Throughout his State of the Union tackle, President Joe Biden made a number of notable claims. The Day by day Sign crew checked them out to see if the info add up—or if some essential context was lacking.
1. Inflation Discount Act and Well being Care Prices
Biden touted the $740 billion spending invoice Democrats dubbed the Inflation Discount Act, claiming throughout his State of the Union tackle Tuesday evening that the brand new regulation will lower well being care prices.
“With the Inflation Discount Act that I signed into regulation, we’re taking over highly effective pursuits to carry your well being care prices down so you’ll be able to sleep higher at evening,” the president mentioned. “, we pay extra for prescribed drugs than any main nation on Earth.”
Biden mentioned large pharmaceutical corporations might now not make document earnings by climbing up costs.
“This regulation additionally caps out-of-pocket drug prices for seniors on Medicare at a most $2,000 per yr when there are in truth many medicine, like costly most cancers medicine, that may price as much as $10,000, $12,000, and $14,000 a yr,” Biden mentioned. “If drug costs rise sooner than inflation, drug corporations should pay Medicare again the distinction.”
Biden later added:
Now, some members listed here are threatening to repeal the Inflation Discount Act. … Make no mistake, for those who attempt to do something to lift the price of prescribed drugs, I’ll veto it.
I’m happy to say that extra People have medical health insurance now than ever in historical past.
A document 16 million persons are enrolled underneath the Reasonably priced Care Act. Due to the regulation I signed final yr, hundreds of thousands are saving $800 a yr on their premiums.
Nevertheless, the president overlooked potential will increase that would end result from the laws.
The so-called Inflation Discount Act would probably increase taxpayer costs by $248 billion over the following decade, and contribute to increased insurance coverage costs, all at your expense by extra Obamacare subsidies.
The invoice ensured the federal authorities might negotiate drug costs. Nevertheless, that didn’t scale back the true prices related to producing medication, more likely to be handed on to shoppers.
Additionally, extending Obamacare subsidies will probably have little impact on the premiums that insurers cost.
2. ‘Excessive Abortion Bans’
President Joe Biden painted lifesaving laws proscribing abortion as “excessive” throughout his State of the Union remarks on Tuesday.
“Congress should restore the appropriate the Supreme Courtroom took away final yr and codify Roe v. Wade to guard each lady’s constitutional proper to decide on,” Biden mentioned. “The vp and I are doing every thing we are able to to guard entry to reproductive well being care and safeguard affected person privateness.”
“However already, greater than a dozen states are implementing excessive abortion bans,” he added. “Make no mistake; if Congress passes a nationwide abortion ban, I’ll veto it.”
The president’s reference to “excessive abortion bans” refers to legal guidelines that defend unborn infants from being killed. Virtually 70% of People help limiting abortions to the primary three months of a being pregnant, in line with a January 2023 survey by the Knights of Columbus and Marist Poll.
About 14 states have handed close to complete bans on aborting unborn infants, according to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and 6 extra states have handed close to complete abortion bans depending on authorized motion. One state (Florida) bans abortions after 15 weeks. Twenty-six states have few or no legal guidelines proscribing abortion.
Evaluation by the Charlotte Lozier Institute shows that the overwhelming majority of European nations prohibit abortions to fifteen weeks’ gestation—making the US’ legal guidelines permitting late-term abortions a number of the most excessive on the planet.
“No European nation permits elective abortion by all 9 months of being pregnant, as is successfully permitted in a number of U.S. states, and America is one of only a small handful of nations, along with China and North Korea, to permit any sort of late-term elective abortion,” mentioned Angelina B. Nguyen, a Lozier Institute affiliate scholar.
The states with robust pro-life legal guidelines on the books allow well timed medical remedies for miscarriage, ectopic being pregnant, and different medical procedures wanted to save lots of the lifetime of a pregnant lady, opposite to the claims of many high-profile Democrats.
3. Border Success?
“We now have a document variety of personnel working to safe the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers and seizing over 23,000 kilos of fentanyl in simply the final a number of months,” Biden mentioned.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that it seized simply over 14,000 kilos of fentanyl in fiscal yr 2022, which ended Sept. 30, and greater than 7,000 kilos between October and the top of December.
In February, CBP reported a big drug seizure within the San Diego sector, together with “blue capsules” that contained “fentanyl with a complete weight of 250 kilos with an estimated road worth of $3,412,000.”
Below President Donald Trump in fiscal 2018, Customs and Border Safety reported seizing 2,135 kilos of fentanyl. And in 2020, it seized practically 5,000 kilos of the deadly drug.
“Most illicit fentanyl at the moment is manufactured in Mexico and introduced throughout our southern border,” Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Basis’s Border Safety and Immigration Heart, and Virginia Krieger,
president of Misplaced Voices of Fentanyl, recently wrote. (The Day by day Sign is Heritage’s multimedia information group.)
“However the Biden administration and the Left stay absolutely dedicated to their open border insurance policies—despite the fact that opioids, largely fentanyl, are actually the No. 1 killer of People aged 18-45 years previous,” Krieger and Ries wrote.
The rise within the quantity of fentanyl flooding into America is accompanied by a document variety of unlawful migrants crossing the southern border. Fiscal 2022 noticed 2.76 million unlawful immigrant border crossings.
Ron Vitiello, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, informed The Day by day Sign on Monday that brokers are overwhelmed by the border disaster. Vitiello mentioned there’s a psychological well being disaster amongst Border Patrol brokers due to the stress and frustration attributable to the Biden administration’s “self-inflicted disaster” on the southern border.
In response to the border disaster, Biden outlined a plan in January to restrict the variety of unlawful immigrants crossing into America. The plan goals at limiting illegal migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela to 30,000 per thirty days.
“Since we launched our new border plan final month, illegal migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97%,” Biden mentioned throughout his speech Tuesday evening.
With a document variety of encounters on the border and fentanyl flowing throughout, Tom Homan, former performing director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Basis, mentioned in a current assertion:
Congress wants to carry Joe Biden, [Homeland Secretary] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas, and everybody else answerable for this travesty accountable for what they’ve achieved to this nation.
This administration’s insurance policies are harmful and inhumane, and the brand new majority in Congress higher get severe about doing one thing to cease them. We’re shortly operating out of time to repair this—act now, present some backbone, or exhibit that you simply care about border safety to the identical extent the Left does.
4. Biggest Menace to Democracy Since Civil Struggle?
Biden celebrated how far the nation has come for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic-induced recession, however he additionally referenced the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, repeating his declare that it was the “biggest risk” to American democracy for the reason that Civil Struggle.
He famous that his second State of the Union tackle comes two years after the riot.
“And two years in the past, our democracy confronted its biggest risk for the reason that Civil Struggle,” Biden mentioned. “At this time, although bruised, our democracy stays unbowed and unbroken.”
It’s not clear what he meant in evaluating the Capitol riot, wherein 950 Donald Trump supporters had been charged with crimes, to a battle wherein a number of slave-holding Southern states tried to kind a brand new Accomplice States of America, raised their very own navy in an armed rebel that wore on for 4 years, and took the lives of greater than 600,000 troops.
Through the Capitol riot, a whole bunch of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol to forestall Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral Faculty victory over Trump. A number of had been violent towards cops and shouted threats at members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence. Others induced property harm.
Some rioters carried Confederate battle flags into the Capitol on Jan. 6. Not one of the 950 individuals arrested had been charged with riot, or trying to violently overthrow the federal government, however federal prosecutors did cost 50 with conspiracy. Out of these, 4 had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The others had been charged with conspiracy to impede a congressional continuing, conspiracy to impede regulation enforcement throughout a civil dysfunction, or conspiracy to injure an officer.
Biden didn’t clarify why this riot supposedly represented a bigger risk to democracy than when Japan attacked the US on Dec. 7, 1941, which pulled the U.S. into World Struggle II in opposition to the Axis powers.
Additional, the Capitol was attacked a minimum of 4 occasions earlier than Jan. 6, 2021, three of these occasions after the Civil Struggle.
In 1814, British troopers burned the Capitol throughout the Struggle of 1812. It took about 5 years to rebuild the Home chamber.
In 1954, 4 Puerto Rican terrorists—Andres Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores Rodríguez, and Rafael Cancel Miranda—attacked the Capitol. In contrast to those that acquired contained in the Capitol constructing in 2021, these terrorists had been armed with weapons. The 4 opened fireplace from the Home gallery, wounding 5 lawmakers: Reps. Alvin Bentley, Ben Jensen, Clifford Davis, George Hyde Fallon, and Kenneth Roberts.
In 1971, a home terrorist group known as the Weather Underground bombed the Capitol, inflicting $300,000 value of injury. Nobody was harmed. The so-called Weathermen returned in 1983 and set off another bomb that “tore by the second flooring of the Capitol’s north wing,” in line with the Senate’s historical past website. No fatalities occurred on this case both.
Through the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, a number of rioters had been carrying pepper spray or bear spray, and wielding flagpoles as golf equipment in attacking regulation enforcement officers.
Two individuals died instantly from the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, however as many as seven others died not directly from the occasions of the day, primarily based on a tally of deaths published in The New York Occasions.
5. Police reform
Biden launched the mother and father of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old man who was fatally crushed by Memphis cops, as he known as for police reform Tuesday evening throughout his State of the Union tackle.
Biden overlooked the truth that Senate Democrats blocked a police reform invoice in 2020.
“There aren’t any phrases to explain the heartbreak and grief of dropping a toddler,” Biden mentioned. “However think about what it’s prefer to lose a toddler by the hands of the regulation.”
Biden went on to cite Nichols’ mom, Kristin Christensen: “With religion in God, she mentioned her son ‘was an attractive soul and one thing good will come from this.’”
Biden known as for Congress to “give regulation enforcement the coaching they want [and] maintain them to increased requirements” in a police reform invoice.
“Let’s commit ourselves to make the phrases of Tyre’s mom come true: One thing good should come from this,” Biden later mentioned. “All of us on this chamber, we have to rise to this second. We will’t flip away. Let’s do what we all know in our hearts we have to do. Let’s come collectively and end the job on police reform.”
In 2020, after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota by a police officer, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., proposed a police reform bill that might create a nationwide policing fee to assessment the prison justice system; gather information on use of power by cops; ban the usage of chokeholds by federal officers; and withhold federal funds from state and native regulation enforcement companies that don’t ban chokeholds.
Scott’s invoice additionally would withhold federal cash from police departments that fail to report no-knock warrants to the Justice Division.
Nevertheless, Senate Democrats—then within the minority—blocked Scott’s laws from coming to a vote. Then-Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Sick., said the bill from Scott, who’s black, was a “token, half-hearted strategy.”
Senate Republicans supplied to permit flooring votes on as many amendments as Democrats needed. Nevertheless, throughout negotiations, Scott said that Democrats mentioned, “we’re not right here to speak about that” and “walked out.”
6. Colleges and COVID-19
Biden opened his tackle with, “Two years in the past, COVID had shut down our companies, closed our faculties, and robbed us of a lot. At this time, COVID now not controls our lives.”
Whereas Biden now celebrates victory over COVID-19 and the ending of pandemic faculty closures, his appointees and poor management stored school rooms closed far longer than crucial.
The president claimed in a 2021 interview with “CBS Night Information” that closed faculties had been a “nationwide emergency,” however his answer solely included “well-ventilated rooms” and classrooms with very few students.
Whereas Biden’s crew promised “to have the vast majority of faculties, so greater than 50%, open by Day 100 of his presidency,” the administration later walked the definition of “open” back to incorporate school rooms solely open someday every week, hybrid digital choices, and testing proctor websites.
His appointees fared a lot worse.
Biden’s appointee for deputy secretary of education fought to maintain the San Diego Unified Faculty District locked down as superintendent. She refused to set a timeline for any faculties to reopen.
Rochelle Walensky, Biden’s decide to move the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, collaborated behind closed doors with the American Federation of Academics to vary the CDC’s suggestion for college reopenings and different COVID-19 tips. Unions throughout the nation would vote to keep classrooms virtual well into 2022.
Moreover, progressive teams like teachers unions and liberal media shops continually belittled those that desired for faculties to reopen—accusing mother and father and college students of racism, bigotry, and homicide.
Then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo steered children who went back to school might “kill grandma.”
Chicago Public Colleges’ academics union accused the will to reopen faculties as rooted in “sexism, racism and misogyny.”
Republican governors and oldsters’ rights activists fought, however, to reopen faculties and preserve them open. President Donald Trump got here underneath considerable fire for suggesting governors “critically think about” reopening faculties in April 2020.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, introduced suggestions to reopen Florida’s entire education system at “full capability” in June 2020. He later slammed Biden over the sluggish nationwide tempo of faculties reopening in 2021 as a “pathetic failure of management.”
Together with DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed govt orders to forbid faculties from implementing masks mandates—actions that Biden’s Department of Education openly condemned.
Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow on the American Federation for Kids, informed The Day by day Sign:
Biden ought to rename himself the gaslighter-in-chief. Academics unions—who personal Democratic politicians—held youngsters’s training hostage to safe a number of multibillion-dollar ransom funds from taxpayers. And it labored for them. The federal authorities allotted about $190 billion in so-called COVID aid to Ok-12 faculties since March 2020. The push to maintain faculties closed was all the time extra about politics and energy than security and the wants of youngsters. Mother and father aren’t dumb. They’ll always remember how academics unions harm their youngsters by combating to maintain faculties closed for therefore lengthy.
Biden could declare that he fought to reopen faculties, however does so omitting the timeline and method wherein he advocated. Biden was nicely over a yr behind Republicans in reopening faculties—whereas appointing workers who instantly opposed and obstructed the method of placing college students again in school rooms.
7. Inflation
“Inflation has been a worldwide downside due to the pandemic that disrupted provide chains and Putin’s battle that disrupted power and meals provides,” Biden mentioned, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Though it’s true that inflation has hit different nations’ economies, it didn’t begin within the U.S. at first of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did it start throughout Russia’s battle on Ukraine. The president’s description of the inflation downside is deceptive at finest.
When Biden was sworn into workplace Jan. 20, 2021, inflation stood at 1.4%. Because it started to rise in 2021, Biden called high inflation a “transitory” situation. By June of the following yr, inflation hit 9.1, a 40-year high.
The speed of inflation improve has slowed, but it surely stays a big downside that’s eroding the financial savings of People.
“Whereas the speed of value will increase has actually slowed in current months, as authorities deficit-spending additionally slowed and the Federal Reserve hiked rates of interest, costs are nonetheless up about 14% underneath Biden,” wrote EJ Antoni, an economics skilled at The Heritage Basis. “That’s considerably greater than the rise in common earnings.”
Actually, as Antoni additionally wrote in November, the common American household misplaced over $7,000 due to inflation underneath Biden.
The Inflation Discount Act, signed by Biden in 2022, has achieved little to scale back inflation. Actually, it principally added to the federal government spending.
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