Fact check: The first Democratic primary debate, Day 2
Day two of the first Democratic presidential debate, held in Miami Thursday, brought ten more candidates discussing the future of the country and the biggest issues in the Democratic primary contest. Here are some of the things they said that CBS News fact checked or expanded upon in order to add context.
Would most people in the U.S. pay "significantly less" for health care than they do now??
Claim by Bernie Sanders: Under Medicare-for-All, "the vast majority of the people in this country will be paying significantly less for health care than they are now."
Fact check: Probably true, but that's only part of the equation for a family, and Sanders has not released a blueprint showing how his plan will be financed.
Sanders' plan for a government-run health care system to replace private insurance calls for no premiums, and no copays and deductibles.
But taxes would have to go up significantly as the government takes on trillions of dollars in health care costs now covered by employers and individuals.
Independent studies estimate the government would be spending an additional $28 trillion to $36 trillion over 10 years, although Medicare for All supporters say that's overstating it.
How those tax increases would be divvied up remains to be seen, as Sanders has not released a blueprint for how to finance his plan.
Do the top 1% of Americans receive 83% of the benefit from the Trump tax law?
Claim by Bernie Sanders: Under President Trump, "83% of your tax benefits go to the top 1%."
Fact check: Not true -- yet.
The Vermont senator is referring to 2027, not the present day.
He didn't include that critical context in his statement.
His figures come from an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. That analysis found that in 2027 the top 1% of earners would get 83% of the savings from the tax overhaul signed into law by Mr. Trump.
Why is that? Simple: Most of the tax cuts for individuals are set to expire after 2025, so the benefits for everyone else simply go away. The 2017 tax overhaul does disproportionately favor the wealthy and corporations, but just 20.5% of the benefits went to the top 1% last year.
Did Biden oppose busing to desegregate schools?
Claim by Joe Biden: "I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed was busing ordered by the Department of Education."
Fact check: Lacks context
The issue of busing was raised when Kamala Harris brought up the fact that she had been bused when she was growing up in order to integrate the schools. She accused Biden of working with segregationist senators "to oppose busing."
Biden responded, "The fact is that in terms of busing, the busing, I never -- you would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision made by your city council."
Although the Supreme Court put a legal end to the idea of "separate but equal" segregation policy in schools with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, many localities, particularly in the South, remained effectively segregated for years after. Mandatory busing was used to help address the disparity.
Pressed further by Harris to admit he was "wrong to oppose busing in America then," Biden responded, "I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That's what I opposed."
The only reason the federal government intervened, Harris also pointed out, was because so many localities were reluctant to implement the law.
Here's some background: In 1975 when Biden was representing a state with one of the first court-ordered desegregation plans, he sponsored an amendment to an appropriations bill prohibiting the federal government from withholding funding from schools that were segregated.
After the debate, Biden told MSNBC that he supported the court's ability to order busing, and he sought to distinguish the type of desegregation he favored versus what he opposed when he introduced that amendment.
He explained that he opposed de jure segregation, the kind of mandatory racial segregation enabled by Jim Crow laws and undone by Brown v. the Board of Education.
He told MSNBC that the desegregation he opposed in Delaware was the result of de facto segregation -- that is, racial separation that was not mandated by law, but that occurred as a result of the fact that black families lived in one school district and white families lived in another.
However, Politico Magazine suggested that racial discrimination was still at the heart of de facto segregation, noting that policies in cities like Wilmington allowed white students to transfer out of schools with rising black student populations, while racial covenants stopped black families from being able to obtain mortgages in or rent homes in the suburbs, where more white residents lived.
Are 30 states trying to overturn Roe v. Wade?
Claim by Kirsten Gillibrand: 30 states are trying to overturn Roe v. Wade
Gillbrand: "Thirty states are trying to overturn Roe v. Wade right now, and it is mind-boggling to me that we are debating on this stage in 2019 among Democrats whether women should have access to reproductive rights."
Fact check: Her number seems high
It's not clear where she's getting that number, but it appears to be fewer states than that.
The Center for Reproductive Rights estimates 22 states are poised to ban access to abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned.
So far in 2019, nine states have added more restrictions on abortion, and at least six others are considering further restrictions on abortions.
Gallup polling shows nearly two-thirds of Americans do not want to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Did Vermont, Sanders' home state, reject Medicare-for-All?
Claim: Michael Bennet pointed out to Bernie Sanders that "Vermont rejected Medicare-for-All" because of high taxes.
Fact check: True
Bernie Sanders' has won election in Vermont numerous times while supporting Medicare for All, a plan to expand taxpayer-funded insurance to every American.
But Vermont's 2014 plan to extend government health care to all its residents, called Green Mountain Care, was scrapped before it went into effect anywhere in the state due to its high cost.
The Washington Post reported that then-Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, made choices about the program that would have doubled Vermont's budget, increased the state's income taxes by "up to 9.5%," and imposed an 11.5% payroll tax on all of Vermont's employers.
Green Mountain Care would have covered about 94% of the health care costs of all Vermont residents, according to the Post, but the cost would have been roughly $5 billion, an extremely high sum for the small state.
It was a cost the state couldn't shoulder, Shumlin concluded. He said at a press conference killing the plan, "The risk of economic shock is too high at this time to offer a plan I can responsibly support for passage in the legislature."
Do three people in the U.S. own more wealth than the bottom half of America?
Claim by Bernie Sanders: "We have a new vision for America and at a time when we have three people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America."
Fact check: Likely true
Sanders' claim that three people in the U.S. own more wealth than the bottom half of America appears to be referencing a 2017 study from the left-leaning Institute for Policies, which found that the three richest Americans -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos -- together own more wealth ($248.5 billion) than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population.
That bottom 50 percent owned roughly the same amount as the three billionaires in 2017.
In other words, these three people are worth more than "a total of 160 million people or 63 million American households," the authors wrote.
That's just one study, but Sanders' claim is on the right track.
--Kathryn Watson
Did the Trump tax law benefit the top 1% and add $1 trillion to the nation's debt?
Claim by Kamala Harris: "I hear that question, but where was that question when the Republicans and Donald Trump passed a tax bill that benefits the top 1% and the biggest corporations in this country contributing at least $1 trillion to the debt of America which middle class families will pay for one way or another? Working families need support and need to be lifted up, and frankly this economy is not working for working people."
Rating: Mostly true
Mr. Trump's tax law does disproportionately benefit wealthier people -- who pay overall more in taxes -- than lower-income families. The majority of Americans did receive a tax cut, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
The law lowered the maximum corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a more significant cut than the changes made for the individual tax rates. And even the Trump White House acknowledged the GOP tax cut didn't benefit middle-class Americans enough. Mr. Trump subsequently insisted he would push a second round of tax cuts to specifically help the middle class. That was days before the midterm elections. He never followed through.
Harris' claim that Mr. Trump's tax law adds $1 trillion to the debt is accurate but if anything, it's an understatement. The Congressional Budget Office says the tax law is projected to increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion by 2028.
-- Kathryn Watson
Did the Justice Dept say children in cages don't need beds or toothbrushes?
Claim by Joe Biden: "The idea that [President Trump is] in court with this Justice Department saying children in cages do not need a bed, do not need a blanket, do not need a toothbrush -- that is outrageous and it will stop."
Fact check: Half true
The former vice president is referring to oral arguments earlier this month before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, an edited video of which went viral over the weekend with this caption: "A Trump official tried to argue that detained children don't need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be 'safe and sanitary' while in Border Patrol custody."
The attorney at the center of the controversy, Sarah Fabian, has said the video unfairly portrays her "parsing out a technical legal position."
Fabian was seeking to reverse a district court's finding that authorities had breached the Flores Agreement, which established standards for the detention of minors in immigration custody. By outlining specific items to satisfy the requirement that children be held in "safe and sanitary" conditions, like providing hygiene products, the administration argued that the judge "substantially" altered the 1997 settlement.
At one point, Fabian argued that some of those new requirements "may not be required" for a "shorter-term stay." She also sidestepped direct questions from the incredulous Ninth Circuit judges, asking whether she would agree that "if you don't have a toothbrush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary."
But Fabian did not explicitly say that detained children "do not need a bed, do not need a blanket, do not need a toothbrush."
Also, the cages Biden mentions are in fact chain-link fences, and the Obama-Biden administration used them, too.
Children and adults were held in such areas in holding Border Patrol facilities, and they are under the Trump administration, as well.
Obama's administration detained large numbers of unaccompanied children inside chain link fences in 2014. Children are placed in such areas divided by age and sex for safety reasons and are supposed to be held for no longer than 72 hours by the Border Patrol. But as the number of migrants continues to grow under the Trump administration, the system is clogged at every end, so Health and Human Services, which manages the care of children in custody, can't come get the children in time. Officials say they are increasingly holding children for 5 days or longer.