Fact Checks and Analysis of Biden’s Address to Congress and the G.O.P. Rebuttal
New York Times reporters watched President Biden’s address and Senator Tim Scott’s rebuttal, offering analysis and fact-checking the remarks. The coverage below is in reverse chronology.
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fact check
— Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina
This is exaggerated.
Mr. Scott is correct in some ways, but the opposite is true in others.
Georgia’s new voting law, for example, requires at least 17 days of early voting while New York offers nine. But early voting may not take place before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. in Georgia, and the state does not require counties to allow for early voting on Sundays.
In contrast, New York mandates that polls open for early voting for at least five hours on weekends during that nine-day period. Georgia’s new voting law also requires voters who apply for an absentee ballot provide the number from a driver’s license or an equivalent state-issued identification. That requirement does not exist in New York.
Economics Reporter
Thanks for joining us for Biden’s first address to Congress. We are going to call it a night. For more coverage, our colleague Peter Baker detailed how Biden laid out an ambitious agenda tonight, and as our colleague Jim Tankersley wrote, Biden is trying to capitalize on the reality of "a pandemic that reminded many Americans that big government could deliver money to help sustain them and speed efforts to end the crisis."
Fact check
— Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina
This is exaggerated.
The prepandemic economy did see record-low unemployment rates for many minority groups and rising wages, especially for low-paid workers, But Republicans can mostly take credit for keeping the party going. Unemployment rates were falling when President Donald J. Trump took office, and that trend didn’t show a marked change after the White House rolled out key policies, like the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. While tax cuts in particular probably did boost the economy, how much remains a topic of debate.
The key ingredient to the last cycle’s job market benefits seemed to be a very long period without a recession, paired with historically low interest rates. The Federal Reserve was slow to hike borrowing costs after the 2007 to 2009 downturn and it moved gradually once it started, allowing the economy to grow without the restraining force of expensive-to-borrow money. That was possible because inflation, which officials have long expected to pop when the unemployment rate dips to low levels, remained tame and even tepid. Against that calm backdrop, the job market continued to gradually expand month after month: The economic expansion stretched from 2009 to the start of the pandemic in March 2020, making it the longest in American history.
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Did Tim Scott mention Trump at all?
Economics Reporter
He mentioned the Trump administration, but not the former president directly. It was a notable omission of someone who remains the leader of the Republican Party.
Economics Reporter
Scott offered an interesting mix of rebuttal and stump speech, then closed with some Scripture. And that’s a wrap.
White House Correspondent
Scott is a decent rebuttal speaker who is using personal experience to flesh out his argument. Aside from Senator Marco Rubio swigging water during one a few years ago, these speeches rarely stand out.
Economics Reporter
Scott says Biden “inherited a tide that had already turned” on Covid-19. That is the first mention of the Trump administration in a speech that has lacked much Trumpism.
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“America is not a racist country,” Scott says. That is at odds with the stance of the Biden administration, which has sought to undo what the president has said is deep-rooted institutionalized racism.
Health Reporter
Senator Scott’s point that President Trump delivered the nation’s success with vaccines is one that Republicans have fixated on since President Biden took office. Many of the officials who helped develop, regulate and plan distribution of the vaccines are career employees. They worked for Trump and now work for Biden. This was a triumph of the American government.
White House Correspondent
Scott says he is still working on compromises for a policing overhaul bill with Democrats, but accuses them of “wanting the issue" more than they want a solution.
White House Correspondent
“I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around the store while shopping,” Scott says as he talks about racial discrimination he has experienced. He says progressives and liberals have called him an "Uncle Tom" and worse.
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Scott, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, was central to the crafting of the 2017 Republican tax cuts. Much of that work is now being undone.
fact check
— Mr. Biden
This lacks evidence.
The top American commander in the Middle East has said it would be “extremely difficult” for the United States to watch and counter terrorist threats in Afghanistan from groups like Al Qaeda after American troops leave the country by Sept. 11.
The Pentagon is looking to place troops near Afghanistan to track and attack militant groups if they threaten the United States. Possibilities in the region include Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but those countries are under the sway of Russia to one degree or another, Attack planes aboard aircraft carriers and long-range bombers flying from land bases along the Persian Gulf and even in the United States could strike insurgent fighters spotted by armed surveillance drones. But the long distances are costly and riskier.
White House Correspondent
Scott has an infomercial-like cadence.
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Scott notes that the relief packages passed in 2020 won overwhelming bipartisan support and accuses Biden and Democrats of pushing a hyper-partisan agenda under the guise of Covid relief.
White House Correspondent
Scott is trying to reach a specific crowd by directly addressing single mothers, Christians and parents of children kept out of schools by the pandemic. He also praises Operation Warp Speed, a Trump-era effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine that President Biden did not mention tonight.
Economics Reporter
Scott also recalls his humble beginnings and religious background.
White House Correspondent
Scott starts off by attacking Biden for breaking his promise to promote unity. That’s likely a reference to the Covid relief plan passing without Republican support.
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Scott gives a shout-out to single mothers and speaks of the toll of Covid. These are not standard Republican talking points.
White House Correspondent
“Our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes,” Scott says, accusing the president and Democrats of pulling the country further apart.
Economics Reporter
Scott goes on to say that Biden is failing to bring Americans closer together and is merely offering platitudes about unity.
Economics Reporter
Here is Senator Tim Scott. He begins by saying, “Our president seems like a good man.”
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In a relatable gesture, Representative Joe Neguse appears to be among the lawmakers keeping the name card taped to his chair as a souvenir.
fact check
— Mr. Biden
This is exaggerated.
Mr. Biden is correct that most gun owners support expanding background checks, but they are more divided on the issue of high-capacity magazines. In a 2019 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, 47 percent of gun owners supported such a ban while 50 percent were against it. That was in line with results from a 2019 Washington Post/ABC News poll (48 percent support and 48 percent against) and a 2017 poll from Pew Research (44 percent support).
Congressional Reporter
Congress' attending physician, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, is one of the last people left in the House chamber — he helped set the protocols for tonight’s address and has watched over the entire evening. Speaker Pelosi is speaking animatedly with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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There does seem to be little attempt to maintain social distancing protocols. Everyone is masked and presumably vaccinated, but plenty of people are embracing or talking closely.
Economics Reporter
Biden is lingering, chatting and seeming to soak it all in.
Congressional Reporter
Biden and Senator Rob Portman, a retiring Republican from Ohio, briefly chatted on the House floor. Portman, who has sought to compromise with the White House, could perhaps be a negotiator for the White House on some elements of his agenda. He’s one of the few Republicans who lingered to catch the president on his way out.
Fact check
— President Biden
Misleading
Investments in countries where migrants come from for programs to prevent violence and curb extreme poverty and hunger have the potential to deter illegal immigration, but the Obama administration’s aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, led by Mr. Biden, did not change much. This was in part because there was not enough time to prompt real change before the new Trump administration diverted funds away from these countries to punish foreign leaders for not doing enough to address migration.
As vice president, Mr. Biden championed an increase in aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where citizens were fleeing violence, corruption and poverty in hope of better lives in the United States. The Trump administration eventually restored some of the aid to these countries, but there were still surges in migration. Currently, the country is grappling with a rise of migrant teenagers and children at the border
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Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is delivering the rebuttal to the Biden's speech soon, is also one of the few Republicans working in a delicate coalition with Democrats on a potential policing overhaul.
Congressional Reporter
Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont, the most dedicated photographer in the Senate, came prepared with a digital camera and is now cheerfully photographing his colleagues in a huddle on the House floor.
Congressional Reporter
Chief Justice John Roberts is precariously positioned at his seat between Biden, the floor camera and Democratic lawmakers eager to exchange words and fist bumps.
Economics Reporter
Biden kept many speeches and remarks short during his campaign and early in his presidency, but not tonight. The address clocked in at over an hour. The text was just over 6,000 words.
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Republicans have largely cleared the chamber, though some are remaining to chat in the corner.
Congressional Reporter
Biden made a slow exit as he elbow bumped and fist bumped Democratic lawmakers. He chatted with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Rosa DeLauro, giving Senator Ron Wyden a thumb's up — all are Democratic committee chairs who will be consequential in passing his agenda and helped shape it.
White House Correspondent
Biden finishes with “Let’s begin to get together.” He’s sticking with the theme of unity.
Fact check
— President Biden
Mostly true.
While U.S. spy agencies still express concern about the threat from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, whose affiliates have spread around the globe, intelligence officials say the most immediate threat to the homeland comes from right-wing extremists and white supremacists.
A recent intelligence assessment highlighted the threat from militias, predicting that it would be elevated in the coming months because of “contentious sociopolitical factors,” likely a reference to the fallout from the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the increasingly partisan political climate. Previous analyses by the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have warned of the looming dangers of domestic terrorism, particularly after followers of President Donald J. Trump embraced his baseless claims of election fraud.
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Biden made only a glancing reference to voting rights, but otherwise covered a lot of ground this evening, building his case for why the country needs to work together.
Economics Reporter
Elbow bumps for Pelosi and Harris as Biden concludes his speech.
Economics Reporter
Biden made no direct mention of Trump, but he addressed him indirectly by saying, “We have stared into an abyss of insurrection and autocracy.”
Pentagon Correspondent
Overall, Biden has been smooth. He had a few stumbles but quickly self-corrected.
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Biden has said this before: “It’s time we remembered that we the people are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over.” He wants to make the case that the government has a bigger role to play in public life.
Economics Reporter
Biden makes the case that the American system still works: “In our first 100 days together, we have acted to restore the people’s faith in our democracy to deliver.”
White House Correspondent
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who wore a “COME AND TAKE IT” face mask to the proceedings, was blinking very heavily as the president talked about immigration.
Fact Check
— President Biden.
This is exaggerated.
The Biden administration has not been shy about condemning foreign leaders or conflicts that violate human rights — whether criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin for Russia’s aggressions against dissident Aleksei Navalny or Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (The administration notably did not penalize Prince Mohammed for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.) In its earliest days, the administration declared the military junta’s takeover of Myanmar a coup and echoed President Donald J. Trump’s declaration of China’s repression of ethnic Uyghurs as genocide. More recently, Mr. Biden has called the mass killings of Armenians during World War I a genocide and his administration has demanded the withdrawal of Eritrean troops and other security forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where women have reported rape and other violence against civilians in the six- month conflict.
But the Biden administration does not have a good answer when confronted with widespread concerns that women in Afghanistan could lose their rights to work, be educated or participate in the political process once American troops are no longer in that country to ensure the Taliban respects the Afghan constitution in a future power-sharing government. “I think we should all remain concerned that those rights could suffer,” Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told senators at a hearing on Tuesday.
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— President Biden
This is exaggerated.
Mr. Biden was referring to a 1994 law that banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for 10 years. While there is a body of recent research showing that the ban on high-capacity magazines has reduced the number of mass shootings and the lethality of those shootings, the impact of that ban and the ban on assault weapons on gun homicides overall is unclear. A 2020 review of available studies from RAND Corporation found that “available evidence is inconclusive” for the effect of assault weapons and high capacity magazine bans on total homicides and firearm homicides.
fact check
— President Biden
This is misleading.
It is true that the economy has been very rapidly adding back jobs — between mid-January and mid-March, employment expanded by about 1.38 million jobs. That is extremely fast by historical norms, but it’s also a function of the state of the economy. About 8.4 million jobs are still missing compared to the employment level before the pandemic started to weigh on the economy in March 2020. Most people who lost jobs in the downturn are expected to come back fairly quickly as reopening gets underway, because they presumably want to work, but have been thrown out of jobs by state and local lockdowns. It doesn’t make sense for Mr. Biden to seemingly take credit for the rapid rebound in his bragging point, because it is partly or mostly the result of economic reopening.
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— Mr. Biden
Mostly true.
Congress approved $25 billion in rental assistance in December and added more than $20 billion in March, but only a small portion has reached landlords and tenants, The New York Times has reported.
The program requires hundreds of state and local governments to devise and carry out their own plans, and some have been slow to begin. Renters have faced hurdles such as lack of internet to computer access, not having the necessary paperwork or landlords declining to participate. There is no complete data on how many tenants have been helped. But of the $17.6 billion awarded to state governments, 20 percent is going to states not yet taking applications, though some local programs in those states are.
fact check
— President Biden
Mostly true.
The United States does account for 15 percent of global emissions and tackling climate change requires that every country — fully industrialized ones like the U.S., Japan, Australia and the European Union as well as major emerging economies like China, India and Brazil — significantly ratchet up their efforts to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. But Mr. Biden’s emphasis on the relatively small percentage of emissions the U.S. creates lacks some context.
Not all countries have contributed to the climate problem equally. The U.S. is no longer the largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases — China surpassed America more than a decade ago. But the U.S. has put the most carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began than any other country and still produces more emissions per capita than most other countries. As nations negotiate ahead of a United Nations climate summit in November, one key question will be whether the countries most responsible for climate change should do more financially to help others curb emissions.
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