Advertisement

PolitiFact: Digging deeper into the divide between Sanders, Clinton

 
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton shake hands after a Democratic presidential primary debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton shake hands after a Democratic presidential primary debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Published Feb. 13, 2016

Fresh off his victory in the New Hampshire primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders decried former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's record and her admiration for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as the pair met onstage Thursday in Milwaukee.

We fact-checked a number of statements by both candidates in the Democratic debate.

During her opening statement, Clinton tried to channel the frustration that has led many voters to consider backing her opponent.

"I know a lot of Americans are angry about the economy, and for good cause," Clinton said. "Americans haven't had a raise in 15 years."

We rated her statement Mostly True.

Using inflation-adjusted median household income, she's right. There has been a decline of 7 percent in that period. However, earnings of wage and salary workers have risen in that period by about 2 percent. That's a very slight increase, but Clinton's point that Americans are historically worse off stands.

Prescription drugs

Sanders stuck to debate form and lambasted the U.S. health care system. Among a laundry list of problems he ticked off, the senator included exorbitant prices for medicines.

"In America, we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," he said.

We rated his statement Mostly True.

He's right about most brand-name drugs, which yield the highest profit for the pharmaceutical industry. One study comparing the United States and Canada did find exceptions for generic drugs, which are a much smaller share of overall prescription drug spending and offer a much lower profit margin.

African-Americans, wealth, Wall Street

Sanders said economic inequality must be addressed to effectively improve race relations in America, because minorities had fared much worse during the housing bubble and recession. The two intertwined crises hit blacks much harder than whites.

"The African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse," Sanders said.

We rated his statement True.

Sanders was citing data from the Pew Research Center that showed between 2005 and 2009, African-Americans lost anywhere from 53 percent to 61 percent of their net wealth due to the housing bubble. During the subsequent recession, blacks lost 43 percent of their net wealth from 2007 to 2013.

Bad-mouthing Obama?

In one of the more heated exchanges, Clinton accused Sanders of having shown too little loyalty to President Barack Obama.

Clinton said, "In the past, (Sanders) has called (Obama) weak. He's called him a disappointment." For emphasis, she later repeated the charge that Sanders had used the words "weak" and "disappointment."

Sanders has critiqued Obama and used those words to describe the feelings of Americans, or to describe Obama's policies. But Sanders did not specifically call Obama "weak" and "a disappointment."

We rated her claim Half True.

Specifically, Sanders told Thom Hartmann in July 2011: "I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president, who believe that with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president, who cannot believe how weak he has been — for whatever reason — in negotiating with Republicans. And there's deep disappointment."

Note Sanders' language: He says "millions of Americans" feel that way, not that he did so himself. It's a small difference, but we think a significant one given the forcefulness of Clinton's attack line.

The other example we found came on Nov. 13, 2011, when Politico reported that Sanders would not say whether he would support Obama for re-election (though he ultimately did). The Politico article quoted Sanders saying that Obama should "stop reaching negotiated agreements with Republicans that are extremely weak and disadvantageous to ordinary people. … I certainly hope and expect to be supporting the president, but it's a little bit early in the process."

Child poverty

One of the questions Sanders faced was whether he would place any limits on the size of government if he were elected. He said the government has a "moral responsibility" to improve everyone's standard of living, listing several problems he believes the nation faces.

Among his issues was that the United States has "the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth."

We rated his statement Half True.

Reports have ranked childhood poverty in the United States embarrassingly high for a country so wealthy. But a definitive measure of childhood poverty rates among countries with wide gaps in the standard of living makes his point difficult to illustrate.

Income inequality in the United States also may be exaggerating our ranking.

Times staff writers C. Eugene Emery Jr. and Linda Qiu contributed to this report. Read more rulings at PolitiFact.com.