PolitiFact: roundup for past week

The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.

PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia last week fact-checked a Democratic Georgia congressman’s criticism of how the Obama administration vetted judicial candidates.

And we looked at the administration’s track record on government workers who leak information to the news media.

We examined claims that votes by Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss could cost people jobs.

And we also tested Sen. Rand Paul’s contention that unemployment insurance could be a disincentive to find a job.

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Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.

Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.

Pundit Jake Tapper: “The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to go after whistle-blowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous administrations combined.”

Tapper said that while Barack Obama has been president, the government has used the Espionage Act seven times to prosecute those who shared classified information with journalists. Since the release of the Vietnam War-era documents known as the Pentagon Papers, the law’s only been used 10 times. It would be 11 times if you went back to 1945, Tapper said during a Jan. 2 broadcast on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper.”

The Justice Department does not challenge the basic figures, and the experts we contacted affirmed the general accuracy of the claim.

We rated Tapper’s statement as True.

U.S. Rep. David Scott: President Barack Obama’s judicial appointments for Georgia and the region were drafted in secret and not vetted by legal groups among the president’s supporters.

It’s rare for Democrats and civil rights leaders to criticize the Obama administration, but they do question whether there should have been more vetting of some of the president’s recent judicial nominees.

“It is an abomination that these nominees for lifetime appointment were drafted in secret, not vetted by any legal groups among the president’s supporters,” U.S. Rep. David Scott, an Atlanta Democrat, wrote in a Jan. 6 letter to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The selections for the federal bench in the Northern District of Georgia followed a deal struck by White House officials and Georgia Republican U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss.

In a telephone interview and emails, Scott’s chief of staff, Michael Andel, said the White House did not discuss the nominations with Georgia Democrats serving in Congress, which is why Scott described the process as secret. Andel said the White House did not run the names by organizations that typically vet potential nominees, such as the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys (GABWA) or the Gate City Bar Association, a prominent African-American attorney group based in Atlanta.

We rated Scott’s statement as Mostly True.

Americans United for Change: Votes by Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss against unemployment insurance were votes to kill nearly 6,000 jobs.

In a Jan. 7 press release, Americans United for Change based its claim on a report on the White House website pushing the extension. Called “The Economic Benefits of Extending Unemployment Benefits,” the report outlines how many jobs would be saved in 2014 by continuing the insurance. In Georgia, the total was 5,876. Nationally, the impact is 240,000 jobs, the report says.

Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute, said the group’s “overall numbers make sense.”

University of Georgia professor Jeffrey Dorfman was not so convinced about the effectiveness of extending the benefits. “We see the benefits of the government spending but do not see the jobs that would have been created in the private sector instead.”

The claim was based on a federal report. Other nationwide estimates suggest the jobs number in the report is on target. But it is still an estimate that’s based on economic projections.

And the overreaching point by Americans United for Change neglects the fact that Isakson and Chambliss back a GOP plan that would also extend jobless benefits.

We rated the statement Half True.

Sen. Rand Paul: There are many studies that say the longer people get unemployment insurance, the more they have a “disincentive to work.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul, R-Ky., said he was concerned “that the longer you (have unemployment benefits, the more) it provides some disincentive to work. And that there are many studies that indicate this.”

In one paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics, the authors looked at U.S. unemployment data from 1979 to 1983. They concluded that increasing unemployment insurance by six to 12 months could increase unemployment by four to five weeks, and a duration of 24 months could mean an increase of up to 16 weeks.

But others were concerned that ending unemployment benefits reduces spending by the unemployed, which can lead to jobs being lost in the wider economy.

Paul is on solid ground about the existence of studies that support this point. But if Paul means to suggest that ending benefits actually increases employment, the support for that proposition is more mixed.

Paul’s statement is accurate, but needs additional information.

We rated Paul’s claim Mostly True.