PolitiFact Georgia and the AJC Truth-O-Meter were laser-focused on the numbers last week with three claims that sent us reaching for our calculators.
We investigated a claim U.S. Rep. Tom Price made about President Barack Obama’s proposed budget and how much revenue two of the proposed increases could create. We also investigated a claim Cokie Roberts made on the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And leading up to a possible record-setting Powerball jackpot, we checked a reader-recommended claim from the Georgia Lottery about its prize payouts during the past fiscal year. Here’s hoping our winning odds are just as good as their numbers.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below, and full versions can be found at: www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Cokie Roberts: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost every U.S. family $45,000.
Roberts made this claim earlier this month while on the round table on ABC’s television news program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
Her claim that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost each U.S. household $45,000 would mean that war spending — including future veterans’ benefits and debt service costs — would have to be about $5.2 trillion.
The most recent studies that include these long-term costs report war spending between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. Studies that do not include the long-term costs list war expenses approved by Congress at $1.4 trillion thus far.
Assuming Roberts’ claim factored in future expenses, her statement would fall in the appropriate range of estimated spending. But leave those out, and she comes up short.
Her claim is partially accurate but needs a lot of context to be fully understood.
We rated Roberts’ claim Half True.
Georgia Lottery: The Georgia Lottery paid out $2.3 billion in prizes during the past fiscal year.
A PolitiFact Georgia reader asked us to check out this claim that the Georgia Lottery has been using in television and radio advertisements.
A Georgia Lottery spokeswoman told us that the $2.3 billion amount includes prizes paid to Georgia winners of games played in multiple states, such as Mega Millions and Powerball. For Mega Millions, the prizes won in Georgia reached $79.5 million; the total was $55.5 million for Powerball.
Also of note, the $2.3 billion figure quoted in the ad does not include tickets paid as prizes.
On the income side, the Georgia Lottery recorded total ticket sales for fiscal 2012 of $3.835 billion, according to the lottery’s 2012 financial statements.
The $2.3 billion figure appears to be true but is padded to include amounts paid out for Georgia winners of the multistate games, Powerball and Mega Millions.
We rated the Georgia Lottery’s claim Mostly True.
U.S. Rep. Tom Price: President Barack Obama’s proposed budget includes two new tax increases that would collect about $14 billion.
Price set his Twitter account aflame this month with this claim as part of his objections to the president’s budget plan. A Twitter follower asked us to check it out.
Price was referring to two changes in the proposed budget. The first would require some beneficiaries of individual retirement accounts to take their inherited distributions over a five-year stretch. The second change would cap how much money people can accumulate in tax-deferred retirement accounts at $3.4 million.
The total revenue impact of the two proposed changes comes to $14.253 billion over 10 years, Price’s spokesman said. And a White House report backs him up.
But calling the changes tax increases is a matter of semantics. That could imply it would affect large numbers of people who got Price’s tweet. The changes would affect a very small group, possibly less than 1 percent of account holders, studies show. That’s important context that is missing.
We rated Price’s claim Mostly True.
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