This week, CNN’s Jake Tapper takes a look at a claim that President Donald Trump made about subpoenas issued by the House committees for documents and testimony related to the impeachment inquiry.

In criticizing the House Democrats for their handling of the impeachment inquiry, Trump said this about former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and current speaker, Nancy Pelosi: 

Trump, Oct. 16: [T]he Republicans have been treated very unfairly by the Democrats. I’ll say this: Paul Ryan would never issue a subpoena. I don’t say right or wrong. He wouldn’t do it. He had too much respect for our country. Nancy Pelosi hands them out like cookies.

That’s not true. Committees, not House speakers, issue subpoenas. And GOP-controlled committees issued numerous subpoenas to Obama administration officials, including during Ryan’s relatively brief time as speaker when Barack Obama was president. Ryan served as speaker from Oct. 29, 2015, to Jan. 3, 2019, so he ruled the House for little more than one year when Obama was president.

In fact, two GOP-controlled committee investigations of Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, issued 17 subpoenas in August and September 2016, a few months before the 2016 presidential election.

Kurt Bardella — who was a spokesman for one of those committees, the House oversight committee — tweeted this when Trump made a similar claim on Oct. 2:  “wow … @realDonaldTrump just said Republicans didn’t issue subpoenas to @BarackObama … as the former Spokesperson/Advisor for @GOPoversight I can tell you this is 100% false … our committee alone issued more than 100 subpoenas to the Obama Admin.”

For more about this and other claims made by the president in a busy day of public appearances on Oct. 16, please see our story “Flurry of Trump Falsehoods.”

FactCheck.org and CNN’s “State of the Union” collaborate on weekly fact-checking videos, which appear on CNN’s politics page and our website. Past videos can be found here.

The post Video: Trump’s False Subpoena Claim appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

For the fourth year in a row, Donald Trump dominates our list of the whoppers of the year.

Before he entered politics as a presidential candidate in 2015, we had never singled out one person as the most egregious teller-of-falsehoods in these year-end wrapups. But he continues to force our hand. We can’t ignore the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming.

We selected 10 of Trump’s whoppers, and there were many more that could have made the cut.

The president exhibits a penchant not only for making inaccurate claims, but for adding new embellishments when he repeats them. For instance, his frequent false claim that “U.S. Steel is opening and expanding seven different plants,” became “eight or nine” in one retelling.   

Trump also makes claims for which he offers no evidence, and the White House declines to provide any. One example: Trump claims an Uzbekistan national who was arrested for a deadly terrorist attack in New York City brought 22 people with him into the U.S. through “chain migration.” There’s no evidence that the man brought even one relative, and it would be impossible under the immigration system to bring “his uncle, his aunt, his brother, his nephew,” as the president claims.

Among his most newsworthy falsehoods were his denial that he knew anything about a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign and his claim that he “never said Russia did not meddle in the election.”

Trump may have stood apart in 2018, but he, of course, wasn’t the only politician making false claims. Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Adam Schiff, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, and Democratic midterm ads all made false and distorted claims about the unemployment rate, tax cuts, payments by the government to the Trump Organization and rising sea levels.

The Russian president rounds out our list this year. Putin falsely asserted that business associates of a man who had lobbied for a U.S. law sanctioning Russians had given $400 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Those affiliated with the firm donated just $17,700.

We give more detail on these whoppers and others in the video and analysis below.

Analysis

The Payment to Stormy Daniels

In August, a guilty plea by Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen exposed a string of falsehoods and contradictory statements from the president and his staff.

Cohen admitted that he arranged — “at the direction of” Trump — payments totaling $280,000 during the 2016 campaign to silence two women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump. One payment was $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels. 

Yet in an exchange with reporters on Air Force One on April 5, Trump denied knowing anything about it, saying, “No. No. What else?” when asked if he knew about the payment to Daniels.

For months, the White House had denied the allegations about the affair and payment. In January, when the Wall Street Journal first broke the story, the White House said in a statement: “These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election.”

In early May, Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani acknowledged that the payment was made to Daniels, but both claimed that Trump had repaid Cohen through a monthly retainer that wealthy clients typically have with lawyers. Trump claimed he had no knowledge of how Cohen used the retainer. The Justice Department, however, in announcing the plea agreement with Cohen, cited internal company emails and invoices that show “there was no such retainer agreement, and the monthly invoices COHEN submitted were not in connection with any legal services he had provided in 2017.”

Cohen admitted to receiving $420,000 from the Trump Organization to reimburse him for the payment to Daniels, plus expenses and a bonus, and to arranging for a $150,000 payment to a second woman, Karen McDougal, who claimed to have an affair with Trump. Cohen said in court that the payments were made to the two women “for the purpose of influencing the election.”

Cohen pleaded guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations.

On Twitter the week of Dec. 10, Trump called the hush-money, “a simple private transaction,” and said he “never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law.”

In a Dec. 16 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Giuliani accused Cohen of changing his story on the hush-money payments over time. When told “so has the president,” Giuliani responded: “The president’s not under oath.”

Hurricane Maria

On Twitter in September, Trump rejected Puerto Rico’s official estimate of 2,975 hurricane-related deaths after Hurricane Maria, saying the death toll was “6 to 18 deaths.” He falsely claimed Democrats had produced the higher estimate “to make me look as bad as possible.”

Puerto Rico initially estimated there were 64 deaths caused by the hurricane, which hit the island in September 2017, but it later accepted an independent estimate of 2,975 hurricane-related deaths over about six months. Puerto Rico had commissioned the study, which was done by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

The study took into account the usual number of deaths that could be expected during the six-month period after the hurricane, and estimated the number of “excess” hurricane-related deaths. Trump misrepresented that methodology, too, wrongly saying the study counted deaths “for any reason, like old age.”

Revisionist Remarks on Russia

In one tweet in February — among many concerning the federal investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election — Trump falsely claimed that he “never said Russia did not meddle in the election.”

He has repeatedly denied or doubted Russia’s involvement in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers from the first day it became public in June 2016.

The day after the Washington Post reported that Russian hackers had gained access to the DNC’s servers, Trump issued a statement saying, “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

Months later, Trump told Time magazine in a Nov. 28, 2016, interview: “I don’t believe they interfered.”

In a Jan. 3, 2017, tweet, Trump dismissed the cyberattack as the “so-called ‘Russian hacking.’”

Three days later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified intelligence report that said Russian President Vladimir Putin had “ordered an influence campaign in 2016” and that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC computers and released material to WikiLeaks “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”

But Trump continued to cast doubt on Russia’s involvement.

On April 29, 2017, he told CBS News that “if you don’t catch a hacker, okay, in the act, it’s very hard to say who did the hacking.”

See our February story for more examples. Trump’s denial tweet came two days after the special counsel’s office issued an indictment charging 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations with illegally interfering in the election. 

Months later, in a July 16 joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declined to directly respond when a reporter asked whether he believed U.S. intelligence agencies or Putin on whether Russia meddled. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said in his answer.

Pushing a Conspiracy Theory

In that same response in the Helsinki press conference, Trump repeated a discredited conspiracy theory about the DNC computer hack when he falsely claimed there were “missing” servers associated with a “Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC.” His own Justice Department had shot down that conspiracy theory, saying there was “no evidence” to allegations of stolen equipment or documents.

Trump had referenced these bogus allegations before, saying in an April tweet that there were “Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man.”

By the time Trump made his remarks in Helsinki, the DOJ had already struck a plea deal on July 3 with former congressional IT staffer Imran Awan, who pleaded guilty to a false statement on an application for a home equity line of credit. U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, who was nominated by Trump, wrote the plea document, which debunked the theories about Awan. 

News broke in February 2017 that U.S. Capitol Police were investigating allegations that Awan had stolen equipment and violated House IT policies. Awan worked partly for the offices of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2011 to the summer of 2016. This sparked conspiracies — floated even by Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera — alleging Awan had something to do with the hacking of DNC computer systems and the release of DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

Yet, after the DOJ investigated and dismissed such allegations of stolen materials — “interviewing approximately 40 witnesses” and examining various electronic devices, it said — the president, in part, answered a question on a world stage about Russian interference in the election by citing the conspiracy theory. 

A Fanciful Immigration Tale

Throughout the year, Trump repeatedly claimed, with no proof, that Sayfullo Saipov — the Uzbekistan national who was arrested for a deadly terrorist attack in New York City in 2017 — brought 22 people with him into the United States through “chain migration.” There’s no evidence that Saipov brought even one relative to the country.

Princeton University professor Marta Tienda, a demographer who has studied “chain migration,” told us Trump’s 22 figure was “an implausible exaggeration given the current visa system.”

Saipov came to the U.S. in 2010 through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Such visa holders may bring a spouse and children, but there’s no indication that happened in Saipov’s case. He married in the United States in 2013.

When he drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians and bicyclists in New York City, Saipov was a legal permanent resident, a status that is also limited to sponsoring only a spouse and children.

At his midterm campaign rallies, however, Trump would rattle off various family members that he claimed Saipov had brought to the country, including Saipov’s mother and father. That’s false. They were living in Uzbekistan at the time of the attack, as reported by the Daily Mail and the Wall Street Journal. 

A Fanciful War Story, Too

In his campaign rallies, the president made false claims about statements he said Sen. Richard Blumenthal had made about the Vietnam War. 

Trump claimed Blumenthal “went around telling war stories,” saying he “fought in Da Nang Province” and talked of “soldiers dying left and right as we battled up the hill.” There’s no record of Blumenthal ever saying any of those things.

What’s true is that Blumenthal, a Marine Corps reservist during (but not in) the Vietnam War, wrongly claimed years ago that he “served in Vietnam” and once spoke of the mistreatment of Vietnam veterans “when we returned.” He apologized, saying he had not been “as clear or precise as I should have been.”

But Trump stretched the public record on this incident beyond recognition. As if he were playing his own personal game of telephone, the president added new embellishments as he repeated his tale.

He told a crowd in Kansas on Oct. 6 that Blumenthal “talked about” making rescue attempts during the war. “I went back and I got them, and then I made a second attempt, and bullets are going left and right and over my shoulders and they’re hitting my men,” Trump claimed the senator had said. Again, there’s no record that Blumenthal ever said such things.

Ghost Factories?

The president has shown a pattern for claiming new manufacturing plants were opening, despite no evidence to support his statements:

• “U.S. Steel is opening and expanding seven different plants,” Trump frequently has claimed, once upping the number to “eight or nine.” A U.S. Steel spokeswoman referred us to the company’s website, where all operational changes had been posted, she said. We found announcements for a new galvanizing line and the restarting of operations at two blast furnaces and steel-making facilities at an existing plant in Illinois. That’s not “seven different plants.”
• Weeks after Trump imposed a 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and panels, he claimed: “A lot of places are opening up” to “make solar panels again.” Later, he claimed, “We’re opening up at least five plants,” and then the figure grew to “seven or eight.” Experts told us they knew of one announced facility since the tariffs were implemented.
• After General Motors announced in February that it would close a plant in South Korea, Trump falsely claimed, “and they’re going to move back to Detroit. You don’t hear these things, except for the fact that Trump became president.” GM spokesman Patrick Morrissey told us: “That was not part of the announcement.”
  

Shifting Responsibility

The president wrongly blamed the Democrats for his own administration’s policy that led to the controversial separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. “I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough,” he said at the White House on May 16. “But those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing. We have to break up families.”

In April, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration, and the following month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen directed her department to refer all unauthorized immigrants who cross the U.S. border to federal prosecutors.

That decision — to criminally prosecute immigrants for illegal entry, as opposed to using a civil removal process — led to parents being placed in detention centers and their children being separated from them. Children can’t be housed in detention centers for adults. 

“It is the government’s choice whether to criminally prosecute someone for illegal entry or reentry,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told us. 

The Trump administration’s policy caused nearly 3,000 children to be separated from their parents and sparked several public protests. Trump backed down on June 20, signing an executive order directing DHS to keep families in custody together “to the extent permitted by law” and the availability of appropriations. According to a Dec. 12 court filing in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, there are still 131 children in custody separated from their parents; however, in more than 90 percent of those cases either the parents have indicated they won’t reunify with their children or officials have found the parents are unfit. 

Taking Undue Credit

Politicians are known for taking some undue credit for perceived successes, but Trump brought the practice to a new level when he repeatedly claimed that the 2014 Veterans Choice law was “the greatest idea I think I’ve ever had.”

In his detailed anecdotes, Trump claimed he “came back to my group” with the “brilliant” idea to allow veterans facing a long wait for care to see private doctors. “Who else would think of that?” he told a crowd in Pennsylvania on Oct. 10. Ten days later in Nevada, he said, “What a genius — I said, I said, how good is that? They said, ‘Sir, we’ve been trying to get it passed for 44 years.’ So I was good at getting things passed. That’s what I did.”

In fact, the Veterans Choice Program was created by the bipartisan Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, signed by President Barack Obama on Aug. 7, 2014. It allowed veterans with long wait times or travel burdens to get care from eligible health care providers outside the Veterans Affairs system. 

Trump signed legislation to continue funding the program, and in June, he signed the bipartisan VA MISSION Act, which calls for consolidating Veterans Choice and other private-care options next year into a new Veterans Community Care Program.

Taking Undue Credit, Part II

The president began the year by suggesting he deserved credit for zero commercial passenger jet deaths in 2017 worldwide. On Jan. 2, he tweeted: “Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”

There have been no deaths from U.S. commercial airline accidents since 2009, and no deaths from accidents of foreign air carriers in the U.S. since 2013.

The Aviation Safety Network had reported there were no commercial passenger jet deaths in 2017 worldwide, and a low number of deaths from turbo-prop plane or cargo plane accidents. It said 2017 was “the safest year ever for commercial aviation,” which was also “no surprise.”

“Since 1997 the average number of airliner accidents has shown a steady and persistent decline,” ASN President Harro Ranter said in a press release.

Others Twist the Facts, Too

Trump is an outlier. Nobody comes close to the number of falsehoods that the president has told over the past year.

However, there are some notable whoppers from people who don’t live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As with the president, there are many other false claims that we could easily include in this story from others. But we were ruthless in our selection process and limited the number to just six — including one from a foreign leader accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

That’s Not How It Works

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who will soon represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, has a knack for attracting media attention. So, it wasn’t surprising that PBS interviewed her not long after she upset Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary on June 26.

During the July 13 interview, Ocasio-Cortez was asked if “capitalism has failed to deliver for working-class Americans,” even though the unemployment rate is at historically low levels. At the time, the unemployment rate was 4 percent, and it has since dropped to 3.7 percent, as of November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“I think the numbers that you just talked about is part of the problem, right?” Ocasio-Cortez said, beginning at the 5:32 mark of the video. “Because we look at these figures and we say, ‘Oh, unemployment is low, everything is fine, right?’ Well, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.”

Unemployment is not low because more people are working two jobs. That has no bearing on the unemployment rate. Employed people, whether they hold one or more jobs, are only counted once in the unemployment rate calculation.

Nor is the rate of people holding multiple jobs rising, as Ocasio-Cortez implied. At the time of the interview, 4.9 percent of employed people held multiple jobs — which was slightly lower than the 5.1 rate when unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 during the recession. (Dual jobholders remains at 4.9 percent, as of November.)

The ‘No. 1 Cause of Sea Level Rise’

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, falsely claimed in a May 19 op-ed that erosion caused by river sediment deposits and falling rocks is “far and away the #1 cause of sea level rise.”

“Over the history of planet Earth, far and away the #1 cause of sea level rise has been erosion and its resulting deposits of sediment and rocks into the world’s seas and oceans,” he wrote, adding, “There is no close second cause of sea level rise.”

That’s false — far and away.

According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, global sea level rise is “primarily driven by two factors,” both directly related to global warming.

First, the oceans are expanding because water swells as it gets warmer. According the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “oceans are absorbing more than 90 percent of the increased atmospheric heat associated with emissions from human activity.” Second, there is also more water in the oceans because mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting, explains the 2017 report.

Brooks discussed his novel theory of sea level rise at a May 16 hearing of the House science committee. But one expert witness — Philip Duffy, a physicist and the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, a climate change think tank — instantly debunked Brooks’ claim. “I’m pretty sure that on human time scales those are minuscule effects,” Duffy said.

Brooks wasn’t the only Republican committee member who got his facts wrong at that hearing, which turned into a fact-checking bonanza. Among other things, Rep. Lamar Smith, the committee chairman, falsely claimed there’s “no correlation” between sea level rise and carbon emissions, and Florida Rep. Bill Posey was wrong when he said the last ice age “was caused by a cataclysmic collision of an asteroid.”

Schiff’s Golf Fable

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, is a frequent Trump critic. On CNN’s “New Day,” Schiff criticized the president for forcing the federal government “to patronize Trump-related businesses,” such as Trump golf properties. But, when it came to a specific example, Schiff’s shot against Trump landed out of bounds.

Schiff wrongly claimed that the Secret Service had paid the Trump Organization “over $150,000 … for the privilege of renting Donald Trump golf carts to protect Donald Trump on his rounds.” The money went to two companies, but they weren’t “Trump-related businesses.” And the vehicles were not “Donald Trump golf carts.”

At the time, Schiff’s office told us that the $150,000 figure came from a November 2017 USA Today story that cited the work of American Bridge 21st Century PAC, a Democratic opposition research group. American Bridge provided us with its research, which showed that the Secret Service rented golf carts from Golf Car & Utility Vehicle Distributors in Florida and Associates Golf Car Service of Poughkeepsie, New York. 

“We haven’t found the contracts going to any Trump companies,” American Bridge spokesman Harrell Kirsten told us.

Corporate Tax Revenues Didn’t Rise

Three months after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect, House Speaker Paul Ryan — a key player in the passage of the tax bill — pushed back at the notion that the new law would increase annual federal deficits. 

During an April 15 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Ryan was asked to respond to criticism from a fellow Republican, Sen. Bob Corker, that the tax bill will drive up annual deficits. In response, Ryan blamed rising deficits on mandatory spending, not the tax bill. He went on to falsely claim: “Corporate income tax revenues. Corporate rate got dropped 40 percent, still rising.”

The tax bill, among other things, reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, beginning in January 2018. That has resulted in lower corporate tax revenues.

At the time of Ryan’s statement, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had just announced in an April 6 report that corporate tax revenues for the first six months of the year were down $22 billion – a 22.3 percent decline from the first six months of fiscal year 2017.

For the full fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, corporate tax revenues were down $92 billion — a decline of 31 percent from the previous fiscal year, according to CBO. “About half of the decline has occurred since June,” as a result of the tax law changes, “the new lower corporate tax rate and the expanded ability to immediately deduct the full value of equipment purchases.”

The federal budget deficit was $779 billion in fiscal year 2018, $113 billion more than the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2017, according to the Treasury Department’s final statement for the fiscal year. In a June report, CBO projected that the tax act — even after accounting for economic effects — “would increase primary deficits by $1.272 trillion through 2028.”

A Misleading Democratic Talking Point

Anyone with a TV, computer or radio during the midterm elections probably heard that 83 percent of the Republican tax cuts go to the wealthiest 1 percent. That’s grossly misleading. 

The Democrats started using this misleading talking point immediately after Trump signed the Republican tax legislation into law a year ago and repeated it throughout the midterm elections. It is based on cherry-picking an analysis by the Tax Policy Center released on Dec. 18, 2017.

The Tax Policy Center estimated the effects of the tax cuts on various income groups for three years: 2018, 2025 and 2027. In 2018, according to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of income earners (those earning above $837,800) would receive 20.5 percent of the tax cut benefits — a substantial amount, but not 83 percent. In 2025, the top 1 percent’s share of the tax cut would grow slightly to 25.3 percent — still not 83 percent.

It is not until 2027 that the percentage of tax benefits to the top 1 percent jumps to 82.8 percent, and that’s only “because almost all individual income tax provisions would sunset after 2025,” as the TPC report explains. (A major reason: The top 1 percent still benefits from some of the remaining tax cuts, such as reducing the top corporate tax rate.)

The Republicans wrote an expiration date in the bill so that they could pass it through budget reconciliation with only a majority vote in the Senate. Under reconciliation, the bill could not add more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years or add to the deficit beyond a 10-year period. 

Republicans have said they want to extend these expiring income tax cuts, and Democrats have said they want to “repeal and replace” the GOP-crafted tax law. Both options would likely reduce the top 1 percent’s share of the tax cut benefits in 2027 and beyond.

We can’t predict the future, but we can say that the Democrats this past year have repeatedly distorted the actual impact of the tax law by cherry-picking the 83 percent figure.

Putin’s Whopper

In what is a first for us, a foreign leader has made our annual whoppers list and, perhaps fittingly, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin — the man who U.S. intelligence agencies say directed a multipronged influence campaign during the 2016 presidential election in an attempt to help Trump defeat Clinton.

Putin lands on our list for his comment during his joint press conference with Trump at the Helsinki summit on July 16. The Russian leader falsely claimed that business associates of William Browder, who had lobbied for a 2012 U.S. law sanctioning Russians, “sent a huge amount of money – 400 million – as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.” (To put the $400 million in perspective, we note that the Clinton campaign raised a total of $563.8 million, and outside groups supporting her campaign raised another $231 million.)

Who is William Browder? He’s the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management who angered the Russian government by helping to pass the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which banned some Russians from entering the United States and froze their assets held in U.S. banks. His investment company at its peak managed more than $4 billion in assets before the Russian government sued Browder for tax evasion — forcing Hermitage’s lucrative Russia fund to shut down in 2013.

Although he was born in the United States, Browder renounced his citizenship in 1998, so cannot make campaign contributions, and we could find no contributions from any employees of Hermitage in the 2016 cycle. 

So what was Putin talking about?

At a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump campaign officials, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya arrived with talking points — later published by the New York Times in 2017 — that said the Ziff Brothers “took part in financing both Obama” campaigns and that “[i]t cannot be ruled out that they took part in financing the campaign of Hillary Clinton.” In a 2017 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Veselnitskaya said she told the Trump campaign at the meeting that Browder had worked with Ziff Brothers Investments, and that the firm had dodged taxes in Russia and later donated to Democrats.

But those affiliated with the Ziff Brothers gave just $17,700 to Clinton’s campaign in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And their donations to other Democratic committees — $1.1 million — don’t come anywhere close to Putin’s $400-million accusation.

For his part, Browder in an op-ed for Time magazine called Putin’s claim “so ludicrous and untrue that it falls into delusion.”

The post The Whoppers of 2018 appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did House Speaker Paul Ryan break campaign finance laws in a meeting with donor Sheldon Adelson?

A: He met with Adelson (which is legal), but there’s no evidence he solicited a $30 million donation for a Republican super PAC (which would be illegal).  

FULL ANSWER

House Speaker Paul Ryan was at a recent meeting where casino mogul and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson agreed to give $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a conservative super PAC.

Ryan didn’t ask for the donation — he actually left the room while someone else made the request — a spokeswoman for the CLF confirmed. If that’s what happened, it’s not a violation of campaign finance laws.

But a left-leaning website called Opposition Report posted an item that is circulating on Facebook with the headline: “BREAKING: Paul Ryan BUSTED In Corruption Scheme With Top Donor.” It was copied and posted by at least two other sites the next day.

The story, which Facebook users flagged as potentially false, says: “Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, broke campaign finance laws.” But it offers no evidence to support that claim.

The Congressional Leadership Fund is a so-called “nonconnected PAC,” which means it is not a party committee. It may receive unlimited contributions, while national party committees are limited to accepting $33,900 per year from individual contributors. The official House Republican committee is called the National Republican Congressional Committee.

It’s not unusual for high-ranking federal officeholders, such as Ryan, to meet with big donors to friendly super PACs. That’s legal as long as they don’t actually solicit contributions over the thresholds set in the federal election law for individual contributions to traditional PACs — which currently is $5,000 from individuals, as explained on the Federal Election Commission website.

“The classic example is a fundraiser,” said Lawrence Noble, former general counsel to the FEC and senior director of The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that deals with election law and campaign finance issues.

Noble said federal lawmakers can attend super PAC events that raise donations far beyond those caps, as long as they aren’t the ones who actually ask for the money. That’s when those who aren’t in office step in and request the donations.

Other experts agreed.

They all pointed to a 2011 FEC advisory opinion that said officeholders cannot solicit unlimited funds, but they can “attend, speak at, or be featured guests at fundraisers for the Committees, at which unlimited individual, corporate, and labor organization contributions will be solicited.”

The Opposition Report describes that kind of situation with Ryan being present for the meeting and then leaving when the donation is requested. But it concludes, “This is disgusting, and — once again — not legal.” But it is legal.

We asked Ryan’s office for comment, and it referred us to his fundraising committee, Team Ryan, which provided us with his recent answer to a reporter about the incident. Here’s the exchange:

Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Congressman Sensenbrenner discussed how good a fundraiser you are. You took that trip to Nevada to meet with Adelson when there was a $30 million ask, not made by you, what do you tell people about the ethics of the fundraising and how it works, because it has gotten some criticism.

Ryan: Look, we follow the rules extremely carefully, and in that case we did. And I think a lot of Americans realize that our majority is at stake. The midterm elections are not good for majority parties, historically speaking. On average, the president’s party in the first midterm loses about 32 seats, we have a 24-seat majority. So I think people understand that the historic trend does not (inaudible) the majority party, and what we’re trying to do is make the case to people around the country that this is a majority worth supporting. With respect to the campaign finance issues, we do it by the book, always have, always will.

Ryan and the Republicans are counting on the Congressional Leadership Fund to help the party retain its majority in the House. In 2016, the super PAC raised almost $51.1 million and made more than $40 million in independent expenditures – such as TV ads that advocate for the defeat or election of particular candidates. Its largest individual donors in 2016 were Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who contributed $20 million to the group.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk false stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

Clarification, June 6: We changed the headline and clarified the short answer and one line in this story to make it clear that there’s no evidence that Ryan violated campaign finance laws.

Sources

Sherman, Jake and Alex Isenstadt. “Sheldon Adelson kicks in $30M to stop Democratic House takeover.” Politico. 10 May 2018.

Alexander, Courtney. Spokeswoman, Congressional Leadership Fund. Interview with FactCheck.org. 15 May 2018.

Simpson, Andrew. “BREAKING: Paul Ryan BUSTED In Corruption Scheme With Top Donor.” ORnews.org. 11 May 2018.

Soft money of political parties. 52 U.S.C. 30125.

Limitations on contributions and expenditures. 52 U.S.C. 30116.

Federal Election Commission. Advisory Opinion 2011-12. 30 Jun 2011.

Noble, Lawrence. Senior Director, The Campaign Legal Center. Interview with FactCheck.org. 15 May 2018.

Adler, Jeremy. Spokesman, Team Ryan. E-mail sent to FactCheck.org. 15 May 2018.

The post No Evidence Ryan Violated Campaign Finance Laws appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The rhetoric has been heated on both sides of the aisle as House Republicans pursue a bill that would expand the work requirements necessary to be eligible for food assistance.

As a result of the GOP-proposed work requirements, 1.2 million fewer people a month would access Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, by 2028, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In February, the most recent month for which we have figures, 40 million people received SNAP benefits, according to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.

Republican proponents tout the bill as a step toward moving people away from government dependence to work. Democratic opponents of the bill say it adds unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and will cause hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of the country’s most vulnerable citizens to go hungry.

The facts cited by the two sides appear to conflict wildly. Here we sort through some of the rhetoric from both sides.

What’s in the Bill?

The wholesale overhaul of the SNAP program is part of the latest farm bill, H.R. 2, the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, introduced by Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, who chairs the House Committee on Agriculture. The committee approved the bill, but it has not been voted on by the full House.

Under current SNAP rules implemented in 1996, able-bodied adults without dependents, or ABAWDs, between the ages of 18 and 49 are required to work at least 20 hours a week or participate in a qualified job-training or volunteer program in order to be eligible for more than three months of benefits over a three-year period. Benefits are cut off after three months if the work requirements are not met and the applicant has not received a waiver (more on those waivers later).

The proposed GOP law would raise the age of those subject to the work requirement from 49 to 59, and extend the work requirements to adults with children ages 6 and older. The minimum work required would rise to 25 hours per week in 2026.

According to CBO, 62 percent of the 1.2 million who would ultimately lose benefits would be able-bodied adults caring for children 6 or older. Another 27 percent would able-bodied adults between the ages of 50 and 59 without dependents (due to the age extension in the bill). And 11 percent of them would be able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 without dependents.

CBO estimates that, on average in 2028, those 1.2 million people would lose $1,816 in annual food assistance benefits.

In addition to the new work requirements trimming the ranks of SNAP recipients, CBO says another 400,000 households per year would lose eligibility due to a change that would cut off SNAP eligibility for those whose gross income exceeds 130 percent of poverty, instead of the 200 percent threshold for SNAP recipients in some states.

The bill would provide an additional $6.7 billion over the next 10 years for employment and training services — an amount CBO does not expect would fund enough job training for all who would be eligible for it under the new bill.

Even if the House passes the proposed bill as written, it is expected to have a much harder time passing with those same work rules in the Senate. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump might threaten to veto the bill if it does not include tighter work restrictions.

What Is the Problem?

Republicans say: With today’s fast-growing economy, House Speaker Paul Ryan says the time is ripe to get able-bodied adults who receive food assistance “off of welfare, into the workforce.”

According to the Republicans on the House Committee on Agriculture, the SNAP program is “riddled with loopholes that create disincentives to work.” A spokesman for Conaway says that among able-bodied adults without dependents who receive federal food assistance, only 30 percent are working.

Rep. Warren Davidson from Ohio likened the situation to an unemployed friend who moves in with you.

“You’d be like, ‘Hey, man, I’m glad to help you out for a while, but are you going to go to any job interviews?'” Davidson said. “We would do that! And somehow, when the government does it, it’s mean. And we have to be willing to do what we would do even for our friends or we’re not going to get this spending under control.”

Democrats say: Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana calls the GOP bill “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Richmond says: “The overwhelming majority … of able-bodied people on food stamps wake up and go to work.” Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota went one step further. “The number of people who could work and aren’t working on SNAP is a miniscule fraction, less than 1 percent.” (Smith’s office later told us she misspoke.)

The facts: Although the statistics used by Republicans and Democrats appear to contradict each other, they are actually different measures.

According to the USDA’s Food Nutrition Service, about 3.5 million SNAP participants in fiscal year 2016 were nondisabled adults living in a household without children. (See Table 3.3.) That’s a little different, but very similar to able-bodied adults without dependent children.

About 29.5 percent of those people were working (indicated by countable earned income), according to FNS. But FNS notes that among this group, “their wages are very low.” Among those who worked at least 20 hours per week, they earned about $1,000 a month — which puts them right at the federal poverty level.

Opponents of the GOP plan do not dispute that 30 percent figure, but argue that it is misleading because it shows a snapshot in time when people are most likely out of work, and have turned to SNAP because they are between jobs and need help.

“It is correct that approximately 30 percent of ABAWDS are working, but it is important to note that people often receive SNAP benefits during a particular period that they are not working,” Elaine Waxman, senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, told us via email. “Often, if you look at people’s work histories the year before and the year after they are on SNAP, they were working during both of those years. Thus, a static snapshot doesn’t tell you the whole story about the use of SNAP and employment.”

Research by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that nearly half of the adults who were not working in a month when they were participating in SNAP worked within a year. Of the remaining nonworking adults, “over one-third are unable to work due to caregiving responsibilities (most of whom have working spouses); about one-quarter have a work-limiting disability or chronic health condition, despite not receiving disability benefits; close to one-third report either going to school or being unable to find work; and the rest report other reasons, such as temporary inability to work,” according to testimony provided to a House subcommittee by Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In short, Dean said, “the numbers do not bear out the characterization that SNAP recipients are work avoidant.”

CBPP concluded that most parents who are able to work are working or are temporarily between jobs. In 62 percent of families with children and working-age, able-bodied adults, the adults worked in a typical month while receiving SNAP; 87 percent of such adults were employed in the year before or after SNAP receipt.

When Richmond says, “The overwhelming majority … of able-bodied people on food stamps wake up and go to work,” he’s pointing to that expanded definition of working, looking at whether people worked within a year of receiving benefits. In other words, SNAP is often used by people who are between jobs.

“Moreover, even though they’re referred to as able-bodied adults, it is important to recognize that there are still high levels of barriers to employment among this population, such as low education and serious health limitations,” Waxman said.

As for Smith’s claim — that “the number of people who could work and aren’t working on SNAP is … less than 1 percent” — her office acknowledges that’s incorrect.

Her spokesman, Michael Dale-Stein, said the senator misspoke. He noted that according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services there was an average of nearly 430,000 Minnesotans on SNAP per month in 2017, and of that number, fewer than 6,300 per month were able-bodied adults without dependents. That means about 1.5 percent of people using SNAP are required to work, Dale-Stein said.

Those are different statistics.

And the same Minnesota DHS report states that the number of able-bodied adults without dependents who receive SNAP benefits has shrunk dramatically since 2012, when the figure was 65,000 per month. That’s largely because in 2013 Minnesota dropped statewide waivers to the three-month time limit allowed during the recession. The Republican bill seeks to reduce those very kinds of statewide waivers.

Work Requirements

Democrats say: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi says that “SNAP already has work requirements,” and that the Republican plan “will only create vast, untested, unworkable bureaucracies that will increase hunger and poverty across America.”

Republicans say: According to Conaway’s spokeswoman, SNAP “has work requirements, but these requirements are currently confusing, vague and ineffective and riddled with a series of loopholes that create disincentives to work.” She says roughly 35 percent of Americans live in an area with no food stamp work requirements, a statistic compiled by the Foundation for Government Accountability.

The facts: Under the current rules, people generally can be disqualified from the program if they fail to register for work (which is different than actually working), voluntarily quit a job or reduce hours, refuse to take a job offer or to participate in state-assigned employment and training programs.

There are stricter requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. They are required to work or participate in a work program for at least 20 hours per week in order to receive SNAP benefits for more than three months in a 36-month period. There are exceptions for children, seniors, pregnant women, and for people with physical or mental health issues.

There are time-limit waivers available, however, in areas with persistently high unemployment. USDA states that during the recession, “many States qualified for and chose to waive time limits in all or part of the State.” According to the USDA, five entire states and parts of 28 others had time-limit waivers as of Jan. 8.

“Too many states have asked to waive work requirements, abdicating their responsibility to move participants to self-sufficiency,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement in February.

Although the proposed GOP legislation would continue to allow waivers in some high unemployment areas, it seeks to reduce the areas covered by waivers.

According to an aide in Conaway’s office, some states are taking advantage of a provision in current law that allows states to average the unemployment rates of several contiguous counties, and some states are grouping counties with very high unemployment with ones with lower unemployment so that all of the counties in the entire state can be waived.

But even without the Republican proposal, the number of waiver areas is shrinking. As the economy continues to improve, USDA states, “many places no longer qualify for time limit waivers, unless they have high unemployment or not enough jobs available.”

“Increasingly, these waivers are being removed as the economy improves,” said Waxman, the Urban Institute senior fellow. “But there continue to be some areas of the country where there may be an insufficient base of employment for many able-bodied adults to find work.”

How Would the Plan Affect Children and Seniors?

Democrats say: “[U]nder the GOP SNAP cuts — seniors, children, individuals with disabilities, our veterans — large numbers of our veterans — and hungry families will lose the means to put food on the table,” Pelosi said on April 19.

Republicans say: Under the GOP proposal, seniors and children are exempted from the work requirement. The only people who would lose benefits, Conaway said, are “work-capable adults” who are “self-selecting to remove themselves from the program” because they choose not to work.

The facts: Who’s right? The answer is somewhere in the middle.

While children and seniors would not have their benefits cut, Democrats say if a working-age adult loses benefits, that would reduce the food assistance to the household, and that could translate to less food for children or seniors living with adults who lose benefits.

Under the GOP bill, qualified seniors and children are still eligible for SNAP benefits, and, of course, they do not have work requirements to keep them.

As mentioned earlier, CBO says 1.2 million fewer people would receive SNAP benefits per month in 2028. Of those, 62 percent, or 744,000, are adults with dependent children over the age of 6.

According to Pelosi’s office, in 2016, “4 million children and 185,000 seniors lived with people subject to Republicans’ burdensome new work requirements. In 2021, those numbers would be 3.3 million children and 156,000 seniors, adjusted based on the CBO baseline. Less food on the table for many of these families is a clear repercussion of this bill.”

Pelosi spokesman Henry Connelly said: “Stripping SNAP benefits from a parent or caregiver means the whole family loses critical resources to put food on the table.”

An aide with the Republicans on the House Committee on Agriculture said ineligible adults taking food assistance meant for their child is against the rules. “If a household decides to do something that is less than honest, that is on them,” she said.

The Republican bill also takes aim at a perceived loophole created by automatic eligibility rules in some states that bypass an asset test.

An aide to Conaway pointed to the case of a Minnesota millionaire who testified before state lawmakers that he received SNAP food assistance for 19 months to prove a point. The man explained that he and his wife had little income during the 19 months they received aid, but he never had to provide information on the couple’s assets. The GOP plan seeks to eliminate that.

According to a fact sheet provided by the Republican staff of the House Committee on Agriculture, the GOP bill would eliminate the automatic eligibility provided by Broad Based Categorical Eligibility, but those who meet a revised asset test would remain eligible.

What about People with Disabilities?

Republicans say: Individuals with disabilities are exempt from the proposed work requirements, so none of them would lose SNAP benefits under the GOP plan.

Democrats say: The bill does not account for people with disabilities or chronic conditions who lack the necessary medical exemption or documentation, and, they say, those who can’t navigate the exemption process will lose SNAP benefits.

The facts: The bill specifically exempts from its work requirements those who are “medically certified as mentally or physically unfit for employment,” same as the current law.

Connelly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said the bill’s new reporting requirements will present hurdles for “people with disabilities who struggle to meet that exemption already.” Obtaining this documentation can be very difficult, he said, “especially for those who want to avoid the risk of being permanently ‘unfit’ for work instead of temporarily, or live in states where they do not have access to health coverage or their state does not provide access to transportation, personal care services, employment services, and more.”

“It may seem simple to assert that ‘people with disabilities will be exempt,’ but converting such a statement into an effective policy process is complicated, expensive, and fundamentally flawed,” the group Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities wrote in a letter sent to the House Committee on Agriculture. “Many people with disabilities receive SNAP, but do not meet SNAP’s statutory definitions of ‘disability’ or have not been so identified. Under SNAP, states have no obligation to help people prove they are exempt, even if they have difficulty obtaining the necessary records or verification from a doctor.”

As an example, the group points to a survey of SNAP participants in Franklin County, Ohio, which found that among able-bodied adults without dependents — those subject to work requirements/time limits — a third self-reported “some type of physical or mental limitation.”

Will Kids Lose Free Lunch?

Democrats say:  According to Pelosi, “With one provision alone, just one of the provisions alone, hundreds of thousands of school-aged children will be kicked off free and reduced school lunch and breakfast initiatives.”

Republicans say: A spokeswoman for Conaway counters that the GOP bill “does not take away a child’s lunch.”

The facts:  Under the current law, many states offer what is called Broad Based Categorical Eligibility, which allows households that qualify for welfare benefits through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to automatically qualify for SNAP. At the state’s option, that can include people with gross monthly income up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The GOP plan would limit categorical eligibility to households whose monthly income is no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level.

As we said before, CBO estimates that in an average year, about 400,000 households would lose SNAP eligibility as a result of that change.

But the change would also affect children who are categorically eligible for free meals at school based on their eligibility for SNAP.

According to CBO, “If their households lost SNAP eligibility because of the revised threshold and their families were not otherwise eligible for free meals, those children would be eligible only for reduced-price or paid meals.”

CBO estimates that in an average year, about 265,000 children would lose access to free school meals under this provision.

James Ziliak, director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, told us that because SNAP automatically confers eligibility for school breakfast and lunch, losing SNAP will likely mean that many children will lose school meal programs because of failing to fill out the paperwork.

“Whether you refer to it as ‘kicked off’ or failure to certify even though the child remains eligible, the end result is the same, and that is children will lose out on access to crucial nutrition assistance,” Ziliak said.

The post Facts on Food Stamp Work Requirements appeared first on FactCheck.org.

House Speaker Paul Ryan misleadingly claimed that corporate tax revenues are “still rising,” even though the 2017 tax law cut tax rates. In the first six months of fiscal year 2018, corporate tax receipts have declined by 22.3 percent from a year ago. Revenues are also projected to be less over the next 10 years than they otherwise would have been because of the law.

Ryan, who recently announced he is leaving Congress in January 2019, discussed his legacy as speaker during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Ryan pointed to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017, as an example of his achievements.

The bill, among other things, reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, effective in the 2018 tax year.

Host Chuck Todd asked Ryan to respond to criticism that the Republican “tax bill spiked the deficit.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the fiscal year 2018 deficit will total $804 billion — $139 billion more than in fiscal 2017.

In response, Ryan blamed rising deficits on mandatory spending. He went on to claim that corporate tax revenues are “still rising,” even though the rate “dropped 40 percent.”

Todd, April 15: I want you to respond to something Bob Corker said. He said this: “This Congress and this administration likely will go down as one of the most fiscally irresponsible administrations and Congresses that we ever had.” And he’s referring to the fact that this tax bill spiked the deficit. It’s higher than even what was projected. And as — we’re gonna get trillion dollar, you walk away with trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see —

Ryan: That was going to happen. The baby boomers’ retiring was going to do that. These deficit trillion-dollar projections have been out there for a long, long time. Why? Because of mandatory spending, which we call entitlements. Discretionary spending under the CBO baseline is going up about $300 billion over the next 10 years. Tax revenues are still rising. Income tax revenues are still rising. Corporate income tax revenues. Corporate rate got dropped 40 percent, still rising.

Ryan is right that $1 trillion deficit projections “have been out there for a long, long time.” In a June 2017 report, before the tax bill became law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the federal deficit would top $1 trillion in fiscal year 2022 and remain above that level. It’s also true that overall tax revenues are up for the first six months of fiscal year 2018.

But corporate tax revenues are down for the first six months of the fiscal year, and they are projected to be less over the next 10 years than they otherwise would have been because of the law. In fact, revenues in general will be less than they otherwise would be — resulting in even larger projected deficits. The CBO now projects $1 trillion annual deficits starting in FY2020.

Each month, the CBO issues an analysis of federal spending and tax revenue collections for the previous month and the fiscal year to date — a report known as the Monthly Budget Review.

In its most recent report on April 6, CBO said total tax receipts were up 2 percent in the first half of fiscal year 2018, from October to March, compared with the same six-month period in fiscal year 2017.

However, that same report said corporate tax revenues for the first six months of the year were down $22 billion – a 22.3 percent decline from the first six months of fiscal year 2017.

Corporate tax revenues declined $10 billion in the final three months of calendar year 2017, from October to December, and fell an additional $12 billion in the first three months of 2018, from January to March, for a total cumulative drop of about $22 billion, according to the CBO monthly reports.

In its latest Budget and Economic Outlook report, which projects spending and revenue for 10 years, the CBO said it expects “corporate tax receipts to fall by $54 billion in 2018, to 1.2 percent of GDP, largely because of the enactment of the 2017 tax act.”

CBO projects the federal government will take in $243 billion in corporate tax receipts in fiscal 2018 and $276 billion in fiscal 2019 — both below the $297 billion that the federal government collected from corporations in fiscal 2017. (See Table 3-1.)

In an email, Ryan’s spokeswoman AshLee Strong told us that the speaker was referring to revenues over a 10-year budget window. She said corporate tax revenue “will nearly double between 2018 and 2028 – from $243 billion to $448 billion,” citing the CBO’s economic outlook report.

Actually, the increase is about 50 percent, not double, when measured from fiscal year 2017 – before the tax laws changed. Also, CBO projects tax revenues will be less than what the government otherwise would have collected from corporations if the tax laws did not change.

Over the next 10 fiscal years, from 2018 to 2027, CBO projects that the federal government will take in about $409 billion less in corporate income tax revenue because of legislative changes, mostly those in the new tax law.

“CBO also reduced its projection of corporate tax revenues — by $94 billion in 2018, and by $409 billion over the 2018–2027 period — to reflect legislative changes,” CBO said in the Budget and Economic Outlook, which was released earlier this month. “Most of that reduction is attributable to the 2017 tax act, which modified the corporate income tax system in many important ways.”

That $409 billion estimate does not include the potential economic benefits of reducing tax rates. However, when factoring in the economic effects of the new tax law (plus $476 billion) and other technical revisions related to the tax law (minus $333 billion), the CBO estimates a net drop of $266 billion in corporate tax revenue relative to what the government would have collected over 10 years without the 2017 tax law. (See Table A-1.)

Overall, CBO says the new tax law “increases the total projected deficit over the 2018–2028 period by about $1.9 trillion,” mostly because of a reduction in individual income tax revenue and an increase in debt service.

Mark Mazur, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told us in a phone interview that there may be months or even years when corporate tax revenues increase. There were so many corporate tax changes in the 2017 law that “it’s uncertain when the dollars will show up” in federal coffers. But he said over time the federal government will take in less corporate tax revenue as a result of the new tax law.

“The whole point of this is to cut corporate taxes,” Mazur said.

Update, April 16: Ryan’s office responded to us after we posted this item. We have updated our story to reflect its response. 

The post Paul Ryan Misleads on Corporate Tax Revenues appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did Sen. Chuck Schumer take $500,000 in donations from immigrant advocacy groups before the government shutdown?

A: No. That rumor originated on a satirical website. 

FULL QUESTION

Did Chuck Schumer receive donations from illegal immigrant support groups prior to Senate budget vote?

Did [House Speaker Paul] Ryan or Schumer take $500,000 from the Koch brothers to pass the tax bill or shut down the government?

FULL ANSWER

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer has a history of supporting immigration legislation. For example, he voted to block a bill in 2016 that would have increased penalties for people who illegally re-enter the country and he was a member of the so-called “gang of eight” that developed a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013.

But, there is no evidence that he received $500,000 in campaign contributions from immigration advocacy groups shortly before the partial government shutdown, which lasted for three days and was due in part to Democratic efforts to force protections for DACA recipients.

DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an Obama-era policy that offered protection from deportation and work authorization to immigrants who were brought here as children without legal permission. President Donald Trump’s administration has decided to wind down the program. That left the fate of 689,800 active DACA recipients up to Congress, which has yet to act.

A website that describes itself as satirical and has a disclaimer that says, “Everything on this website is fiction,” posted a story claiming that Schumer had raised $500,000 just before the partial shutdown from “three groups that regularly push for complete amnesty for all illegals.”

The story says: “An explosive report by The Gateway Pundit reveals that there may be a reason for his support beyond Schumer’s purported love of Mexican criminals above our veterans and poor children. In fact, there is a reason. $500,000 of them in fact.”

There is no such report on the Gateway Pundit.

The made-up story, which was picked up and posted by websites that don’t have a disclaimer, was flagged by Facebook users as potentially false and prompted several readers to ask us if it’s true. It’s not.

None of the three groups listed in the bogus story — “Immigration for Everyone, the Council for Alien Rights, and the Southern Border Defense Fund” — appear to exist and the “transparency” website that supposedly showed the campaign contributions links to a pornographic image.

Schumer’s office confirmed that he has received no such contributions.

The same day that this made-up story came out, HuffPost reported that House Speaker Paul Ryan had received nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from the wealthy conservative donor Charles Koch and his wife after the tax bill passed.

Readers also asked us about those contributions, which are indeed real.

Charles and Elizabeth Koch each gave $247,700 to Ryan’s political action committee, Team Ryan, for a total of $495,400 on Nov. 29. That was just a couple of weeks after the House passed its version of the tax bill.

That amount isn’t unusual, though. Koch — who is the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, which owns companies in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, chemicals and biofuels — and his wife gave almost the exact same amount to Team Ryan in 2016. In March of that year, they each gave $244,200 — a total of $488,400.

There is no evidence that the Kochs’ donations were related to the passage of the tax bill.

Mark Shtrakhman contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to help identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

Sources

U.S. Senate. “S. 2193, a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to increase penalties for individuals who illegally reenter the United States after being removed and for other purposes.” As introduced 21 Oct 2015.

Nakamura, David and O’Keefe, Ed. “Timeline: The rise and fall of immigration reform.” The Washington Post. 26 Jun 2014.

U.S. Senate. “S. 744, Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.” As passed the Senate 27 Jun 2013.

Prokop, Andrew. “7 questions about the government shutdown you were too embarrassed to ask.” Vox. 22 Jan 2018.

Robertson, Lori. “The Facts on DACA.” FactCheck.org. 22 Jan 2018.

Sessions, Jeff. “Attorney General Sessions Delivers Remarks on DACA.” Department of Justice. 5 Sep 2017.

“UPDATE: Charles Schumer Received $500k Donation From Pro-Illegal Alien Group Just Before Vote.” thelastlineofdefense.online. 20 Jan 2018.

Papenfuss, Mary. “Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law.” 20 Jan 2018.

Itemized receipts — Team Ryan. Federal Election Commission. 29 Nov 2017.

U.S. House. H.R. 1, roll call vote #637. 16 Nov 2017.

Itemized receipts — Team Ryan. Federal Election Commission. 28 Mar 2016.

The post No Shutdown Shakedown appeared first on FactCheck.org.

On NBC’s local station in Philadelphia, FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely discussed how politicians on both sides of the aisle distorted the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the Senate health care bill would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million in 2026.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate, claimed the Republican bill “would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance,” while House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said the 22 million refers to people who “choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.”

In fact, CBO said it’s a combination of both. Some people would lose access to health insurance because of the bill, while others would chose not to buy insurance. For FactCheck.org’s full analysis, see our story, “Spinning the CBO Insurance Estimate.”

This news video, which aired July 2, is part of FactCheck.org’s partnership with NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, a division of NBCUniversal, to produce weekly fact-checking segments for local NBC stations.

The post Video: Spinning the CBO Report appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did House Speaker Paul Ryan say “22 million Americans choose to be poor, so it’s their own problem if they can’t afford to be healthy”?

A: No. That fake quote comes from a satirical news story.

FULL QUESTION

Did Ryan really give the speech that people choose to be poor by not working hard enough? It was on a Newslo site which may or may not be a true site?

FULL ANSWER

Rep. Paul Ryan didn’t say “22 million Americans choose to be poor, so it’s their own problem if they can’t afford to be healthy.” That made-up quote comes from a June 28 article on politicot.com. We believe that’s the story our reader asked about, and skeptical Facebook users also flagged it as potentially fake news.

Politicot.com is one of several websites from Newslo, which claims to be “the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web.” We’ve written about stories from Newslo before, and it’s included on our list of websites that post fake and satirical news.

Newslo articles often begin with a paragraph that has been copied from a real news article. The website then fabricates additional details and quotes.

“Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and what is satire,” Newslo’s “about us” page says. But that tool – which allows readers to select “show facts,” highlighting the text that’s real — isn’t helpful when other websites repost the stories without that feature, making it harder for readers to tell what is real or not.

This time, Newslo lifted the opening lines of its story from an article on the progressive site RawStory.com that described a Fox News interview. In the interview, Ryan responded to a question about the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that 22 million fewer people would be insured in 2026 under the Senate Republicans’ health care bill than under current law.

RawStory.com, June 27: House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) this week disputed reports that 22 million people would lose insurance under the Republican health care plan.

During an interview that aired on Tuesday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Ryan to respond to a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that said there would be 22 million more people without health insurance by 2026 if the Senate’s version of the health care bill is signed into law.

“What they are basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office, if you’re not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you’re not going to force people to buy something they don’t want, then they won’t buy it,” the Speaker opined. “So, it’s not that people are getting pushed off a plan, it’s that people will choose not to buy something that they don’t like or want.”

(That quote from Ryan was indeed in the Fox News interview. In fact, we wrote about Ryan and Sen. Bernie Sanders each putting their own spin on the CBO report, which said that some would prefer not to buy insurance but others would no longer be eligible for Medicaid or wouldn’t be able to afford coverage.)

But from there, Newslo deviates from the facts. The satirical story wrongly claims Kilmeade asked Ryan “to comment on the fact that the Republican health care platform is going to make health insurance plans significantly less affordable by decreasing subsidies.” And it wrongly says Ryan responded “by ranting about how being poor is ‘a choice.'”

In reality, Kilmeade never brought up subsidies during the interview, which aired June 27 on “Fox & Friends.” Likewise, Ryan didn’t ask Kilmeade, “Why should anybody who has the willpower to tackle problems and obstacles in order to provide a good life for themselves and their family be obligated to set aside some of their hard earned money to help other people who don’t want to work hard and, instead, rely on policymakers to ensure they have welfare or, in this case, affordable health insurance?”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to help identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network. 

Sources

Schaedel, Sydney. “How to Flag Fake News on Facebook.” FactCheck.org. 6 Jul 2017.

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The post A Fake Paul Ryan Quote appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In this week’s video with FactCheck.org, CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at how members of both parties are spinning the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of how many people will be insured under the Senate health care bill.

The CBO projects that the bill would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million in 2026.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate, says the bill “would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance.” House Speaker Paul Ryan insists that is not the case.

“It’s not that our people are getting pushed off our plan,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “It’s that people will choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.”

Both characterizations of the bill’s impact are inaccurate. It’s actually a combination of both: Some healthy Americans will choose not to buy insurance, but others who want coverage won’t be able to afford to buy private insurance on the individual market, or will not have access to Medicaid in the future.

For details, view the video below or on CNN’s website, and read our story “Spinning the CBO Insurance Estimate.”

The post Video: Both Sides Spin CBO Numbers appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the Senate health care bill would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million in 2026 — a figure that both sides in the debate are distorting:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders wrongly claims the bill “would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance.” Actually, some would prefer not to buy insurance. In fact, CBO estimates that 15 million more would be uninsured next year alone “primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated.”
• Conversely, House Speaker Paul Ryan says of the 22 million, “It’s not that that people are getting pushed off our plan. It’s that people will choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.” That’s inaccurate, too. Under the bill, some would no longer be eligible for Medicaid and others would not be able to afford coverage.
• The White House sought to discredit the CBO estimate, tweeting that the agency’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was off by “100%.” The “CBO estimated that 23M would be covered in 2017,” the tweet said. Actually, CBO was pretty close. The number of people without insurance has declined by 20 million since 2010.

On June 22, Senate Republicans introduced the Better Care Reconciliation Act — their version of legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2010. As with the House version, CBO projected a sharp increase in the number of people without insurance, compared with current law.

In a report issued June 26, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation said the Senate bill “would increase the number of people who are uninsured by 22 million in 2026 relative to the number under current law, slightly fewer than the increase in the number of uninsured estimated for the House-passed legislation.” CBO estimated an increase of 23 million under the House bill.

“By 2026, an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law,” CBO said.

As we saw with the CBO estimate of the House bill, both sides distorted what CBO said about the increase in the number of uninsured. (See “The 24 Million Talking Point” and “Spinning the CBO Report.”)

CBO Report on Senate Bill

Shortly after CBO released its report, Sen. Bernie Sanders went to the Senate floor and spoke about the agency’s analysis of the bill.

Sanders, June 26: According to CBO, and that report just came out a few hours ago, this bill would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance …

A day later, House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared on “Fox & Friends” and gave a different spin on the 22 million figure in the CBO report (at about the 36-second mark of the video).

Ryan, June 27: What they’re basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office is if you’re not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you’re not going to force them to buy something that they don’t want, then they won’t buy it. So it’s not that that people are getting pushed off our plan. It’s that people will choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.

In fact, CBO said it’s a combination of both: some people being thrown off and others opting not to buy insurance they don’t like or want.

The biggest jump in the number of uninsured Americans under the Senate bill would occur in the first year and largely because, as Ryan says, people who were forced to buy health insurance would opt not to purchase it. The Senate bill eliminates a tax penalty for not having insurance. For tax year 2016, the tax was $695 or 2 percent of your income, whichever is higher.

CBO, June 26: CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current law — primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated.

In particular, CBO says healthier people would leave the market, driving up premiums in the short-term. “Under the Senate bill, average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals would be about 20 percent higher in 2018 than under current law, mainly because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated, inducing fewer comparatively healthy people to sign up,” CBO says.

However, the CBO said it didn’t expect the elimination of the requirement to have insurance to affect those now with Medicaid. “The agencies do not expect that, with the penalty eliminated under this legislation, people enrolled in Medicaid would disenroll,” CBO report said.

CBO expects there would be “15 million fewer Medicaid enrollees by 2026 than projected under current law.” The decline would be, in large part, due to proposed Medicaid changes contained in the Senate bill — which reduces Medicaid spending by $772 billion by 2026.

The ACA expanded eligibility to all individuals under age 65 who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, and the federal government currently pays 95 percent of the cost for the expansion population. But, under the Senate bill, states that already have expanded Medicaid would get reduced federal funding, beginning in 2021. And states that haven’t yet expanded eligibility could only do so at their standard federal match rates, which average 57 percent.

“Some of that decline would be among people who are currently eligible for Medicaid benefits, and some would be among people who CBO projects would, under current law, become eligible in the future as additional states adopted the ACA’s option to expand eligibility.”

Also, federal Medicaid payments to states would no longer be open-ended. The bill would cap the amount of federal funding that states can receive per Medicaid enrollee, beginning in fiscal year 2020. That would “shift a greater share of the cost of Medicaid to states over time” and force states to adopt a mix of cost-saving options, including cutting benefits, eliminating optional services and restricting eligibility for enrollment, CBO says.

For those buying insurance on the individual market, CBO says some who would otherwise be insured under current law would be discouraged from buying it under the Senate bill. For example, CBO says that “few low-income people would purchase any plan,” because the cost would be prohibitive.

CBO, June 26: Under this legislation, starting in 2020, the premium for a silver plan would typically be a relatively high percentage of income for low-income people. The deductible for a plan with an actuarial value of 58 percent would be a significantly higher percentage of income — also making such a plan unattractive, but for a different reason. As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan, CBO and JCT estimate.

CBO says that the increase in the number of uninsured “would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower income — particularly people between 50 and 64 years old with income of less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.” For example, CBO says (in Table 5) that single individuals who are 64 years old and earn $26,500 (175 percent of federal poverty level) would have to pay $6,500 in net premiums for a silver plan after receiving a government tax credit — $4,800 more than they would under current law.

CBO Report on Affordable Care Act

On the day that CBO released its report on the Senate bill, the official White House Twitter account posted a tweet that was critical of CBO’s past estimate on the Affordable Care Act. In particular, the White House criticized CBO’s projection for the number of nonelderly people (under age 65) that would be covered by the ACA.

FACT: when #Obamacare was signed, CBO estimated that 23M would be covered in 2017. They were off by 100%. Only 10.3M people are covered. pic.twitter.com/A7Kthh3gDQ

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 26, 2017

Let’s set aside the obvious math error. The difference between 23 million and 10.3 million is 55 percent, not 100 percent.

More important, the White House tweet says — as administration officials have said in the past — that CBO was wrong about the number of people who would be insured by the Affordable Care Act. But, as we wrote, CBO was actually pretty close to accurate on the overall number of people who would gain insurance under the law. What CBO got wrong was the mix of insured: There were more people who gained insurance through the Medicaid expansion than CBO expected, but fewer people that obtained coverage through the ACA exchanges.

To briefly recap: CBO issued its official estimate of the cost and effects of the Affordable Care Act on March 20, 2010, and then updated its estimates in July 2012 after the Supreme Court ruled that states could not be forced to expand eligibility for Medicaid.

In its 2012 report, CBO projected that there would be 30 million uninsured people under 65 years old in 2016. The actual number was 28.2 million in 2016, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey. The number of uninsured fell from 48.2 million in 2010 to 28.2 million in 2016.

The graphic that was attached to the White House tweet ignored the fact that the number of people without insurance declined by 20 million since 2010. Instead, it focused on the number of people who purchased insurance on the insurance exchanges created by the ACA.

CBO estimated that in 2016 there would be 23 million getting policies through ACA exchanges. The actual number was 10.4 million during the first half of the year, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

However, that’s just half the story. CBO underestimated the number of people who would enroll in Medicaid under the expansion of the health care program for low-income Americans.

CBO projected that 10 million people would enroll in Medicaid by 2016. But 14.4 million adults had enrolled in Medicaid through March 2016 as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

So, contrary to the impression left by the White House, CBO got the big picture right. It said the number of people without insurance would be 30 million by 2016, and it was actually a little bit better than that, at 28.2 million.

Editor’s Note: Please see our item “The Facts on the GOP Health Care Bills” for more about the House and Senate bills and how they compare with each other and the Affordable Care Act.  

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