Fact-checking the CBS News vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz
By CNN Staff, CNN
(CNN) — Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio faced off Tuesday night in New York City for their first – and only – vice presidential debate.
The two sparred on issues including inflation, immigration, health care and the future of democracy.
Here is a fact check of some of the remarks made by each candidate:
Vance mischaracterizes Harris’ role on border policy
Sen. JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the “border czar” during the Biden administration. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.
Facts First: Vance’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.
A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”
Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”
Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Walz on jobs from Biden’s climate law
Touting the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate law for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, her running mate, Tim Walz, spoke of how the law created “200,000 jobs in the country,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.
Facts First: This claim needs context. While it’s clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs were created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “200,000” figure includes jobs that companies have promised to create but aren’t finalized. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have come up with smaller figures.
There are several data sets that track climate law investments, all of which differ slightly. Walz’s number of jobs created by President Joe Biden’s climate law is slightly smaller than a June tally by communications group Climate Power that found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies following the IRA passage through May 2024.
E2, another clean energy group that tracks Inflation Reduction Act-related investments and jobs, has counted over 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced from August 2022 to May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power number. A recent report from the US Department of Energy found 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.
Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power’s topline number also didn’t distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs at those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things.
Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there’s no question there’s a huge amount of clean energy investment, and a significant number of new jobs building EVs and renewables like wind and solar are being created by the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. The 2024 Energy Department report showed clean energy jobs made up more than half of the total for new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate twice as large as the overall US economy.
The report also acknowledged how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector from the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs that are being created.
From CNN’s Ella Nilsen
Vance on migrants in Springfield, Ohio
Sen. JD Vance said that schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.”
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed … because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.
Facts First: Vance’s statement, referencing the Ohio town subject to a firestorm of misinformation about Haitian migrants this summer, is misleading.
We don’t know the immigration status of each and every immigrant in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians have official permission to live and work legally in the US. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”
Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And many have “temporary protected status,” which shields Haitians in the US from deportation and allows them to live and work here for a limited period of time. Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Danya Gainor
Vance’s claims about Biden-Harris immigration executive orders
Sen. JD Vance said that the United States has a “historic immigration crisis” because Vice President Kamala Harris “wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies” with “94 executive orders” that did things like “suspending deportations” and “decriminalizing illegal aliens.”
Facts First: While the Biden-Harris administration has signed dozens of executive orders about immigration, Vance’s comments about the administration decriminalizing illegal immigration through executive order aren’t true. Harris did, however, say she supported decriminalizing illegal immigration – a position she’s since reversed.
When she was a candidate for president and a sitting US senator, Harris filled out an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in which she expressed support for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.
Harris has since acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an August interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz
Walz falsely claims Project 2025 calls for a pregnancy registry
Gov. Tim Walz claimed that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation think tank’s detailed right-wing blueprint for the next Republican administration, says people will have to register their pregnancies.
“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.
Facts First: Walz’s claim is false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that a Trump-Vance administration is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.
Project 2025 is firmly anti-abortion; it proposes, among other things, to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication and devices. But it does not propose to require people to register their pregnancies.
The Project 2025 policy document, released in 2023, proposes that the federal government take steps to make sure it is receiving detailed after-the-fact, anonymous data from every state on abortions and miscarriages. The vast majority of states already submit anonymous abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a voluntary basis – the CDC has collected “abortion surveillance” data for decades – and all states already submit some anonymous miscarriage data under federal law.
Minnesota, the state run by Walz, is one of the states that voluntarily submits abortion data to the CDC. And Minnesota posts anonymous abortion and miscarriage data on the state health department’s website every year.
The Project 2025 policy document says the existing federal Department of Health and Human Services should “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
The document also says the department “should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” And it says, “In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”
In the context of the CDC, the word “monitoring” is used to mean statistical tracking. For example, the existing CDC webpage that displays anonymous state-by-state abortion data says, “Since 1987, CDC has monitored abortion-related deaths” through its Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. Neither “monitored” nor “surveillance” means the CDC is spying on individuals during their pregnancies.
Trump dodged the question when asked in a Time magazine interview earlier this year whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies to ensure compliance with an abortion ban, saying, “I think they might do that” but that “you’ll have to speak to the individual states.” Walz is free to criticize Trump for this answer, but nowhere in the interview did Trump make an actual proposal to create a new pregnancy-monitoring government body.
Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino wrote on social media last month that Project 2025 “merely recommends CDC restore the decades-long practice of compiling *anonymous* abortion statistics for all states” – and noted that Minnesota already compiles such data.
Vance denied that a Trump-Vance administration would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency when asked by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell.
“Certainly, we won’t,” Vance said.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco
Vance falsely says he never supported a national abortion ban
Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.
Facts First: This is false. Vance previously said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” in 2022 while running for his Senate seat in Ohio. He did say that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion in 2023. During the current campaign, however, Vance has deferred to former President Donald Trump’s stated view that each state should set its own abortion policy.
In 2022, while running for his Senate seat in Ohio, Vance said, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. He also said on his website during that Senate campaign that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he favored “eliminating abortion”; these words remained on his website until Trump selected him as his running mate in July. And Vance said in an interview during the 2022 campaign that he wanted abortion to be “primarily a state issue,” but also said, “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”
In November 2023, Vance told CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett in the Capitol: “It seems to suggest there needs to be some more interest in this building among Republicans in setting some sort of minimum national standard, whether that it’s 15 weeks or 20 weeks or the different ranges that are thrown out there.” He said, “We keep giving in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this matter. Because if it doesn’t … then the pro-life movement is basically not gonna exist, I think, for the next couple of years.”
Vance, emphasizing his support for certain exceptions to abortion bans, said on CNN in December 2023, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t. And I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for life of the mother, for rape, and so forth.”
During his vice presidential campaign this year, Vance has aligned himself with Trump’s professed desire for a state-by-state approach to abortion policy rather than federal legislation. Vance said on Fox News in July, “Alabama’s going to make a different decision from California. That is a reasonable thing. And that’s how I think we build some bridges and have some respect for one another.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck
Vance falsely claims Biden administration unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets
Sen. JD Vance claimed the Biden-Harris administration had unfrozen more than $100 billion in Iranian assets, which he said were then used to buy weapons.
“Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially, launching against the United States as well,” Vance said, referring to Iran’s Tuesday attack on Israel.
Facts first: Vance’s statement is false. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration unfroze more than $100 billion in Iranian assets. As part of a prisoner exchange last year, $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets were moved from restricted accounts in South Korea to restricted accounts in Qatar to be used for humanitarian purchases. The process for Iran to be able to spend those funds was expected to take months, if not years.
In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House lawmakers that the US and Qatar had reached a “quiet understanding” not to allow Iran to access any of the $6 billion in Iranian funds for the time being, according to a source familiar.
Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, sanctions waivers would allow Iran to access frozen assets abroad. Estimates varied, but some said those assets could be worth more than $100 billion. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was California attorney general at the time, had no involvement with the nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew under former President Donald Trump.
From CNN’s Jennifer Hansler
Vance on Harris’ energy policies and China
Speaking about combatting climate change and bringing down planet-warming emissions, Sen. JD Vance suggested the fix was to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”
Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of making climate change worse by supporting clean energy, saying her policies “actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas.”
Facts First: A few parts of Vance’s claim are misleading and need context. First, while Vance is correct that China is currently the biggest global supplier of clean energy technologies and components, the Biden administration is trying to stop that by bringing more clean energy manufacturing to the US and moving the global supply chain away from China.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history, was designed to bring more manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, large batteries and other components to the United States. The law’s EV tax credits were crafted with the intention of moving the EV supply chain away from China, which has long dominated the industry. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who authored much of the IRA, changed its federal EV tax credits to move the supply chain for the critical minerals needed for things like EV batteries, solar panels and smaller rechargeable batteries away from China.
China will likely continue to dominate the global clean energy supply chain in the coming years. But the US is catching up; companies have announced over $346 billion worth of investments building new clean energy projects and factories in the US since the law was passed. According to the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and MIT, in the last two years, companies have invested $89 billion in clean energy manufacturing alone – a 305% increase from the prior two years.
From CNN’s Ella Nilsen
Vance on a Minnesota ‘born alive’ law
Sen. JD Vance claimed during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that Gov. Tim Walz signed a law that says doctors aren’t required to provide lifesaving care to babies that survive a botched abortion.
“The statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said, adding that the law is “fundamentally barbaric.”
Facts First: This needs context. The law Walz signed in 2023 says that an infant born alive must be “fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and must be provided “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.” While previous Minnesota law said that medical personnel needed to take steps to “preserve the life and health” of that infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, the new law says that medical personnel must take steps to “care” for the infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.
The key difference between the “preserve the life and health” language and the “care” language, experts say, is that the new law gives families the option to choose comfort care if their infant does not have a legitimate chance of survival.
Dave Renner, director of advocacy for the Minnesota Medical Association, which supported Walz’s change to the law, said in a September email: “The difference is the old law only focused on preserving the life and health of the infant, even if there was no chance of the infant living. The result was that infants who have no chance of survival were taken away from the parent at birth for extraordinary efforts to ‘preserve the life’ even though they would not succeed. It did not allow the grieving parent to hold their infant.”
Dr. Erin Stevens, legislative chair of the Minnesota section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a September email that under the new law, “any infant that is born alive in any circumstances who has a legitimate chance of survival will be provided sound medical care to encourage survival. No one is sitting by depriving healthy infants of nutrition and care.”
Stevens said that people who decide to terminate pregnancies at a very advanced gestational age generally do so because of a “particularly dangerous or life-threatening” new diagnosis and are offered either a surgical abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) or a delivery after a C-section or the induction of labor.
“In the latter scenario of a delivery,” she said, “often that is pursued knowing the baby could be alive for a very short time after the birth but that that life would not be sustainable. Generally, these are the cases on mandated statistical reports of terminations that indicate live births after abortion. It’s not a ‘botched abortion,’ which many people envision as a D&E gone wrong resulting in a mangled, living baby. Many times, the reason a patient chooses the option of delivery is to have the opportunity to hold their baby and experience that precious time with them.”
She continued: “When there are mandates to resuscitate in such circumstances no matter how futile the attempts, the parents lose out on that opportunity and will never get that time back. It’s not only a waste of costly medical resources, but it’s cruel. Comfort care is provided as clinically appropriate.”
Former President Donald Trump has previously claimed that the new law allows the execution of Minnesota babies after birth. That is still murder in the state.
“This change does not allow ‘the execution of babies’ and to suggest so does not understand the change,” Renner said.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jack Forrest
Vance claims DHS ‘effectively lost’ 320,000 children
Sen. JD Vance claimed the Department of Homeland Security has “effectively lost” 320,000 children.
“You ask about family separation. Right now, in this country, we have 320,000 children that the department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said, referring to separating migrant families.
“Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’ wide-open southern border,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said.
Facts First: This claim needs context. An August 2024 report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 (which includes two years and four months under the Trump administration). The report added that the number could be larger, given that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children were not given notices to appear in court. The report said that without the ability to monitor those children, ICE has “no assurances” those children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” The report does not say for certain that those children are being used in drug trafficking or are victims of sex trafficking.
The report, released August 17, said that of 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) transferred or released from Homeland Security or Health and Human Services custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 “failed to appear for their immigration court hearings.”
The report also said that ICE failed to issue a “Notice to Appear” for 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children in that timeline and that those children “therefore do not yet have an immigration court date.”
By not issuing the notices, the report says, “ICE limits its chances of having contact with UCs when they are released from HHS’ custody, which reduces opportunities to verify their safety. Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN last month: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”
Some right-leaning outlets, such as the New York Post and the Washington Times, took the report from the Office of Inspector General and combined those numbers, reaching the 320,000 figure of migrant children who are unaccounted for.
From CNN’s Jack Forrest
Vance’s claim about Trump’s comments to protesters on January 6
Sen. JD Vance claimed that then-President Donald Trump said protesters should protest peacefully on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was attacked and overrun by Trump supporters.
“He said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” Vance said.
Facts First: This claim leaves out some key context. During his speech, Trump did tell protestors to “peacefully” make their voices heard and, in the same speech, told protesters they should “fight like hell” and used other combative language.
During his speech that day, Trump told those attending: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Trump, however, also made numerous other remarks in the speech in which he struck a far more combative tone.
Trump, for example, urged Republicans to stop fighting like a boxer “with his hands tied behind his back,” saying, “We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder.” Trump told marchers, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.” After urging congressional Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College results, Trump said, “And fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”
Trump alleged there would be dire consequences if his supporters did not take immediate action – saying that, if Joe Biden took office, “You will have an illegitimate president. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.” And he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump also spent much of the speech laying out a false case that the election was marred by massive fraud. And he falsely claimed, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”
From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand
Vance on the number of undocumented immigrants in the country under Biden administration
Sen. JD Vance claimed during the debate that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”
Facts First: That number is significantly higher than most estimates.
While the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the country difficult to track, multiple estimates show it is probably smaller than the number Vance floated during the debate. For instance, a 2024 report from Pew Research Center estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the US grew to 11 million in 2022. The report used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.
In 2024, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports curbing immigration and criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, estimated there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.
From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Vance on CBP One app
Sen. JD Vance claimed Tuesday that migrants who apply for legal status through a Customs and Border Protection app can have it granted “at the wave of a … wand.”
“There’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” he said.
Facts First: This claim is false. CBP One allows users to schedule appointments to claim asylum with border authorities, but that does not mean that their request will be granted. The app is not a means to make an asylum application. It allows applicants to enter their information through the app rather than going directly to a port of entry.
The app was launched in October 2020, during the Trump administration, so people could access Customs and Border Protection services on their mobile devices. It was expanded during the Biden administration and is now “the only way that migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry can preschedule appointments for processing and maintain guaranteed asylum eligibility,” according to the American Immigration Council.
From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Vance on inflation under Trump
Sen. JD Vance claimed at Tuesday’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered 1.5% inflation for Americans.
“Because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.
Facts First: Vance’s claim needs context. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was indeed 1.5% in May 2019; however, the average inflation rate was north of 2.1% from January 2017 through February 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its quick and deep economic recession in the US, inflation slowed drastically as Americans sheltered at home and reduced spending on in-person services.
Including the pandemic-distorted pricing environment, the CPI averaged 1.9% from 2017 through 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
For comparison purposes, during the Biden-Harris administration, the CPI averaged an annual rate of 5.2%
Inflation’s rapid ascent – which began in early 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 before moderating to 2.5% in August 2024 – was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as snarled supply chains, and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Vance’s misleading claim that Trump ‘saved’ Obamacare
Sen. JD Vance said in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that former President Donald Trump could have “destroyed” the Affordable Care Act during his first term, but instead he “saved” it.
“He saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.
Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges. Also, during his term, the Department of Health and Human Services approved several state waiver requests that resulted in lower premiums for Affordable Care Act plans.
As president, Trump initially tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act but failed because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017.
Then, Trump put in place many measures aimed at undermining the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.
Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.
Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.
Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the Trump administration did approve several states’ waiver applications to implement reinsurance programs in their Affordable Care Act exchanges. This generally lowered Obamacare premiums by providing funding for insurers that enrolled many high-cost patients.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
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