WASHINGTON: Donald Trump changed some of his facts to fit his agenda Monday, pitching shades of truth and misconceptions in what was billed as a major economic policy speech.
He wrongly accused Hillary Clinton of proposing to increase middle-class taxes and blamed crumbling roads and bridges on money spent on refugees, a minuscule expense in comparison with infrastructure. He overstated the corporate tax burden and declared the jobless rate — the prime statistic for holding leaders accountable for the state of the economy — a hoax.
A look at some of his claims and how they compare with the facts:
Trump: “She said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.”
The Facts: If Clinton said that — and it’s debatable — it’s clear she didn’t mean to. Her economic agenda calls for middle-class tax cuts (the amount is not specified), and she has repeatedly said she would not raise taxes on middle incomes. At a rally Monday, Clinton said: “I have said throughout this campaign I am not going to raise the taxes on the middle class, but with your help we are going to raise it on the wealthy.”
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Trump: “You cannot ever start a small business under the tremendous regulatory burden that you have today in our country.”
The Facts: Trump is exaggerating. There are clear signs that new business formation has slowed, but it hasn’t ground to the halt that he suggests.
Between 2011 and 2013, the most recent years available, the Census Bureau found that the number of companies that employ fewer than four people has increased by 43,232 to 3.58 million.
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Trump: “Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.”
The Facts: Over the last eight years, the period Trump addresses when pointing to failures of President Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled 530,830 refugees. That includes many from the final year of the Bush administration. So far in the budget year that ends Sept. 30, the U.S. has resettled 59,099 refugees. Over the last 15 years: about 850,000.
The State Department puts the cost of the resettlement program to taxpayers at less than $1.2 billion a year. That’s roughly 0.03 percent of the federal budget, a rounding error according to most experts. That sum would hardly make up for the infrastructure shortfall.
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Trump: “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.”
The Facts: Michigan actually added jobs after the North American Free Trade Agreement began in 1994, when auto plants employed roughly 200,000 workers. Over the next six years, their ranks increased to 231,000. The decline only occurred after the tech bubble burst and U.S. automakers lost market share among U.S. consumers, a decline that prompted a government bailout that caused Michigan auto jobs to start rising again in late 2009.
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Trump on the unemployment rate: “This 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern American politics.”
The Facts: The jobless rate has its shortcomings, but it is not a hoax.
The unemployment rate has become controversial since the recession ended because many people have stopped looking for work, and the government doesn’t count those out of work unless they are actively searching for jobs.
Still, a broader measure of unemployment that includes people who have recently stopped looking for jobs has also fallen — from a peak of 17.4 percent in 2010 to 9.7 percent now.