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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Cruz’s Nonfactual Illegal Immigration Figures

Cruz’s Nonfactual Illegal Immigration Figures

Sen. Ted Cruz says there will be “20 or 30 million” people living in the U.S. illegally “in another 10, 20 years” if the Senate immigration bill becomes law. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill, if enacted, will reduce future illegal immigration by 33 percent to 50 percent compared with current law.

Rand Paul Exaggerates His Filibuster ‘Victory’

Rand Paul Exaggerates His Filibuster ‘Victory’

Sen. Rand Paul says it “took 13 hours of filibuster” to finally force the Obama administration “to say, no, we won’t kill noncombatants in America.” In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder said “no” at a Senate hearing shortly before Paul began his filibuster.
“After much gymnastics I am very glad to hear that it is the opinion of the Department of Justice that it would be unconstitutional to kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil if that individual did not pose an imminent threat,”

Ted’s Twisted History

Ted’s Twisted History

In Sen. Ted Cruz’s twisted vision of economic history, Ronald Reagan cured double-digit unemployment by cutting spending and reducing the federal debt, and Jimmy Carter was guilty of “out-of-control regulation.”
In the real world:

Total federal spending soared during Reagan’s deficit-plagued first term, and the national debt nearly doubled. His budget director later resigned and wrote a book criticizing Reagan’s failure to cut spending.
And Carter signed landmark bills freeing airline, railroad and trucking rates from federal regulation,

Cruz, Paul: A Menagerie of Misinformation

Cruz, Paul: A Menagerie of Misinformation

Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul got laughs at the federal government’s expense at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, but the facts don’t jibe with the jokes.

Cruz accused the EPA of “trying to use a lizard to shut down oil and gas production” in West Texas to set up a one-liner about lizard boots. But the jab — an old campaign joke — no longer has any basis in fact. The federal government decided against listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as “endangered”

Texas-Size Mudballs in GOP Senate Runoff

Texas-Size Mudballs in GOP Senate Runoff

A bitter GOP primary contest in Texas for a U.S. Senate seat has come to this: an ad featuring a grieving mother who links one of the candidates to her son’s suicide.
A Texas super PAC is airing a TV ad that features a distraught mother who says Ted Cruz, a lawyer, “should be absolutely ashamed of himself” for representing a key figure in Pennsylvania’s infamous “kids for cash” scandal. In that case, two judges were convicted of taking $2.1 million from Cruz’s client in exchange for sending kids to private juvenile detention centers —