Democrats and Republicans are once again in a standoff over a looming debt limit crisis. Congress must raise or suspend the limit on federal borrowing soon or the U.S. government won’t be able to pay its bills. Here we provide the facts on the political dispute.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has conceded that the New York Democrat falsely claimed that “all” Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan “have come out.” Government officials say that fewer than 100 U.S. citizens, and an unknown number of U.S. legal permanent residents, who want to leave Afghanistan are still in the country.
In the days leading up to the Senate vote on the House-passed elections bill, Republicans offered several misleading talking points about the Democratic bill, and made other statements that required more context.
In a press conference in which they called on President Biden to use his executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt for individuals, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren misstated a racial disparity statistic.
As the COVID-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus has spread around the world, a number of politicians, news organizations and public figures have made the false claim that the Trump administration cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-pandemic work in over 40 countries to just 10.
Posts on Facebook falsely claim to show screenshots of two tweets by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer about the U.S. coronavirus response. Schumer didn’t post the supposed tweet criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to bar travelers from China.
An online conspiracy theory falsely claims that Democratic leaders coordinated the June attacks on two oil tankers and a U.S. drone and that President Donald Trump caught them in the act. The Trump administration has placed the blame squarely on Iran.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has faced backlash from Republicans, and some Democrats, for his debate-night advocacy of a mandatory buyback program for so-called assault weapons. But Sen. Chuck Schumer went too far when he said, “I don’t know of any other Democrat who agrees with Beto O’Rourke.”
Democratic lawmakers claim the president’s proposed 2020 budget would “ransack” or “slash” Medicare and Medicaid, likening it to an “assault on Medicare” and “the health care of seniors and families across America.” Experts agree the proposed cuts to Medicaid are significant, but many of the Medicare proposals echo those of Barack Obama and wouldn’t directly affect beneficiaries.
Several Democrats have claimed that the president’s emergency declaration could “raid” or “take money away” from military pay and pensions to fund construction of the border wall. But the money is actually leftover funding due to lower-than-expected recruits and fewer early retirements.