Republican and Democratic leaders have either downplayed or overstated the estimated impact of the House reconciliation bill on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that due to work requirements in the bill, 3.2 million people would lose all of their SNAP benefits, which provide financial help to low-income people for groceries.
Republicans say that able-bodied adults who don’t work would lose Medicaid coverage under the House tax-cuts-and-spending bill, while Democrats say the legislation would hurt vulnerable groups. The bill’s main target is those able-bodied adults, but other groups would lose coverage due to paperwork burdens and other provisions in the bill, health policy experts say.
Multiple independent analyses say the recently passed House reconciliation bill — even with its deep spending cuts in some areas — would add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit over 10 years. Those analyses contradict Republican lawmakers who have downplayed the net cost of the bill and White House claims that it wouldn’t increase the deficit at all.
Democrats and Republicans are accusing one another of “lying” about what a House Republican budget resolution means for Medicaid, and both sides have made misleading or speculative comments. There’s little doubt the health care program would face cuts under the plan — and it would have to if Medicare cuts are off limits.
Federal law enforcement officials have identified an Army veteran, who was born in the United States, as the sole person responsible for the Jan. 1 terrorist attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people and injured many more. But some Republican politicians and social media posts have wrongly claimed or suggested that the attack was the result of illegal immigration.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was spinning the facts when he claimed Republicans would have won a larger majority in the House in the 2024 election if not for Democrats’ gerrymandering of districts. The net effect of redistricting did not give the Democrats a large advantage, experts told us, with most of them saying the Republicans benefited more than Democrats.
Election law experts say House Speaker Mike Johnson is wrong when he says it is “unlawful” for Democrats to “simply just switch out a candidate who has been chosen through the … democratic process.”
On a night when the focus was on safety and unity at the Republican convention, a number of GOP leaders also offered up some misleading and false claims we have seen before.
Both Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility happened to fall on March 31 this year. President Joe Biden recognized both occasions, as he has done every year in office. But some social media posts and conservative politicians characterized his acknowledgement of Transgender Day of Visibility as “mocking” Easter and declaring “war” on Christianity.
At their weekly news conference, several Republican House leaders wrongly claimed the special counsel report into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents found the president was mentally unfit to stand trial. The report said no such thing.