Fact Check Democratic 3rd Debate

Like our first Live Discussion on the Democratic 3rd Debate, this will be our first fact check. We will post this with the subject matter, a summary of the beef, and a link to the beef.

Cory Booker:

Kamala Harris:

Bernie Sanders:

  • “Joe and I strongly disagree on trade. I helped lead the opposition, the NAFTA, the PNTR, which cost this country over 4 million good-paying jobs.”
  • This appears to be true, according to several reputable analyses. (See NBC for links).
  • “Let us be clear Joe, in the United States of America, we are spending twice as much per capita on health care as the Canadians and any other major country on Earth.”
  • Exaggerated: The U.S. spends $10,586 per capita on health care, according to data from the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 
  • “Three people own more wealth than the bottom half of the American public.”
  • True-

Joe Biden:

  • Comparing [Obama] to the president we have is outrageous, number one. “We didn’t lock people up in cages, we didn’t separate families, we didn’t do all of those things.”
  • Biden is half right. Cage like structures, no separation.
  • “My plan for health care costs $740 billion dollars, it doesn’t cost $30 trillion dollars. $3.4 trillion a year, turns out, is twice what the entire federal budget is, that’s before it exists now, without interest on the debt.”
  • Biden’s math is off. While Medicare For All could cost $3.4 trillion a year, according to one estimate, the federal budget is larger: in 2018, the federal budget was $4.1 trillion, including $300 billion going toward interest.
  • Obama administration released 36,000 people from the prison system.
  • False- 36K applied to have their sentences commuted under an Obama era plan; most were denied.

Julián Castro:

  • To Joe Biden: “The problem with your plan is that it leaves 10 million people uncovered.”
  • This is mostly true, according to the text of Biden’s own plan. His plan estimates that his expansion of the Affordable Care Act would insure “more than an estimated 97 percent of Americans.”
  • Still, Biden has said he wants to give everyone a chance to be covered.

Amy Klobuchar:

  • Three gun bills on McConnell’s ‘desk:’
  • True: Three guns sit on his desk—to die.
  • “If we’re not careful, he’s going to bankrupt this country. One forecast said it’s already said it cost us 300,000 jobs, all right?”
  • True:  It’s true that Trump’s trade war has indeed cost American jobs.

Elizabeth Warren:

  • Insurance companies make $23 billion in profits a year.
  • True: A 2018 report on the U.S. health insurance industry found insurance companies made $23.4 billion in net revenues.”

More sources:

https://fortune.com/2019/09/12/fact-check-third-democratic-debate/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/us/politics/fact-check-democratic-debate-september.html

I know I didn’t cover every candidate but, read the links. 😊😇😊

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WTF, America?! What the actual F?!