Ahead of the vote on President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package deal, lawmakers have supplied an array of deceptive claims to advertise their place on the invoice. Here’s a reality examine of some frequent speaking factors.
Republicans mischaracterized components of the invoice.
WHAT WAS SAID
“This is supposed to be a Covid bill. Only 9 percent of it goes to Covid.” — Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House minority chief, in an interview this week on Fox News.
This is deceptive. A spokeswoman for Mr. McCarthy stated that the 9 p.c referred to the $160 billion for a nationwide vaccination program, expanded testing and a public well being jobs program, as outlined by the Biden administration. In different phrases, 8.4 p.c, or $160 billion of the $1.9 trillion package deal, is allotted particularly to preventing the coronavirus.
But that could be a relatively slender interpretation of pandemic-related funding. The invoice additionally contains different well being care spending like subsidizing insurance coverage protection for laid-off staff, extending paid sick go away and funding for veterans care.
And like the first two reduction payments signed by President Donald J. Trump and an alternate measure proposed this yr by 10 Republican lawmakers, a lot of the Biden plan is dedicated to offering monetary assist to households and companies harmed by the financial results of the pandemic. The $1,400 stimulus checks and extension of unemployment advantages are the two largest single expenditures, based on a breakdown by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
WHAT WAS SAID
“We’ve run the numbers and here’s your receipt, @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer,” — Senator Marsha Blackburn this week on Twitter, breaking down the invoice into classes like arts, museums and library providers; Pelosi’s subway; providers together with Planned Parenthood; and “climate justice.”
This is deceptive. Ms. Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, accused Democratic management of drafting a $1.9 trillion invoice that amounted to a liberal “wishlist.” But the 4 particular areas of funding she highlighted add as much as $547 million or about 0.03 p.c of the complete $1.9 trillion.
“Pelosi’s subway” refers to a project to extend the Bay Area Rapid Transit system into downtown San Jose — which is an hour south of San Francisco and the district Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents. The venture is definitely in the district of one other Democrat, Representative Zoe Lofgren.
A spokeswoman for the House transportation committee stated that the BART extension was not receiving particular funding, however relatively “simply being funded proportionately” to different comparable initiatives round the nation.
Over all, the invoice contains $30 billion to help public transit agencies, the bulk of which covers operational prices of transit techniques throughout the nation. About $1 billion of that goes to a Transportation Department grant program to make sure that already accepted transit initiatives — like the BART extension in addition to rail enhancements in Republican-led states like Indiana and Arizona — stay solvent.
“Art, museums, and library services” consult with the $135 million put aside for the National Endowment for the Arts and $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The invoice additionally devotes $50 million to household planning initiatives, which Ms. Blackburn characterised as “services including Planned Parenthood.” The group just isn’t explicitly talked about in the invoice, nevertheless it has beforehand obtained household planning grants. Other grantees embrace state and native well being companies (together with Tennessee’s Department of Health household planning program) and different nonprofits.
Another $50 million is earmarked for “environmental justice purposes,” the invoice reads, and is meant to deal with the well being final result disparities from air pollution and the pandemic.
WHAT WAS SAID
“There are bailouts to Planned Parenthood, stimulus grants to illegal immigrant families.” — Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, in an interview this week on Fox News.
This is deceptive. Mr. Banks’s declare about “illegal immigrant families” receiving stimulus grants refers to households with blended immigration standing, not households the place all members are undocumented. Under the bill, {couples} who collectively file their taxes must have just one legitimate Social Security quantity to obtain a stimulus examine. But the quantity could be $1,400 for a person, not $2,800 for a pair.
In different phrases, American residents or authorized residents married to undocumented immigrants would obtain the $1,400, however their spouses wouldn’t.
The first two rounds of stimulus checks had the identical circumstances with virtually identical language.
Republicans additionally omitted context.
WHAT WAS SAID
“There’s over a trillion dollars of money unspent from previous relief bills that were bipartisan. The money’s still sitting in a bank account.” — Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, in an interview this week on ABC.
“If you think about what’s happened already, $4 trillion worth of stimulus has been passed. There’s still a trillion dollars’ worth, or close to a trillion dollars, that hasn’t even been spent yet.” — Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, in an interview this week on Fox Business.
This is deceptive. In an op-ed published this month by The Washington Post, Mr. Scalise linked to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s coronavirus spending tracker as his supply for this declare. According to the tracker, about $3 trillion has already been spent. But that doesn’t essentially imply that $1 trillion will stay unused.
The assume tank explained in a blog post in January that “much of it is already allocated or scheduled to be spent, and a small portion will never be spent.” About $775 billion of the “unspent” funding got here from the $900 billion stimulus package deal signed into regulation in late December, based on the weblog submit. Funding anticipated to be doled out over time (loans and Medicaid spending), in addition to knowledge lags, additionally clarify a few of the disparity.
WHAT WAS SAID
“In fact, 95 percent of that money can’t even be spent until 2022. Do you really want to wait until 2022 to start having your kid go back in school? This bill actually will delay school reopening. This is crazy.” — Mr. Scalise in an interview this week on Fox News.
“We need to get and follow the science and get kids back to school. This bill does not do that.” — Mr. McCarthy, in an interview this week on Fox News.
This is deceptive. The invoice units apart $128.5 billion for funding Ok-12 colleges by the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that $6.4 billion of that could be spent in the 2021 fiscal yr, which ends in September.
But the finances workplace additionally stated that the spending charge it estimated was “subject to considerable uncertainty.”
In a letter to congressional leaders, schooling teams wrote that the notion that colleges didn’t want extra funding due to how a lot they’d spend this yr was “inaccurate.”
“In conversations with our respective memberships, they report that while the ‘spend rate’ may seem quite low to those unfamiliar with state and district school financial procedures and requirements, they have budgeted for every dollar they are scheduled to receive from the Covid relief bills and are still anticipating more significant costs they will be unable to meet without additional federal funds,” the teams wrote.
A spokeswoman for Mr. McCarthy additionally famous that the invoice “provides no assurance to families that schools will reopen” and that funding was not tied to reopening colleges.
Nothing in the invoice explicitly delays college reopening, nor does it situation funding on reopening. But a spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee famous that it was by no means supposed to.
“Our position has always been that these decisions should be made by local school districts in consultation with public health officials,” stated Joshua Weisz, the communications director for the committee. “Congress should not be coercing schools into reopening.”
Mr. Biden has been imprecise about some components of the invoice.
WHAT WAS SAID
“If we don’t pass the American Rescue Plan, 40 million Americans will lose nutritional assistance through a program we call SNAP, the old food stamp program. Do we not invest $3 million — $3 billion to keep families from going hungry?” — Mr. Biden in remarks final week at a Pfizer plant.
This is exaggerated. As FactCheck.org noted, the White House transcript of Mr. Biden’s remarks added “some of” in brackets earlier than the phrases “nutritional assistance.” That is as a result of failure to cross the invoice wouldn’t result in Americans who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in shedding all of their advantages. Rather, the stimulus package deal signed into regulation in December briefly elevated meals stamp advantages by 15 p.c from January to June. The present invoice and Mr. Biden’s plan would prolong that improve to September.
WHAT WAS SAID
“For example, if it went — if we gradually increased it — when we indexed it at $7.20, if we kept it indexed by — to inflation, people would be making 20 bucks an hour right now.” — Mr. Biden final week at a CNN town hall event.
False. The federal minimal wage was last raised to $7.25 in July 2009, which if listed for client inflation could be about $8.81 today. Mr. Biden almost certainly meant to say “worker productivity” as an alternative of inflation. Dean Baker, an economist at left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, has estimated that if the minimal wage had saved up with productiveness, it might be about $24.
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