "I would say Save Our Homes is the largest tax cut in the history of Florida," Wilkinson said. "There is a savings, you can look it up, and it's real." Wilkinson and Wenner said you can't ignore Save Our Homes just because it was a citizen initiative. Moreover, the Crist-led changes built off Save Our Homes in two major ways — by making Save Our Homes portable and by creating a Save Our Homes style benefit for commercial and rental properties. If one's a tax cut, so is the other. Our ruling The Crist-led changes to Florida's property tax structure certainly required the lowering of tax rates and assessment values throughout Florida. But there are all kinds of holes in projecting the size and scope of the legislation's impact. The basis for the governor's estimate assumed a future that did not come to pass. Specifically, the governor's estimates relied on future property values continuing to increase and local governments failing to lower their property tax rate. We now know property values are decreasing. The governor's office admits its projections are now inaccurate because of declines in property values statewide. A state analysis concluded that the tax measures have failed to produce the savings estimated by the governor. Portability, for instance, was predicted to cut taxable property values by $11.5 billion in 2008. But it cut property values only $3.4 billion, the analysis showed. Here's the bottom line: While the tax structure changes passed by the Legislature, signed by Crist and approved by voters undoubtedly will result in less property taxes being paid by Florida residents, the specific financial impact of the initiatives remains quite unclear. Experts say projections can be misleading. But given the decline in home values, we know Crist will have difficulty reaching his claim of $25 billion over five years. In the absence of additional data, and with the knowledge that Save Our Homes has cut property tax bills for Florida residents $32 billion or more, we can't agree with Crist that the 2007 and 2008 changes constitute the largest tax cut in state history. We rule Crist's statement False

"President Obama campaigned on a promise to put reproductive health care at the center of his reform plan. With abortion now a key issue in the debate over health care reform, abortion rights supporters are highlighting President Barack Obama's promise about the issue during the presidential campaign. In an alert to members on Nov. 9, 2009, Planned Parenthood Action Fund said, "President Obama campaigned on a promise to put reproductive health care at the center of his reform plan." We'll address that claim here. We'll also be adding it to our Obameter database of campaign promises. The group's claim is virtually identical to one made in September by House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who said in a statement that, "during his quest for the presidency, now-President Obama declared that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care that includes abortion, and vowed that this 'right' would be at the heart of his health care reform plan if elected president." We researched Boehner's claim and concluded he was right about Obama's promise. We rated the statement True . To explore Obama's promise on abortion coverage in his health care plan, you need to go back to a July 17, 2007, speech he gave to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. In that speech, he discussed his commitment to how "reproductive care" -- a term a campaign aide said included abortion coverage -- would fit into his health care reform plan. Obama said, "In my mind, reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose. Essentially what we're doing is, we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services, as well as mental health services and disease management services, because part of our interest is to make sure that we’re putting more money into preventive care." The words Obama used in that speech mirror those in the Planned Parenthood Action Fund's recent alert even more closely than they did Boehner's formulation. So it's certainly correct, as the group says, that Obama "campaigned on a promise to put reproductive health care at the center of his reform plan." It's worth nothing that since he spoke to that group -- an important constituency for someone seeking the Democratic nomination -- he has chosen his words carefully. Of all the words Obama has spoken and written about health care reform since 2007 -- a voluminous amount, to be sure -- the terms "abortion" and "reproductive health" haven't popped up very often. Indeed, on several of the rare occasions in which Obama or his staff have broached the subject, it's been to assure Americans that his health care proposal would not promote abortions. For instance, in his prime-time address to Congress on Sept. 9, 2009, Obama's only mention of abortion -- which came immediately after he was interrupted by the heckling Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. -- was that "one more misunderstanding I want to clear up: Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." That's a reflection of the sensitivity surrounding the issue. Obama's promise to the abortion rights group during the primary campaign could now be a liability before a broader audience that includes many people opposed to abortion rights. Still, Planned Parenthood is correct that Obama campaigned on a promise that he would put reproductive health care at the center of his reform plan." After all, he was speaking to . . . Planned Parenthood. So we find the group's claim to be True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Mitt Romney ... gave you government health care that is now bankrupting the state" of Massachusetts On his Nov. 2, 2009, Webcast, Glenn Beck rattled off a list of Republicans he thinks are just too liberal for his party, including Sen. Lindsay "Grahamnesty," Minnesota Gov. Tim "Cap-and-Trade" Pawlenty, Sen. John "My Hero is a Flaming Progressive" McCain, and Sen. Olympia "Health Care" Snowe. And then there's former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who Beck said "opened the tent and gave you government health care that is now bankrupting the state." "That was my problem with the Massachusetts Romneycare," Beck said, referring to a three-year-old mandate that requires everyone in the state to have health care. "I remember saying to him, 'Mitt, you're not king. You're not going to be there forever. You opened the door, the progressives came in.'" In many ways, the Massachusetts health care model mirrors a plan lawmakers are considering on Capitol Hill, so we wondered whether the mandate could be the budget-buster Beck claims it to be. First, a few words about the Massachusetts plan. When Romney became governor in 2003, he was looking for a way for Massachusetts to make health care cheaper and more accessible. "People who don't have insurance nonetheless receive health care. And it's expensive," he told National Public Radio in 2006. "We're spending a billion dollars giving health care to people who don't have insurance. ... And my question was: Could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase insurance? Let them pay what they can afford. We'll subsidize what they can't." Thus began Romney's plan for an individual mandate, a requirement that nearly everyone have health insurance, even those who are unemployed. Though Romney vetoed eight parts of the bill, including a provision that would have fined small businesses that failed to comply with the mandate (the legislature overrode that veto), the basics of his original vision remained intact throughout the legislative process. Commonwealth Care is a program that helps low-income consumers pay for plans while Commonwealth Choice acts as an insurance exchange for individuals and small businesses. The program is subsidized by taxpayer dollars and federal funding. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Today, about 96 percent of the state's population has health insurance, either through the state program, their employers or by other means, which ranks Massachusetts first in the nation in terms of percentage of people with some form of coverage. Nevertheless, Commonwealth Care has had its share of criticism. Some critics say it's been a boon to the insurance industry, while others complain that some consumers are paying even more for coverage, not less, as state lawmakers initially hoped. (In fact, Massachusetts has some of the most expensive health care per family in the country, according to some studies.) Another complaint: Commonwealth Care has taken a significant bite out of Massachusetts's bottom line. Indeed, the program has been quite popular. Initially, the state projected that 215,000 people would eventually be enrolled in the program at the cost of $725 million. By 2007, enrollment had reached 80,000 and six months later, the number had doubled to 158,000 people. In 2008, enrollment peaked at more than 177,000 people. Currently, the state is expecting to spend about $880 million on Commonwealth Care in the coming budget year; that's about 3.3 percent of the state's $27 billion budget. So, while the program has become more expensive, it has not been the budget-buster that Beck suggests. We asked experts whether the state would still be facing a $5 billion deficit if the program hadn't been put into place, and the resounding answer was "yes." "Beck joins a long and growing list of uninformed commentators who allege that Massachusetts’ health reform is bankrupting the state," said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a tax policy think tank. "He and they are absolutely wrong." The state's budget deficit has been caused by an unprecedented collapse in state tax revenues, Widmer said. According to the administration, tax revenues have fallen $2 billion below the amounts the fiscal 2009 budget was built upon. And the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a left-leaning budget think tank, says the problem has been compounded by permanent tax cuts put in place during the late 1990s. Adding to these financial woes is an increase in the number of people relying on unemployment benefits as the result of losing their jobs, said Alan Sager, a professor of health policy and management at Boston University. "The state would be facing a deficit no matter what," Sager said. So, while the state may be broke, it has little to do with the health care program Mitt Romney put in place over three years ago. Instead, tax revenue shortfalls and a growing reliance on unemployment benefits due to layoffs have put a massive budget burden on the state. As a result, we give Beck a Fals

An amendment to the House health reform bill "puts new restrictions on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market even when they would pay premiums with their own money. An amendment about abortion coverage was a key reason Democrats were able to narrowly pass the sweeping health care reform bill in the House of Representatives on Nov. 7, 2009. But that same amendment has emerged as a flashpoint that has some Democrats threatening to ultimately oppose the bill. The question of abortion funding has been a long-running and contentious issue in the current health care debate, and we have already addressed the question in the context of the Senate Finance Committee bill here and here . Specifically at issue is whether the new system of exchanges and subsidies for uninsured Americans envisioned by the House health care bill would result in federal money being spent on abortion services -- something that has been barred since 1976, with passage of the Hyde Amendment. The amendment, by Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Joe Pitts, R-Pa., has explicit restrictions on abortion coverage that go beyond the language of the original bill. The amendment passed the House on a 240-194 vote. It won the support of 64 mostly antiabortion Democrats, joining with all Republicans except for Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., who voted present. A wide majority of Democrats opposed the Stupak-Pitts amendment. Opponents of the amendment argued that it amounted to a severe infringement on rights that have been upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Roe vs. Wade. During the House debate, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., explained that she would support the health care bill despite approval of the abortion amendment, which she strongly opposed. "Now, this bill is not perfect," Lowey said. "I am deeply disappointed that the House approved language which puts new restrictions on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market even when they would pay premiums with their own money." For this item, we'll explore whether she is correct that it puts new restrictions on abortion coverage in the private market even when women would pay their own premium. On one issue right off the bat, we believe Lowey is misleading. The Stupak amendment -- which now accounts for about four pages of the nearly 2,000-page bill -- does not address the entire "private health insurance market." Rather, it addresses how abortion coverage would be handled within the health insurance "exchanges" included in the Democratic-sponsored House health care bill. These exchanges would provide a virtual marketplace for health insurance for those who do not already have coverage through their employer or through a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid. The exchange is designed for people who are self-employed or work for very small businesses -- but it would serve at most a small fraction of Americans, since most people get their insurance either through their employer, a spouse's employer or through existing government programs. So, by not specifying that she's talking about how abortion coverage would be handled in the exchange, Lowey immediately makes the issue seem to affect many more people than it actually does. And she makes an additional, and we believe more significant, misrepresentation when she says that abortion coverage would be restricted for beneficiaries "even when they would pay premiums with their own money." The amendment says that individuals buying insurance on the exchange may still purchase coverage that includes abortions as long as no federal money is used. It also says that insurers may still offer abortion coverage as long as such coverage, and the administrative structure behind it, is not supported by federal money, and as long as their insurance offerings on the exchange include two nearly identical options, one of which covers abortion services and one of which does not. Whether someone would be affected by the restriction depends on whether they receive what the bill calls "affordability credits" -- federal subsidies that would help the lower-middle class buy coverage. People who choose to receive the subsidies would indeed face more significant restrictions on abortion coverage. If they want a plan with abortion coverage, they would have to buy a separate, add-on plan for abortion coverage known as a "rider," using their own money. But Lowey said the amendment "puts new restrictions on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market even when they would pay premiums with their own money ." We believe that Lowey's formulation is, at best, misleading. The people who would truly pay all of the premium with their own money -- and who would not use federal subsidies at all -- are not barred in any way from obtaining abortion coverage, even if they obtain their insurance from the federally administered health exchange. Lowey's office counters that exchange participants who get the subsidies do indeed pay a share of their premiums with their own money, maybe even a majority of the cost. But if that's what Lowey meant, she should have said abortion coverage would be prohibited "even when they pay part, or most, of their premiums with their own money." Not making that distinction, combined with her failure to specify that she was discussing only people who use the exchange, suggests that the restrictions are more severe and widespread than they actually are. Some in the abortion-rights community do actually make a stronger case that the amendment would harm individuals who pay for their coverage without subsidies. This line of argument involves what insurance companies might do from a business perspective in response to the amendment. Some critics say that the amendment throws up enough obstacles against offering abortion coverage on the health exchange -- particularly the requirement to offer two separate plans, one of them without abortion provisions -- that insurers will simply take the path of least resistance and offer a single plan that leaves out abortion coverage. Some also argue that companies will be reluctant to offer riders for abortion coverage, or that there won't be much demand for them. This could indirectly diminish the abortion coverage options for people on the exchange who don't take subsidies, even though the law doesn't limit their options directly. There's plenty of room for debate about how the Stupak-Pitts amendment will eventually shape the availability of abortion coverage. But Lowey is wrong on two points. First, she suggests the amendment applies to everyone in the private insurance market when it just applies to those in the health care exchange. Second, her statement that the restrictions would affect women "even when they would pay premiums with their own money" is incorrect. In fact, women on the exchange who pay the premiums with their own money will be able to get abortion coverage. So we find her statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"History tells us that job growth always lags behind economic growth. Some Republican critics have scoffed at President Barack Obama's pronouncements that the economy seems to be improving, pointing to the unemployment rate, which keeps going up. But Obama has consistently tempered his hopeful words about positive economic indicators with warnings that unemployment rates are likely to continue to rise for a while, even as the economy improves. "History tells us that job growth always lags behind economic growth," Obama said Nov. 6, 2009, in remarks in the White House Rose Garden. "He's right about that," said William Beach, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's center for data analysis. In the post-World War II era, there have been 10 recessions and after most of them, employment lagged a few months behind other improving economic indicators. But after the last two, in 1991 and 2001, unemployment rates continued to climb for more than a year. Interestingly, Democrats criticized President George W. Bush regarding the 2001 "jobless recovery," much as some Republicans now criticize Obama for the current one. The latest jobless recovery came as little surprise to economists who study such trends. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "Employers are hesitant to hire people back to the work force (after a recession) because they don't know if the economy is going to continue to grow, which is understandable," Beach said. But more importantly, he said, the American economy has become increasingly reliant on service jobs, such as information and financial jobs. "Those jobs come back very slowly," Beach said. The recession this time is even more severe, so Beach predicts this jobless recovery will last even longer than past recessions. "I don't think we'll see jobs coming back for a long time," Beach said. But even without government meddling, Beach believes employment was destined to lag. The San Francisco Chronicle , relying on numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August charted the lag between recessions' end and the peak of unemployment rates. In the eight recessions between 1949 and 1991, unemployment rates lagged by an average of about three months. After the last two, however, it took 15 months and 19 months, respectively, before unemployment rates peaked. Bottom line, President Obama is right when he cautions that employment has lagged behind economic recovery in the past. And so we rate his statement True

The House health care bill pays for "about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. Do you think the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal likes the health care bill written by Democrats in the House of Representatives? Well, the headline on a recent editorial about it was "The Worst Bill Ever." The editorial disliked new regulations for the health care system and additional taxes to pay for health insurance expansions. The bill also "disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks," the editorial said. "It 'pays for' about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, 'saving' about $250 billion." We've looked into the problem of Medicare payments previously and whether that should be considered part of health care reform. We found evidence to support both sides. So we rated Sen. John Cornyn's statement about it -- "The first installment of health care reform ... will raise the deficit by $250 billion " -- as Half True. Here, we wanted to look at the claim that the bill pays for "about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years." To check on the bill's financial condition, we turned to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, the nonpartisan budget agency that creates calculations for how much bills in Congress will cost the government. Political leaders and others regularly turn to the CBO as the definitive source for budget projections. The CBO looked at the bill's new spending, new savings and new taxes. CBO analysts added those numbers together to get the bill's impact on the deficit for a given year, and over 10 years. Generally speaking, the CBO does not provide numbers after the first 10 years, because it believes those numbers are subject to too much uncertainty. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Looking at the House health care bill, it takes awhile for all the pieces of it to take effect, with different measures going into effect in different years. The requirement for individuals to buy insurance, for example, doesn't begin until 2013. People are subject to a tax penalty for not having insurance, and they'll see that penalty on the return they file in 2014. The new taxes on high-income individuals, however, go into effect earlier, in 2011. The CBO projects that these tax revenues will rise gradually over the first nine years. Meanwhile, cost savings don't start kicking in until 2012. The cost savings grow slowly but then get bigger in the last three years of the plan. (You can follow along with these numbers by looking at Page 3 of this CBO report .) The Journal editorial is right that the CBO shows the biggest costs come in the second five years of the program, from 2015 to 2019. But the cost savings are the biggest in the final years as well. Overall, the plan is in the black through 2014, dips briefly into the red in 2015 and 2016, and then pays for itself again in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Over 10 years, the bill reduces the deficit by $104 billion. The CBO did not create numerical projections for the years 2020 to 2029, but the report notes that for those years, the bill would probably result in "slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty." To be clear, those who oppose the Democratic bill think the CBO's estimates will likely be undermined by future events. "The tax hikes will bring in less revenues than is estimated, and the spending provisions will likely be expanded over time," said Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Institution. "Even if the CBO assumes it's revenue neutral, the smart money would bet on lower tax revenues, fewer spending cuts and higher program costs." (Riedl added that he wasn't questioning the work of the CBO, he just thought it would be overtaken by political realities.) On the other hand, Edwin Park of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said that it's significant that the CBO found the bill lowered the deficit over the first 10 years and also in the subsequent 10 years after that. That shows that the bill pays for itself over the long term and is fiscally sound. "The CBO has been crystal clear that it reduces the deficit in the out years," he said. The Journal editorial says the House bill "'pays for' about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years." It's true that the taxes kick in first, before many of the bill's biggest expenses get started. But the editorial doesn't mention that the CBO projects the largest cost savings for the bill's final four years, and that the bill appears to be self-sustaining starting around 2017. So we rate the statement Half True

"As a result of the House Republican bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now confirms that families will see their health care premiums reduced by up to 10 percent. A day after the GOP released its 219-page alternative health care bill, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, sent out a press release boasting that the "the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now confirms that families will see their health care premiums reduced by up to 10 percent." Lowering health care costs -- rather than reducing the ranks of the uninsured -- has been the primary focus of many Republicans in Congress, and so we wanted to check out Pence's claim. First, a few words about the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO. The nonpartisan budget agency calculates how much bills in Congress will cost the government. Political leaders and others regularly turn to the CBO as the definitive source for budget projections. And here's what the CBO concluded about how the GOP health care plan would affect private health insurance premiums: • For the small group market (generally businesses with two to 50 employees -- about 15 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce average premiums in 2016 by 7 to 10 percent compared with amounts under current law. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 • For the individual market (just over 5 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 5 to 8 percent. • And for the large group market (which represents 80 percent of private premiums), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 0 to 3 percent. The CBO cautioned that those estimates are "very preliminary and are subject to an unusually high degree of uncertainty" because of the difficulty in trying to untangle how various proposals in the plan might affect premiums. But you can see what Pence has done. The Indiana congressman cherry-picked the most favorable number to put the GOP plan in the best light. Yes, for people in the small market group, the CBO estimates they could see average premiums reduced in 2016 by "up to 10 percent" compared with amounts under current law. But only 15 percent of the total private premiums fall into that category. The overwhelming majority, 80 percent of people paying private premiums, are in the large market group. And for them, the CBO estimates the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 0 to 3 percent. But Pence did say "up to," providing himself with some very broad wiggle room. And so we rate Pence's statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a2bc5368-e052-449d-b9e1-d63c5904a6

The Republicans' alternative health care plan "will still let insurers raise premiums four times faster than wages. The liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change has an ad running in the Washington, D.C., market that attacks the GOP's recently released alternative to the Democrats' health care plan. The ad adopts a faux broadcast news format, beginning with this jab: "This just in: Republicans in Congress have introduced the Health Insurance Industry Profits Protection Act." The announcer says the GOP plan would let insurance companies continue denying care for pre-existing conditions, a claim we looked at more closely when U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the same thing. The ad then makes this claim: "Republicans will still let insurers raise premiums four times faster than wages." In its backup material for the ad, Americans United for Change cites a report from the liberal group Health Care for America Now! (guess where they are in the health care debate) that states, "Commercial health insurance premiums have risen four times faster than wages and have more than doubled in the last nine years." That report, in turn, credits the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation's "Employer Health Benefits -- 2008 Annual Survey," which backs up the statistic. So it's fair to say that insurance premiums have risen four times faster than wages over the last nine years. But is it fair to say that trend would continue under the Republican plan? "They (Republicans) do nothing to control the cost of premiums," said Lauren Weiner, a spokeswoman for Americans United for Change. "It's a tacit approval of the current trend." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Weiner said that's because the Republican plan does little to expand the insurance pool, which she argues would lower costs for everyone. A report from the Congressional Budget Office concluded the GOP plan would only reduce the number of uninsured people by 3 million by 2019, while 52 million nonelderly people would remain uninsured (by contrast the Democrats' plan would reduce the uninsured by 36 million, leaving 18 million without coverage). The Republican plan also does not include a public option, Weiner said, so it would not create the necessary competition to drive down health insurance costs. Republicans say their plan would reduce premiums because it would let people buy health insurance across state lines; allow small businesses to pool together and offer health insurance to their employees at much lower costs; and institute medical malpractice reforms. For an objective assessment, we turned to the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the GOP plan. The CBO is a nonpartisan budget agency that creates calculations for how much bills in Congress will cost the government. Contrary to the Americans United claim, the CBO concluded the GOP plan would lower premiums. Specifically: • For the small group market (generally businesses with 2 to 50 employees — about 15 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce average premiums in 2016 by 7 to 10 percent compared with amounts under current law. • For the individual market (just over 5 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 5 to 8 percent. • And for the large group market (which represents 80 percent of private premiums), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 0 to 3 percent. The CBO cautioned that those estimates are "very preliminary and are subject to an unusually high degree of uncertainty" because of the difficulty in trying to disentangle how various proposals in the plan might affect premiums. Still, the CBO has done the most thorough and objective analysis of the bill, while the liberal groups have merely assumed that past trends will continue. Given the CBO's role as a nonpartisan, well-respected authority, we find its estimates more persuasive. We find the Americans United claim to be False

"I didn't endorse" the federal stimulus bill Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, facing a potentially bruising Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, continues to run from any assertion that he is linked to President Barack Obama. Last week Crist told reporters he didn't know Obama was traveling in Florida. On Wednesday, Crist told a national television audience he didn't endorse the $787 billion federal stimulus bill pushed by Obama and passed by Congress in February. "I didn't endorse it," Crist told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. "I — you know, I didn't even have a vote on the darned thing. But I understood that it was going to pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians." This, from the same man who skipped a Florida Cabinet meeting to campaign with Obama for the stimulus in Fort Myers in February? Who went on national talk shows and across the state selling the plan? As the interview continued, Crist got on a roll. "You know, unfortunately, the president thinks that everything we need to do for every problem that comes along is spend more money and that's just wrong," he said. "Frankly, enough is enough. And I know that the people understand that. And I understand it. And I understand it because I'm the grandson of a Greek immigrant who came to this country with nothing, really taught me the value of a dollar, because his first job in America, in Altoona, Pa., was shining shoes for a living for $5 a month." Crist's comments about the stimulus startled conservatives, Democrats, and frankly, us, who all remember things differently. The conservative Club for Growth responded Thursday with an online television ad, criticizing Crist's support for the stimulus plan. And the Democratic National Committee blasted Crist's comments to reporters across the country. Let's go back to earlier this year, to see what Crist had to say then. From Hardball with Chris Matthews on Feb. 3: Speaking of the stimulus, Crist said, "It's going to help (Floridians') children. It's going to help their traffic situation. It's going to help produce more jobs here in the Sunshine State. That's a perspective that I have to have as, in essence, the CEO of Florida. And that's why I support it." From Time on Feb. 10: "I see this package as a pragmatic, commonsense opportunity to move forward. I didn't campaign for Obama, we don't agree on everything, but he's my president, and my job is to help Florida stay in the black." From Meet the Press on Feb. 22: Q: Why would you buck your own party, which did not vote for this plan in Congress, as you know, to support the stimulus? Crist: "It's not a matter of bucking the party, it's a matter of helping the people. I mean, I really view it as an issue of what can I do that's best for the people of Florida? We've got almost 20 million people that live in the Sunshine State now. I think my obligation is in essence the CEO of the state, to do everything I can to help us get through this tough economy. Certainly this stimulus package, about $12.2 billion to Florida, will help Florida an awful lot." Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 And that's just a sampling. But then there's the rally in Fort Myers Feb. 10. Crist skipped a Florida Cabinet meeting and a lunch with former Gov. Jeb Bush to tout the stimulus bill in person. If you've forgotten, here's a photo and video to jog your memory. Here's the retelling of that day from the St. Petersburg Times : "We know that it's important that we pass a stimulus package,'' Florida's popular Republican governor said amid "Yes, we can!" cheers as he introduced the Democratic president. "This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America and reigniting our economy." Crist went as far earlier this year as to lobby members of Florida's congressional delegation from both parties to support the stimulus package. The Miami Herald reported that Crist lobbied Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and his brother, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, along with Democratic Reps. Kathy Castor and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, he was one of the few prominent Republicans to support the stimulus at any level, a choice that won him accolades from Obama. And Crist was among a group of governors to write Obama on Feb. 3 to express support for the stimulus plan. "As stewards of the economies of our respective states and regions, we urge the Congress to reach prompt resolution of all outstanding differences and you to sign the bill when it reaches your desk," the letter read in part. Oh, oh, oh. One more. In May, according to the Orlando Sentinel , Crist himself said he would have made the "pragmatic" decision to vote for the stimulus bill that ultimately passed. On Thursday, Crist tried to expand on his CNN comments. When asked by state Capitol reporters if he were changing his position on the stimulus, Crist said, "I don't think so. I don't think so." "The bill that passed wasn't exactly what I would want to vote for. But it's what passed," Crist said. "And once that happened, you need to realize you need to do everything you possibly can to fight for Florida and our fellow Floridians, whether they're school teachers, construction workers or whatever it might be. And so once this happens, you know, I think it's important to embrace it, fight for Florida's fair share and do what's right for the state." That sounds a lot like Obama, actually, who has said several times that the stimulus wasn't perfect. Crist even said as much during his interview on Meet the Press in February. Back to Crist's original statement. He said Wednesday that he didn't endorse the stimulus and offered the fact that he didn't have a vote on the proposal as evidence. Of course, Crist, as governor, couldn't vote for the stimulus. But, strictly speaking, neither could Obama as president. So that's hardly a proper measure to justify a claim that Crist didn't endorse the stimulus bill. What is a proper measure are Crist's actions in January and February. Crist broke ranks with many in the Republican Party by publicly campaigning for the stimulus package on television and with the president. He lobbied Florida's congressional delegation to vote for the bill. And he signed Florida's budget, which was balanced because the state received billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. (The stimulus provides Florida $15.7 billion over three budget years ending next budget year.) White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Thursday even acknowledged Crist's support. "I think his words at that (Fort Myers) event speak for themselves," Gibbs said. "I think he was very supportive of the legislation and supportive of the benefits that it would have and has had for — for the state of Florida in seeing positive economic growth." Facing a primary challenge from the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Crist appears to be trying to rewrite history. But there are mountains of evidence that he not only supported the stimulus, he sang its praises. The meter is ablaze: Pants On Fir

The GOP health care plan "would allow health insurance companies to continue engaging in unfair and discriminatory practices like denying coverage to people because of a pre-existing medical condition." The GOP's alternative health care plan hadn't even hit the streets before the Democratic push-back began. The day before the plan was officially unveiled, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., took aim at the way the GOP plan was described by media outlets that had gotten early, leaked versions of it. In a press release from the Democratic National Committee, Vice Chair Wasserman Schultz said the GOP plan, "would allow health insurance companies to continue engaging in unfair and discriminatory practices like denying coverage to people because of a pre-existing medical condition." Requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions has been a popular element of the Democratic plan. Now that we've seen the full 219-page GOP alternative plan, it shows Wasserman Schultz is correct that it does not prohibit health insurance companies from denying coverage to people due to pre-existing medical conditions. But to listen to her, one might get the impression the Republicans have completely ignored the issue of pre-existing conditions. And they haven't. They have a different idea that they think will get at the problem. More than 10 pages of the GOP bill spell out a plan to help people with pre-existing conditions by allowing universal access to expanded and improved state-run high-risk pools. They accept patients who have health conditions that might prompt private insurance companies to reject them. Already, 34 states have high-risk insurance pools. "We want to encourage all states to have these," said House Republican Leader John Boehner. "And we put more money into these high-risk pools so that we can bring down the cost of health insurance. And at the end of the day, what we're doing with our proposal is lowering health care insurance premiums — lowering cost and expanding access." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The Republican plan calls for $25 billion in funding through 2019 to subsidize state high risk pool and reinsurance programs. In an MSNBC interview on Nov. 4, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said the cost of bolstering state funds and insurance programs to cover people with pre-existing conditions would be offset by savings from medical malpractice reforms that he said would "rein in some of these runaway massive lawsuits that drive defensive medicine and drive up the cost of premiums." Democrats counter that high-risk insurance pools have done little to solve the problems faced by people with pre-existing medical conditions. Premiums in those pools are usually far more expensive than in your average health insurance plan, and therefore remain out of reach for many moderate to low-income people with pre-existing conditions. The Republican plan tries to address that by requiring that the pool "must limit the pool premiums to no more than 150 percent of the average premium for applicable standard risk rates in that state." In other words, it might cost people with pre-existing conditions 50 percent more than average premiums paid by healthy people. But a study shows that might make the price too high. A February 2005 study by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund found that in states with high-risk pools, the rates were typically 25 percent to 50 percent higher than average rates. People with lower incomes just couldn't afford to buy into the state pools. As a result, they found, high-risk pool subsidies tended to go to a small number of relatively high-income people, those who could afford premiums well above market rates. The GOP plan for dealing with the issue of people with pre-existing conditions "is essentially the same as now, and now is not working," said Jonathan Beeton, a spokesman for Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Schultz was correct when she said the GOP plan does not prohibit health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. We found nothing in the 219-page Republican plan that would do that. Insurance companies have argued that they can only absorb the cost of taking people with pre-existing conditions if they could offset that expense by expanding their customer base through mandates that everyone buy insurance. And the Republican plan doesn't do that. Still, we think Wasserman Schultz's comments imply that Republicans have simply ignored the issue of pre-existing conditions altogether. They have not. They have taken a different tack from the Democrats. And Democrats may not agree that dealing with the issue through state-run high-risk pools is an adequate plan, but it is a plan. And so we rule Wasserman Schultz's comment Mostly True

Health care reform "establishes a new board of federal bureaucrats (the 'Health Benefits Advisory Committee') to dictate the health plans that all individuals must purchase. A few months ago, a chain e-mail purporting to be a line-by-line analysis of the House health care reform bill reached in-boxes all over the country, warning people of the dire consequences of the Democratic plans for reform. Taking a page from the same playbook, the House Republican Conference has created a similar list for the new health care bill that will be coming to the House floor in the next few weeks. You can read our fact-check of the Republican analysis in its entirety. Here, we're looking only at the statement, "Page 111 - Section 223 establishes a new board of federal bureaucrats (the 'Health Benefits Advisory Committee') to dictate the health plans that all individuals must purchase." Under the Democrats' health care reform plan, people will have to buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty, and policymakers have said they want everyone covered. The House bill also says what basic coverage should include: hospitalizations, physicians' visits, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse treatment, preventive care, maternity care, well-baby and well-child care, and durable medical equipment. But it doesn't provide specifics, like what kinds of prescription drugs or specific medical procedures must be covered. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The bill creates the Health Benefits Advisory Committee to advise the secretary of Health and Human Services on what the specifics should be. The committee will have up to 27 members appointed by the president and the Comptroller General, and it will represent the major stakeholders in the health care system, according to the bill. The committee doesn't dictate health plans, though: It advises the secretary, who can reject the recommendations. Another important caveat is that the committee helps set a baseline for different types of coverage. People are then free to select any health plan they like that meets or exceeds the basic requirements. So the committee does not dictate which health plans all individuals must purchase. We find the House Republican Conference's statement, "Page 111 - Section 223 establishes a new board of federal bureaucrats (the 'Health Benefits Advisory Committee') to dictate the health plans that all individuals must purchase," makes it sound as if bureaucrats tell you which plan you have to buy. In reality, the committee advises the secretary of Health and Human Services on what baseline coverage should include. We rate the statement False

Health care reform "requires the use of federal dollars to fund abortions through the government-run health plan. A few months ago, a chain e-mail purporting to be a line-by-line analysis of the House health care reform bill reached in-boxes all over the country, warning people of the dire consequences of the Democratic plans for reform. Taking a page from the same playbook, the House Republican Conference has created a similar list for the new health care bill that will be coming to the House floor in the next few weeks. You can read our fact-check of the Republican analysis in its entirety. Here, we're looking only at the statement, "Page 110 - Section 222(e) requires the use of federal dollars to fund abortions through the government-run health plan." We should emphasize that the House bill has yet to be voted on, and Democratic leaders have said they might consider new language on how the bill handles abortion. The Senate is expected to consider its own bill with details that diverge somewhat from the House. The latest version of the House bill incorporates an amendment proposed by Rep. Lois Capps, a Democrat from California. Her proposal sought to create a compromise on abortion, especially in regards to the public option, a basic insurance plan run by the government and offered as a choice on the health insurance exchange. The public option could offer abortion services, but if it does, those services would be paid for with segregated patient premiums, not public subsidies. We looked at the Capps amendment is some detail previously. We concluded that the Capps amendment would stop tax dollars from subsidizing abortion. The sticking point in the new Republican claim, though, is the term "federal dollars." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 If you consider federal dollars to be tax revenues, then the public option would not pay for abortion, because patient premiums will pay for abortion. On the other hand, if you consider "federal dollars" to be any money handled by a federal agency, then the public option would pay for abortion. We've concluded before that if millions of uninsured people would now get insurance due to the health care plan, and some of the plans offer abortion coverage, we think it's fair to conclude that means more women would have access to abortion services. Our previous coverage has more detail on abortion and health care reform , and how it has been handled in the Senate. The House Republican Conference said that health reform "requires the use of federal dollars to fund abortions through the government-run health plan." We find this depends on how a person defines the somewhat vague term "federal dollars." We rate the statement Half True