On
Tuesday, January 30, 2018, 6:00 EST, Donald Trump gave his first SOTU
speech as POTUS. His discourse lasted 1hour and 20 minutes, covering
a variety of issues important to the American people and members of
Congress. It is not unusual for presidents to embellish a little and
try to spin a narrative that shows them in the best light, and that
their policies and leadership is better than the previous
administration or political party. It is now time to Fact-Check some
of these claims to see whether they are true or not; as below in the
following:
TRUMP:
"We enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American
history."
FACTS:
Valued at $1.5 trillion over 10 years, the plan is indeed large and
expensive. According to the Committee for a Responsible
Federal Budget, president
Trump's is the eighth biggest since 1918. As a percentage of the
total economy, Reagan's 1981 cut is the biggest.
TRUMP:
"After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally
seeing rising wages."
FACTS:
Average hourly pay rose 2.5 percent in 2017, slightly slower than the
2.9 percent increase
recorded in 2016
under President Barack Obama.
TRUMP:
The unemployment rate stands at a 17-year low (4.1%).
FACTS:
True. The last time unemployment was this low, in the late 1990s,
average hourly pay was rising at a 4 percent pace.
TRUMP:
"We have ended the war on American energy."
FACTS:
Advances in hydraulic fracturing before Trump became president made
it economical to tap vast reserves of natural gas. Oil production
also greatly increased, reducing imports. Before the 2016
presidential election, the U.S. for the first time in decades was
getting more energy domestically than it imports.
TRUMP:
"We are now
very proudly an exporter
of energy to the world."
FACTS:
Nothing new here because the U.S. has long exported all sorts of
energy to other parts of the world. If Trump means a “net”
importer, the U.S. Energy Information Agency
projects that the U.S. will become a net energy exporter in the next
decade, primarily because of a boom in oil and gas production that
began before Trump's presidency.
TRUMP:
"We slashed the business tax rate from 35 percent all the way
down to 21 percent, and these changes alone are estimated to increase
average family income by more than $4,000.
FACTS:
This figure comes from Trump's chief economist, Kevin Hassett, but
many mainstream economists poked wide holes into this claim. The
problem with the $4,000 claim is that Trump is essentially promising
$500 billion in income gains across the entire economy from tax cuts
that are a small fraction of that total on an annual basis.
TRUMP:
"Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have
already gotten tax cut bonuses — many of them thousands and
thousands of dollars per worker."
FACTS:
This is mostly true, but according to Americans for Tax
Reform, a conservative
group, about 3 million workers have gotten bonuses, raises or larger
payments to their retirement accounts. That's about 2 percent of the
more than 154 million Americans with jobs. The Labor
Department said before the
tax package was signed into law that 38 percent of workers would
probably get some form of bonus in 2017. Few companies have yet
granted across-the-board pay raises, though.
TRUMP:
"Many car companies are now building and expanding plants in
the United States, something
we haven't seen for decades."
FACTS:
As Alec Baldwin would say, “Wrong.” Toyota opened its Mississippi
factory in 2011. Hyundai's plant in Alabama dates to 2005. In 2010,
Tesla fully acquired and updated an old factory to produce its
electric vehicles. Trump also declared that "Chrysler is moving
a major plant from Mexico to Michigan” but actually, Chrysler
announced it will move
production of heavy-duty pickup trucks from Mexico to Michigan,
but the plant is not closing in Mexico. It will start producing other
vehicles for global sales and no change in its workforce is
anticipated.
TRUMP:
"We repealed the core of the disastrous Obamacare — the
individual mandate is now gone."
FACTS:
Alec Baldwin says, “Wrong;” again. No, it's not gone. It will
expire in 2019. People who go without insurance this year are still
subject to fines. Congress did repeal the unpopular requirement that
most Americans carry insurance or risk a tax penalty, but that takes
effect next year. Significant parts of ObamaCare (“AHA”) of the
overhaul remain in place, including its Medicaid expansion,
protections for people with pre-existing conditions, guaranteed
"essential" health benefits, and subsidized private health
insurance for people with modest incomes.
TRUMP:
"Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous
relief for the middle
class and small business."
FACTS:
Most Americans will pay less in taxes this year. The nonpartisan Tax
Policy Center estimates
that about 80 percent of U.S. households will get a tax cut, with
about 15 percent seeing little change and 5 percent paying more.
Middle-class households — defined as those making between roughly
$49,000 and $86,000 a year — will see their tax bills drop by about
$930, the Tax Policy Center calculates. That will lift their
after-tax incomes by 1.6 percent. The richest 1 percent, meanwhile,
will save $51,140, lifting their after-tax incomes by 3.4 percent, or
more than twice as much as the middle class.
TRUMP:
“I am proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has
liberated very close to 100 percent of the territory just recently
held by these killers in Iraq and in Syria and in other locations, as
well.”
FACTS:
Although it's true that the Islamic State group has lost nearly 100
percent of the territory it held in Syria and Iraq when the U.S.
began airstrikes in both countries in 2014, Syria remains wracked by
civil war, with much of that country controlled by the government of
Russian ally Syrian President Bashar Assad and not by U.S.-allied
groups. he progress cited by Trump did not start with his presidency.
The U.S.-led coalition recaptured much land, including several key
cities in Iraq, before he took office. And the assault on Mosul,
which was the extremists' main stronghold in northern Iraq, was begun
during the Obama administration.
REFERENCE
Associated
Press writers Josh Boak, Matthew Daly, Josh Lederman, Robert Burns
and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
__
Find
AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Robert
Randle
776
Commerce St Apt 701
Tacoma,
WA 98402
January
30, 2018
