The fourth GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox Business in Milwaukee focused on the economy, with candidates making claims that didn’t always stand up to scrutiny.
We’ll update this story as we add more fact-checks.
Candidates spent a good portion of the debate bemoaning the tax code and outlining their plans to improve it. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — who has pushed to abolish the Internal Revenue Service — said, "There are more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible." It's generally accepted that the tax code is about 4 million words long, while the Bible is about 800,000. So Cruz's claim came out True.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said income inequality “seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats.” He has a point that one credible study shows a fairly strong correlation between high inequality and a Democratic mayor. But experts say it’s a stretch to draw conclusions from this. The claim inflates the actual powers of mayors to shape inequality in their cities and it ignores the role of population size and suburbanization in driving inequality. It also glosses over the fact that metropolitan areas, as opposed to cities, show no such relationship.
We rated Paul's claim Half True.
Some candidates spoke out against raising the minimum wage, including retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. In support of his point, he said, “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.”
However, if you look at the 12-month period following every minimum-wage hike since 1978, joblessness did rise on seven occasions, but it fell on four occasions, undercutting Carson’s sweeping claim. In addition, it’s not at all clear that a minimum-wage hike was the primary culprit for the periods in which joblessness rose, since those periods also coincided with broader recessions in the economy.
We rated that claim False.
When talk turned to trade, real estate mogul Donald Trump lamented that “We’re losing now over $500 billion a year in terms of imbalance with China.” In reality, the United States’ 2014 trade deficit with China totaled $343 billion, and it’s expected to be larger in 2015 but not more than $500 billion.
Trump's claim rates Mostly False.
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