2x1: Trump Lies About Immigration And Social Security To Falsely Harm Biden

By Glenn Kessler - The Washington Post Fact Checker 

The campaign of the president, Donald Trump, has published an election announcement in several disputed states with the message: "Joe Biden tried to cut Medicare and Social Security for decades. Now he is promising that he will give your benefits to illegal immigrants."

This ad is confusing.

It is based on a deceptively edited Biden video from the 90s.

But his catchphrase ("he's promising to give illegal immigrants your benefits") is puzzling.

The ad cites a 2019 Fox News article as the source of that claim.

But according to that article, Biden said he would support allowing undocumented immigrants to access health services.

Biden's campaign is for undocumented immigrants to be able to buy health insurance in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, but without receiving subsidies.

In other words, he wasn't talking about social security.

[Follow our coverage of the 2020 presidential elections]

Trump's announcement attempts to attack another point: that Biden proposes a path so that some 11 million undocumented immigrants can become citizens, so they could eventually access Social Security.

The facts

Let's look at the misleading video first.

Here, the Trump campaign takes an argument from Senator Bernie Sanders, but this claim has no context and is strange when it comes from a Republican.

In the mid-1980s, bipartisan alarm began to grow over the huge growth in federal budget deficits under President Ronald Reagan.

Biden, along with Senators Charles E. Grassley, Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Max Baucus, proposed a simple solution: freeze all spending for one year, including those of the Pentagon and those of social programs like Social Security.

Biden described his proposal as "the last and best chance" to prevent deficits from undermining the economic recovery and driving the country into a new recession.

He also said this would avoid having to "make big changes to Medicare and big changes to Social Security in general."

The plan was rejected with 33 votes in favor and 65 against, although more Democrats than Republicans voted in favor.

Trump's ad takes a video of Biden speaking in the Senate in 1995, recalling that battle, at a time when Republicans had won majorities in the House and Senate and were pushing to pass a balance-of-budget amendment.

But the video was deceptively edited to remove the context;

that Biden had proposed that all federal spending be frozen, not just Social Security and Medicare.

This is Biden's full speech, the parts in bold are the quotes that appeared in Trump's ad.

• “

  When I argued that we should freeze all federal spending, I also wanted to include Social Security.

  Also to Medicare and Medicaid.

  Also veterans benefits.

  I wanted to include every one of the things of the government.

  And I didn't just try it once.

  I tried it twice.

  I tried it a third time and I tried it a fourth time

  ”.

According to our guide on manipulated videos, this type of deceptive editing is known as skipping.

What is the evidence that "Biden is promising to give undocumented immigrants your benefits"?

It is very technical and scarce.

It also involves some ancient history.

[What is FactChat?

Find out from your WhatsApp who is lying in these elections]

Only those who pay within the system can access Social Security.

(Social Security is designed to provide workers with a basic level of income after retirement, as well as disability payments and life insurance while they work.)

The benefits are progressive, meaning that lower-income workers get relatively better benefits than higher-income workers.

However, workers who earn more than a certain salary ($ 137,700 in 2020) do not have to pay as much of their income to the system, although their benefits are capped as well.

Benefits are adjusted for inflation after they are first received, a feature that is virtually impossible to find in the private pension market.

The suggestion that some other worker can receive “your benefits” is simply incorrect, much less undocumented immigrants could.

"Your benefits" are established by law, depending on how much you work and earn.

Perhaps the advertising meant "the same benefits", but because the phrase is structured, it is misleading.

Biden has proposed a path for some 11 million undocumented people to access citizenship, a common position among Democrats.

If these people one day become citizens, they could also access Social Security benefits.

Currently, undocumented workers cannot access Social Security.

However, with few exceptions, all workers in the United States must pay a portion of their income to Social Security, a portion that is matched in a payment from their employers.

So workers who are in the country illegally and have fraudulent or unauthorized Social Security numbers pay into the system, but do not receive benefits.

A rare image: mask-wearing attendees at a Trump event in North Carolina

Sept.

20, 202000: 21

Until the law changed in 2008, the Social Security Administration processed credit claims for those payments in the form of benefit calculations if an immigrant who was undocumented became a legal resident (and if the worker could prove that they had made payments to the Social Security system).

When this issue was debated in the Senate, in 2006 and 2007, Biden voted once against the amendment that would ban this policy, again voted against a motion to block that change, and absent himself on the day it was added to the bill on expenses.

In 2013, he described the change by saying that “it's just evil” that “even though you've worked and paid Social Security, once you step out of the shadows and are on your way to becoming a citizen, you don't get credit for all the money you paid him. to the government".

As a candidate, Biden does not appear to have taken a position on the matter.

So there is no "promise" that we can talk about.

The Trump campaign also notes that Biden supported the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was established in the Obama administration for so-called

, undocumented immigrants who arrived as children.

After paying taxes for 10 years, like all other Social Security taxpayers, according to the Obama White House,

could access Social Security.

The Social Security actuary determined that the long-term actuary balance of the Social Security Trust Funds would “improve slightly” due to the additional taxes paid by DACA workers. 

“Joe Biden has not proposed a program that would allow undocumented immigrants to access Social Security benefits,” said a Biden campaign advisor, “Biden supports helping families stay together, through a plan for them to undocumented immigrants in our nation can become citizens.

American citizens have the right to access Social Security benefits for which they have already paid.

"There is no question that Joe Biden has publicly committed to providing government benefits to illegal immigrants, including student loans and access to his government health plan," said Ali Pardo, deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, in a statement. .

"With Social Security there are no differences," he added, "Biden supports the reinstatement of the unconstitutional DACA and DAPA programs, which the Actuary Director of Social Security and the Obama White House said would make illegal immigrants able to access Social Security.

Unlike Biden, President Trump will always protect Social Security and the seniors who depend on it. "

Pinocchio's test

In general, Trump's advertising is confusing.

He never mentions Biden's support for a path to citizenship and quotes an article on another topic, but that is supposedly the message.

We suspect that the Trump campaign was trying to force the issue of illegal immigration to attack Biden's story with Social Security.

Once undocumented immigrants become citizens or permanent residents of the United States, under the law, they will eventually be able to access Social Security.

The

covered by the DACA program could also access these benefits, which, according to

the actuary of the Social Security, improve financial long -

term health of the program, allowing you to

continue paying full benefits.

Technically, DACA recipients are still in the United States illegally, although most solutions to this problem see a path to citizenship for people who came to the country as children.

Trump's publicity takes an old Biden video out of context.

That is the first

.

Then the ad claims that Biden promised something, but that promise doesn't exist.

That is the second

.

Verification Tag-FALSE-PolitifactPolitifact-Telemundo

Finally, the advertisement wrongly hints that undocumented immigrants will receive "your" Social Security benefits.

With the small exception of DACA recipients, undocumented immigrants would not receive the same benefits until they legalized their status.

That's the third

.

Therefore, the claim that Trump makes in his advertising is

.

This data verification was translated into Spanish by 

#Chatbot