Fact Checking The Sunday Shows - August 1, 2010

Fox News Sunday

CLAIM: Sarah Palin Falsely Claimed That White House Proposals For The Expiring Tax Cuts Include "A Tax Increase Of $3.8 Trillion Over The Next Ten Years"

SARAH PALIN: Yeah, no, this is going to result in the largest tax increase in US history, and again, it's idiotic, and my palm isn't large enough to write— have written all my notes down on. What this tax increase, what it will result in, let me just go through a coupla things that I want people to be aware of, because, y'know, the spin coming from Gibbs and the White House, you're never gonna get the truth out of their messaging, but Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in US history. It's a tax increase of $3.8 trillion over the next ten years. And it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax. Small businesses especially will be hit hardest, and small businesses account for roughly 70% of all of our job creation in this country, so raising taxes on these employers is the worst thing that can happen.

CHRIS WALLACE (host): Can I just ask you, what do you have written on your hand?

PALIN: "$3.8 trillion next ten years" so I didn't say "3.7" and then get dinged, y'know, by the, by the liberals saying I don't know what I was talking about.

FACT: Palin Overstated President Obama's Planned Tax Increases By $2.7 Trillion

President Obama's FY 2011 Budget Would Increase Tax Receipts By $1.1 Trillion Over Ten Years. According to the Associated Press: "The budget proposal released Monday would extend Obama's signature Making Work Pay tax credit - $400 for individuals, $800 for a couple filing jointly - through 2011. But it would also impose nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 by not renewing tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush. Obama would extend Bush-era tax cuts for families and individuals making less. Obama revived numerous proposals for business tax increases that didn't fare well in Congress last year, including a scaled-down plan to increase taxes on U.S. companies with major overseas operations, and plans to increase taxes on oil and gas companies. In all, Obama would increase taxes on some businesses and wealthy individuals by a total of about $1.4 trillion over the next decade, while cutting taxes for middle-class workers and other businesses by about $330 billion. The bottom line: Tax receipts would increase by about $1.1 trillion over the next decade." [Associated Press, 2/1/10 via ABCNews.com]

FACT: President Obama's Proposal For Dealing With The Expiring Tax Cuts Would Only Raise Taxes On 3% Of Americans

PolitiFact Called Similar Pence Claim "False." According to the non-partisan PolitiFact.com, in their analysis of a similar allegation from Pence on July 20:

Do Democrats want every tax bracket to rise, as Pence suggests? In a word, no.

For many months, Democratic officials have consistently said that they intend to let only the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals lapse. The cutoff they usually suggest is $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. President Obama campaigned on just such a plan, and we've logged those promises into our Obameter campaign promises database.

[...]

Pence is right that every tax bracket will go up if the law is not extended. Still, we think the claim that Democrats don't want to extend the law is inaccurate. While the legislative drafting is still in process, the Democratic majority in Congress has made clear that it plans to extend tax cuts for all but the top couple percentage points of the income distribution. So it's highly misleading for him to say that Democrats actually want to see all the bill's cuts expire. Indeed, Pence's comment verges on a scare tactic.

[PolitiFact.com, 7/22/10, emphasis added]

Reuters: "Two To Three Percent Of Americans" Are Affected By Democrats' Proposals. According to Reuters: "Lawmakers are mulling the renewal of tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under former president George W. Bush that expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress want to extend the lower rates for individuals earning less than $200,000 or couples making less than $250,000. About two to three percent of Americans fit into the upper income categories." [Reuters, 7/21/10]

President Obama's FY2011 Budget Calls For Extending Bush Tax Cuts For Families Making Less Than $250,000 Per Year. As Market Watch reported in February: "Facing a gaping deficit but aiming to spur job creation at the same time, President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget would hit top earners, oil companies and others while giving tax breaks to small businesses to help them hire new workers... Obama wants tax breaks proposed by President George W. Bush to expire this year. His budget would eliminate tax breaks on those making more than $250,000 a year, a move almost certain to be opposed by Republicans and perhaps some Democrats as the economy crawls out of the recession. 'We extend middle-class tax cuts in this budget,' Obama said Monday at the White House, but 'we will not continue costly tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers, and those making over $250,000 a year. We just can't afford it.'" [Market Watch, 2/1/10]

Speaker Pelosi: High-End Tax Cuts Should End. According to The Hill: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday rejected extending tax cuts for the wealthiest tax bracket that are set to expire at the end of the year. Pelosi took off the table a short-term extension of those cuts floated by some lawmakers in her own party. 'No,' the speaker said at her weekly press conference when asked if the cuts for the highest bracket should be extended. 'Our position has been that we support middle-class tax cuts... I believe the high-end tax cuts did not create any jobs, increased the deficit and should be repealed,' she said." [The Hill, 7/22/10, emphasis added]

Treasury Secretary Geithner: We Will Extend Middle- And Lower-Income Provisions Of Bush Tax Cuts. According to the Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration will allow tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire on schedule, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday, setting up a clash with Republicans and a small but vocal group of Democrats who want to delay the looming tax increases. Mr. Geithner said the White House would allow taxes on top earners to increase in 2011 as part of an effort to bring down the U.S. budget deficit. He said the White House plans to extend expiring tax cuts for middle- and lower-income Americans, and expects to undertake a broader revision of the tax code next year. 'We believe it is appropriate to let those tax cuts that go to the most fortunate expire,' Mr. Geithner said at a breakfast with reporters." [Wall Street Journal, 7/23/10, emphasis added]

CLAIM: Palin Falsely Claimed That President Obama's Proposal Would Reinstate The "Marriage Penalty Tax"

SARAH PALIN: But um, these higher income tax rates though, it's going to, it's gonna raise-result in um, things that people aren't, aren't understanding is, is a part of this. The reinstatement of the marriage penalty tax. Cutting the child tax credit in half. Higher investment taxes. Capital gains taxes increasing 15% to 20%. Qualified dividends, those taxes going up. Elimination of certain exemptions and deductions, and a phasing out of personal deductions. We could go on and on and on about what's a part of this expiration of the Bush tax cuts that people I think are just superficially hearing information on. They need to delve in there, they need to dig in there and get the information, get the facts, and don't believe the spin coming from the White House.

FACT: The President's Proposal Maintains The Bush-Era Tax Provisions That Eliminated The "Marriage Penalty"

The "Marriage Penalty" Refers To Pre-Bush Tax Code That Sometimes Resulted In Jointly-Filing Couples Paying More Tax Than If They Had Filed As Individuals. According to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation: "A married couple generally is treated as one tax unit that must pay tax on the couple's total taxable income. Although married couples may elect to file separate returns, the rate schedules and other provisions are structured so that filing separate returns usually results in a higher tax than filing a joint return. Other rate schedules apply to single persons and to single heads of households. A 'marriage penalty' exists when the combined tax liability of a married couple filing a joint return is greater than the sum of the tax liabilities of each individual computed as if they were not married." [Joint Committee on Taxation, 7/12/10, emphasis added]

President Obama's Proposal Maintains The 2001 Modifications To The Standard Deduction That Ended The "Marriage Penalty." According to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation: "[The 2001 Bush tax cuts] increased the basic standard deduction for a married couple filing a joint return to twice the basic standard deduction for an unmarried individual filing a single return. The basic standard deduction for a married taxpayer filing separately continued to equal one-half of the basic standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly; thus, the basic standard deduction for unmarried individuals filing a single return and for married couples filing separately are the same... The [President's FY 2011] proposal permanently increases the basic standard deduction for a married couple filing a joint return to twice the basic standard deduction for an unmarried individual filing a single return." [Joint Committee on Taxation, 7/12/10, emphasis added]

CLAIM: Palin Falsely Claimed That President Obama's Proposal Would Cut The Child Tax Credit In Half

SARAH PALIN: But um, these higher income tax rates though, it's going to, it's gonna raise-result in um, things that people aren't, aren't understanding is, is a part of this... Cutting the child tax credit in half.

FACT: The President's Proposal Extends The Child Tax Credit At Bush-Era Levels

The 2001 Bush Tax Cut Law Called For The Child Tax Credit To Be Cut In Half After 2010. In the "Child Tax Credit" section of their July 2010 report, the Joint Committee on Taxation described the Child Tax Credit provisions of the 2001 Bush tax cuts: "An individual may claim a tax credit for each qualifying child under the age of 17. The maximum amount of the credit per child is $1,000 through 2010, and $500 thereafter." [Joint Committee on Taxation, 7/12/10]

President Obama's Proposal Restores The Child Tax Credit To $1,000 Per Child.  According to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation: "The proposal permanently extends the $1,000 child tax credit and allows the child tax credit against the individual's regular income tax and AMT. The proposal also extends the EGTRRA repeal of a prior-law provision that reduced the refundable child credit by the amount of the AMT. The proposal permanently extends the earned income formula for determining the refundable child credit, with the earned income threshold of $3,000, and stops indexation for inflation of the $3,000 earnings threshold. Finally, the proposal permanently extends the rule that the refundable portion of the child tax credit does not constitute income and shall not be treated as resources for purposes of determining eligibility or the amount or nature of benefits or assistance under any Federal program or any State or local program financed with Federal funds... For years after 2010, this proposal doubles the child tax credit (from $500 to $1,000) to provide additional tax relief to families to help offset the costs of raising a child." [Joint Committee on Taxation, 7/12/10, emphasis added]

CLAIM: Sarah Palin Implied That President Obama Is Taking Action To End The Bush Tax Cuts

SARAH PALIN: To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt you reign in spending, you cut the budget, you don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it, and that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this uh expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his... Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history.

FACT: The Bush Tax Cuts Are "Poised" To Expire Because Republicans Wrote The Law That Way To Hide The True Cost Of The Cuts

Time: Congress Wrote Tax Law To Expire After 2010 Because It Made Cuts Appear Cheaper. According to Time:

Topping the list of odd features is the "sunset" provision that repeals the entire bill at the end of 2010. Budget rules require Congress to include a sunset clause in all major tax legislation, but this sunset arrives a year early--after 10 years instead of the 11 years covered by the current budget resolution. That year was shaved off to keep the total cost of the bill under $1.35 trillion. By repealing the legislation in the 10th year, Congress saved billions of dollars. Without the repeal and a few other tricks, the cost of the full 11-year plan would balloon to more than $1.8 trillion by the end of 2011, far exceeding anything the Democrats would vote for. And the cost in the second decade would reach as much as $4 trillion. Even some conservatives on Capitol Hill are dismayed by the apparent dishonesty of the early sunset. After both parties agreed to a smaller tax cut, the conference committee pulled a fast one.

[Time, 6/3/01, emphasis added]

American Enterprise Institute: Reconciliation "Ploy" To Pass Bush Tax Cuts Means They Expire After 10 Years. According to Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at AEI:

It is worth repeating why we are in this particular car heading toward the cliff. When the Bush tax cuts were on the agenda at the very beginning of his presidency, Republicans in Congress and the White House made a tactical choice to avoid giving Senate Democrats the leverage that a 60-vote hurdle can provide by employing reconciliation (yes, the same tool that those who applied it then condemned roundly when it was used for health care reform this year). It was tricky to use reconciliation for tax cuts, which increased deficits when reconciliation was specifically supposed to be used for revenue-neutral or deficit-reducing programs. But the decision was made to use it for this purpose--but not to violate the proviso that the plan would increase deficits outside the budget window of 10 years.

That meant a ploy of declaring that all the tax cuts would expire entirely after 10 years, including the absurd-on-its-face provision that estate taxes would gradually decline to zero in 2010--and then be fully restored in 2011. From the day after the tax cuts were signed into law, Republicans were campaigning to extend them, in effect admitting that the policy was built around a "never mind" ruse. To be fair, there were plenty of ruses in the health care reform reconciliation, so it is not as if one party is clean--this is legislative politics. But the charges now emanating from Republicans that the Democrats are going to be responsible for a huge tax hike is, shall we say, bemusing.

[AEI.org, 7/21/10, emphasis added]

Ezra Klein: Reconciliation Maneuver Meant "Twisting A Budget Process Meant To Reduce The Deficit." According to the Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

In order to maximize the size of the cuts, Republicans had to minimize the influence of minority Democrats on the package. So they chose to run the bill through the reconciliation process. But that posed some challenges. Budget reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit. In fact, it specifically existed to decrease the deficit. That's why one of its rules was that you couldn't use it to increase the deficit outside the budget window. Republicans realized they could take that very literally: The budget window was 10 years. So if the tax cuts expired after 10 years, they wouldn't increase the deficit outside the budget window. They'd also have the added benefit of appearing less costly in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates, as the CBO duly scored them as expiring after 10 years, which kept the long-range budget picture from exploding.

But the plan was never to have the tax cuts expire. Instead, the idea was that people would get used to the new tax rates, and no future Congress would want to allow a big tax increase, so when the time came, either Republicans in office would extend the cuts or Republicans in the minority would hammer Democrats until they extended them. And that's where we are now: Democrats control the government, so Republicans are screaming about tax increases as a way to get Democrats to extend tax cuts.

It's really hard to know where to start with this one. It's not a tax increase passed into law by Democrats. It's a reversion to old tax rates passed into law by Republicans. It's not how law is supposed to work. It's the result of twisting a budget process meant to reduce the deficit so you could use it to massively increase the deficit.

[Washington Post, 7/19/10, emphasis added]

FACT: The White House Has Proposed A Clear Plan For Extending Large Pieces Of The Expiring Bush Tax Cuts

President Obama Has A Clear Proposal For Extending Pieces Of The Bush Tax Cuts. The New York Times prepared an infographic based on budget proposals from the White House that shows the President's proposals for modifying the expiring tax cut package:

[New York Times, 7/25/10]

CLAIM: Palin Suggested That Arizona's Controversial Immigration Law Is Meant To Help Secure The Border

PALIN: Well this is a temporary suspension of some of the key elements in the law that Jan Brewer pushed hard for Arizonans and for the rest of the country to um, be, have the result of us being more secure, so, y'know, that's unfortunate that the Judge chose those steps. But it is temporary, and Jan Brewer, bless her heart, she's gonna do all that she can to continue down the litigation paths to uh allow secure borders because she's— Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not have to look out for all Americans, not just Arizonans, but all Americans in this desire of ours to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country, as was the purpose of immigration laws.

FACT: Governor Brewer Herself Has Said The Law Is Not About Border Security

Gov. Brewer Agreed With CNN Anchor's Assertion That SB 1070 "Wouldn't Do Much Along The Border." On the July 27 edition of "John King USA," Gov. Brewer and host John King had the following exchange:

KING: One of the things they would say, show me something in SB 1070 that actually improves border security. Your intention may have been, and if you had been allowed to implement it fully, you may have dealt more aggressively with immigration enforcement, interior. But what in that bill would have improved border security? 

BREWER: Well, SB 1070 is just another tool in our toolbox in regards to trying to address the issues that we're facing here. 

KING: But you concede it wouldn't do much along the border? 

BREWER: Well, you know, I'm not quite sure about that. I think -- well, not along the border.

[John King USA, 7/29/10]

CLAIM: Minority Leader Boehner Suggested The Recovery Act Is Only "Running Up Debt" Without Helping The Economy

CHRIS WALLACE (host): A number, Congressman, a number of top economists say, what we need is more economic stimulus.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): Well I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people because they've been asking the question now for 18 months: where are the jobs? The fact is the President's policies are killing job creation in America, uh, killing our economy, and the American people know it. Uh, that's why we're gonna continue to offer what we think are better solutions. Let's stop this uh, stimulus spending that's uh, all it's doing is running up debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids.

FACT: The Economic Statistics John Boehner Refuses To Acknowledge Show That The President's Policies Have Stabilized Our Economy

Job Statistics Trend Shows Recovery Act Is Working. Below is a graph prepared by the Speaker's office showing net job gains or losses per month since December 2007.

[Job Totals Per Month Since Dec 2007, The Gavel, 7/9/10]

The Private Sector Has Added Almost 600,000 Jobs In Six Consecutive Months Of Job Growth This Year. PolitiFact.com recently checked Treasury Secretary Geithner's claim that the private sector has added jobs for six months in a row, and rated the claim "True":

During the July 25, 2010 segment of ABC's This Week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner defended President Barack Obama's economic track record. He specifically brought up the successes that the administration has had in boosting activity in the private sector... In December 2009, the private sector shed 83,000 jobs. That was significantly smaller than the average drop for the year, since the private-sector employment losses averaged 388,000 per month during 2009, according to the report. And so we come to 2010. How have we fared for the past six months? Here's a quick monthly summary of jobs added:

January: 16,000
February: 62,000
March: 158,000
April: 241,000
May: 33,000
June: 83,000

Data for the month of July --which wasn't over when Geithner spoke -- won't be released until August, so that's the most up-to-date data available. The report notes that data for the two most recent months are preliminary. But unless there's an unusually big after-the fact correction for either month, it's pretty clear that Geithner was correct. We've seen positive job growth in the private sector from January to June. We rate this True.

[PolitiFact.com, 7/27/10]

Princeton, Moody's Economists Say "Highly Effective" Government Response To Crisis Saved 8.5 Million Jobs. According to the New York Times: "Like a mantra, officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations have trumpeted how the government's sweeping interventions to prop up the economy since 2008 helped avert a second Depression. Now, two leading economists wielding complex quantitative models say that assertion can be empirically proved. In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus program, the nation's gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year. In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation. The paper, by Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, represents a first stab at comprehensively estimating the effects of the economic policy responses of the last few years. 'While the effectiveness of any individual element certainly can be debated, there is little doubt that in total, the policy response was highly effective,' they write." [New York Times, 7/27/10, emphasis added]

CBO: Recovery Act Saved Or Created Up To 2.8 Million Jobs. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office:

CBO estimates that in the first quarter of calendar year 2010, ARRA's policies:

• Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.2 percent,
• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.5 percentage points,
• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.2 million and 2.8 million, and
• Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 1.8 million to 4.1 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)

The effects of ARRA on output and employment are expected to increase further during calendar year 2010 but then diminish in 2011 and fade away by the end of 2012.

[CBO.gov, 5/25/10]

We Have Had Four Straight Quarters Of Positive GDP Growth. Below is a graph showing quarterly GDP growth since early 2008.

[The Atlantic, 7/30/10]

CLAIM: Senate Minority Leader Repeated False Claims About Government Takeovers Of Health Care, Student Loans

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Look— look at what they've done, they're running banks, insurance companies, car companies, they've nationalized the student loan business, taken over health care. We don't need the government taking equity positions, ownership positions in any more private sector businesses. That's not the way out.

FACT: There Is No "Government Takeover" Of Health Care

PolitiFact: Republicans Are "Wrong That Obama's Plan Offers Government-Run Health Care." The "government takeover" myth has been a consistent winner for Republicans, but it was debunked long ago by the nonpartisan PolitiFact.com. Analyzing Sen. Tom Coburn's claim that President Obama's health care reform plan amounted to a government takeover of health care, PolitiFact.com wrote:

[H]e's wrong that Obama's plan offers government-run health care.

In fact, Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured. It increases eligibility for the poor and children to enroll in initiatives like Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and creates pools for individuals to buy their own cheaper insurance. It also outlines strategies to rein in costs for everyone, such as electronic medical records and preventive care.

[...]

That may be Sen. Coburn's opinion on what could happen, but it's definitely not part of Obama's plan. And Coburn was very specific in saying that "under the Obama plan, all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government." That gives the incorrect impression that Obama is promoting a government-run health care system. He's not. We rate Coburn's statement False.

[PolitiFact.com, 3/4/10]

FACT: Student Loans Affected By The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act Have Always Been Government Originated.

New York Times: Student Aid Changes "Cut Private Banks Out Of What Is Already An Entirely Federalized Program." According to the New York Times, "the 'government takeover' argument may provide [sic] difficult to sustain. The health care bill is projected to direct more than 16 million new customers to private health insurance companies over the next 10 years. And the education changes essentially cut private banks out of what is already an entirely federalized program. The student loans are made using taxpayer money, with repayment almost entirely guaranteed by the federal government. The private banks get paid fees to originate the loans, and then sell them back to the government." [New York Times, 3/30/10]

CLAIM: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Repeated The False Notion That Half The Country's Small Businesses Are Subject To Highest Income Tax Rates.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The way out is to kill this job-killing tax increase that's coming, that they advocate, that is gonna affect 50% of small business income, and 25% of our workforce. That's gonna be their plan in September, to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.

FACT: The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Affect Only 1.9% Of Small Businesses

CBPP: "98.1% Of Small-Business Filers Have Income Too Low To Be Subject To Either Of The Top Two Tax Brackets." According to the report "Big Misconceptions About Small Business And Taxes" by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: "First, critics charge that allowing the 2001 tax cut's reduction in the top two marginal income tax rates for individual taxpayers to expire as scheduled would affect a large proportion of small-business owners. In fact, only 1.9 percent of filers with any small-business income are projected to face either of the top two income tax rates in 2009... In other words, 98.1 percent of small-business filers have income too low to be subject to either of the top two tax rates. By contrast, a substantial percentage of filers with small business income are in the lowesttax brackets. According to Tax Policy Center data, 34 percent of filers with small-business income either are in the 10 percent bracket or are not subject to income taxes because their incomes are too low." [CBPP.org, 2/2/09, emphasis original]

Face the Nation

CLAIM: Sen. Jon Kyl Claimed That Illegal Immigrants Are A Drag On Public Budgets

SEN. JON KYL (R-AZ): Illegal immigrants pose a real burden on the states financially, who must provide education to the children, who must provide medical care, and who do provide a great many benefits including various kinds of welfare benefits.

FACT: Immigrant Contributions To The Economy Outweigh The Benefits They Receive

Cato: Low-Skilled, Hispanic Workers Contribute More To The Economy Than They Cost The Government.   David Griswold of the libertarian Cato Institute wrote in a report titled, "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration Reform: The Real Story":

Several state-level studies have found that the increased economic activity created by lower-skilled, mostly Hispanic immigrants far exceeds the costs to state and local governments. A 2006 study by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the rapidly growing population of Hispanics in the state, many of them undocumented immigrants, had indeed imposed a net cost on the state government of $61 million, but the study also found that those same residents had increased the state's economy by $9 billion. 5/21/07]

Ewing: Studies Claiming "Immigrants Are A Net 'Cost'" Rely On Incomplete Data.  Walter Ewing, senior researcher at the Immigration Policy Center, wrote in a June 2009 column appearing in the Sacramento Bee: "most of the studies that claim to demonstrate that immigrants are a net 'cost' to the economy usually rely on one-year 'snapshots' of the immigrant population that fail to account for the incomes and tax contributions of immigrants over time. Most such studies count the education and care of the U.S.-born children of immigrants as 'costs' incurred by immigrant households, even though these same children are classified as 'natives' when they are taxpaying adults. And few of these studies consider economic contributions such as consumer purchasing power and the formation of businesses, which create new jobs and generate additional tax revenue." [Sacramento Bee, 6/28/09]

IPC Report: Census Data "Disputes The Claims That Newly Legalized Immigrants Will Cling To Public Assistance." A November 2009 Immigration Policy Center report written by Rob Paral and Associates said that Census data on Mexican immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1975-1981 indicates that those who gained legal status through the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act generally "did not depend upon public assistance." The report stated, "Between 1990 and 2006, use of public assistance declined slightly among IRCA immigrants who were 25-34 years old in 1990, and remained roughly the same among those who were 35-44 years old in 1990." These two age groups "became less likely than natives to receive public assistance during the 1990-2006 period." However, the report said "use of public assistance rose slightly among IRCA immigrants who were 16-24 years old in 1990." [Immigration Policy Center, November 2009]

In Most States, Less Than 5% Of State Budget Spent On Undocumented Immigrant Costs.  According to a 2007 report from the CBO titled "The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments": "In most of the estimates that CBO examined, however, spending for unauthorized immigrants accounted for less than 5 percent of total state and local spending for those services. Spending for unauthorized immigrants in certain jurisdictions in California was higher but still represented less than 10 percent of total spending for those services." [CBO, December 2007]

50% Of Undocumented Immigrants Pay Income And Payroll Taxes.  According to a 2007 report from the CBO titled "The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments": "Several of the states whose estimates CBO reviewed used a model developed by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) to determine state and local taxes paid by unauthorized immigrants. ITEP assumes a 50 percent compliance rate for income and payroll taxes." [CBO, December 2007]

75% Of Undocumented Immigrants Have Taxes Withheld From Paychecks.  According to a 2007 report from the CBO titled "The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments": "As part of a larger study on migration, the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego conducted a survey of unauthorized immigrants and found that, in 2006, 75 percent had taxes withheld from their paychecks, filed tax returns, or both." [CBO, December 2007]