FactChecking the Vice Presidential Debate

Summary

In the first and only vice presidential debate, Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence parroted many of the false and misleading claims we have heard from the top of the tickets.

• Harris misleadingly said President Donald Trump’s tax law benefited “the top 1% and the biggest corporations.” Actually most households received some tax cut.
• Pence said that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “is going to raise your taxes.” Biden’s plan says that’s true only for Americans making over $400,000 a year.
• Pence said that if the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had been as lethal as the novel coronavirus, “we would have lost 2 million American lives.” That’s a misleading comparison.
• Pence said “many” of the people in a crowded Rose Garden event “were tested” for the coronavirus. But testing isn’t enough to prevent infection.
• Harris said President Donald Trump had called the coronavirus “a hoax.” Trump said he was referring to Democrats finding fault with his administration’s response to the coronavirus, not the virus itself.
• Pence claimed Trump “secured” a law that saved 50 million jobs. The package was passed 96-0 in the Senate. A university expert estimated perhaps 5 million to 7 million jobs were preserved.
• Pence said the Trump administration “in our first three years … saw 500,000 manufacturing jobs created,” ignoring jobs lost since the pandemic. As of September, 164,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.
• Harris falsely claimed Trump’s China trade war cost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The U.S. gained 146,000 factory jobs during the first 18 months after the tariffs took effect.
• The vice president said that “there are no more hurricanes today than there were 100 years ago.” Climate change may not increase the number of storms, but it is making them more severe.
• Pence claimed that the U.S. “has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris climate accord.” But many nations taking part in the Paris Agreement have slashed emissions by a larger percentage.
• Pence did not provide the context in which Hillary Clinton said “under no circumstances should” Biden “concede the election.” She said Biden will be the declared winner when all absentee and mail-in ballots are counted, so he shouldn’t concede if it’s still close on Election Day.
• Pence warned that “universal mail-in voting” will “create a massive opportunity for voter fraud.” Election experts say the number of known cases is relatively rare.
• The candidates disagreed on whether the Trump administration had eliminated a team that planned for responses to public health emergencies. It eliminated the director’s role, but consolidated some team functions elsewhere.
• Pence falsely claimed the Trump administration has a plan to protect people with preexisting conditions; it has offered no such plan.
• Harris said that “there will be no more protection … for people with preexisting conditions” under Trump if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. Protections would largely remain in place for those with employer-sponsored health plans, but not on the individual market.
• Pence disputed Harris’ claim that Trump “refused to condemn white supremacists” at the presidential debate. Trump didn’t offer a clear condemnation in the debate; Pence then referred to other instances in which he did.
• Pence repeated the false claim that the Obama administration left the Strategic National Stockpile “empty.” That’s not so.
• Pence claimed that Biden and Harris “want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking.” Biden said he wants to ban new permitting on public land; most fracking occurs in non-public areas. 
• Pence wrongly said Trump “suspended all travel from China,” when the restrictions included exceptions.

There were other repeated claims from Pence on the economy, the Osama bin Laden raid and the FBI.

The debate was held at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Oct. 7.

Analysis

Taxes

When it came to taxes, both sides spun the facts about Biden’s and Trump’s record and positions.

Harris said Trump “passed a tax bill benefiting the top 1% and the biggest corporations of America.” As we have written repeatedly, while those with higher incomes reaped greater benefits from the tax law, most households received a tax cut.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a Republican-crafted bill that the president signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017 — provided tax cuts to those at all income levels, on average. The Tax Policy Center estimated that about 65% of households paid less in federal income tax in 2018 under the tax law than they would have paid under the old tax laws, while about 6% paid more.

A higher percentage of high-income taxpayers got a tax cut, and that tax cut was, on average, greater than the tax cuts for those with lower incomes (both in dollar amounts and as a percentage of after-tax income). But 82% of middle-income earners — those with income between about $49,000 and $86,000 — received a tax cut that averaged about $1,050 in 2018, the Tax Policy Center estimated.

We should note that most of the individual income tax provisions expire after 2025, which will then shiftby the Tax Policy Center found that the top 1% of income earners would get 20.5% of the tax cut benefits in 2018. That percentageto 25.3% in 2025 and then jump to 82.8% in 2027.