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Summary
On the first night of the 2024 Republican National Convention, some speakers offered false and misleading assessments of employment, tax cuts, inflation and more.
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that “hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years” under Democrats, ignoring that, on net, employment of native-born workers increased under President Joe Biden.
- Sen. Katie Britt said that under Biden, Americans have the “tough choice” of choosing “which second job to take just to pay the bills,” and she suggested that wasn’t the case under former President Donald Trump. As a share of the employed population, the percentage of people working multiple jobs under Biden is nearly identical to what it was under Trump.
- A rule proposed by the Biden administration in 2023 would prohibit blanket bans on transgender athletes, but contrary to claims made by Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. John James, the rule would allow exceptions for competitive fairness, particularly for high school and college sports teams.
- Sen. Marsha Blackburn incorrectly claimed that the Trump-era tax cut was “the largest tax cut in American history.” She claimed Biden would “let them expire,” but the president has vowed not to raise taxes on those earning less than $400,000.
- A few speakers wrongly said that the U.S. had the “greatest” or “strongest” economy under Trump, as the former president himself has often said.
- Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Rep. Byron Donalds said inflation had been “unleashed” or “created” by the Biden administration. Economists say the fallout from the COVID-10 pandemic is the primary culprit for higher inflation.
- Greene misleadingly claimed that the “establishment in Washington … gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.” For years, the day has been on March 31, which also happened to be Easter this year.
- Blackburn misleadingly claimed that Democrats hired “85,000 new IRS agents to harass hard-working Americans.” Most of those hires would replace outgoing workers and be in customer service, government officials said.
The convention kicked off on July 15 and will wrap up on July 18 with Trump accepting his party’s nomination less than a week after an assassination attempt on his life. We’ll monitor the speeches each night.
Analysis
American-Born Workers
While talking about Democrats allowing “millions of illegal aliens” in the country, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that “hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years.”
“The Democrats’ economy is of, by and for illegal aliens,” she said.
But, on net, employment of people born in the U.S has increased by more than 7.8 million since Biden took office — going up from 123.1 million in January 2021 to 130.9 million in June 2024, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment for the U.S.-born population is 586,000 above the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020.
By comparison, employment of foreign-born workers, a category that includes anyone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen at birth, increased, on net, by 5.5 million under Biden and 3.2 million from the pre-pandemic high. But BLS says the foreign-born population includes “legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.”
There is no employment breakdown for just people in the U.S. illegally.
Multiple Jobholders
After touting a strong economy under Trump, Alabama Sen. Katie Britt said: “With President Trump, the tough choice was which job offer to accept. Now, it’s which second job to take just to pay the bills. Your family can’t afford this costly and dangerous decline for four more years.”
But Britt’s comparison gives a false impression about the amount of people taking on more than one job under Biden and Trump.
As of June, there were about 8.3 million people in the U.S. who held multiple jobs, according to BLS data. That was up from about 6.6 million in January 2021 and roughly 8 million prior to the pandemic in February 2020. We also would note that there were three months under Trump when approximately 8.3 million people were working two or more jobs, as well.
Furthermore, as of last month, multiple jobholders accounted for 5.2% of the total employed population, which was nearly identical to the 5.1% share right before the pandemic four years ago. Over the most recent 12 months under Biden, the average has been 5.2%, which, again, is only 0.1 percentage points higher than the average of 5.1% in 2019 under Trump.
Transgender Policy and Girls’ Athletics
Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. John James talked about Democrats forcing girls to compete against transgender girls, whose sex assigned at birth was male. A rule proposed by the Biden administration in 2023 — which has not been finalized — would prohibit blanket bans on transgender athletes, but it includes exceptions for competitive fairness, particularly for high school and college sports teams.
Johnson said the Democrats’ “fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls.” James said: “Our daughters were sold on hope [by Democrats] and now they’re being forced on the playing fields and changing rooms of biological males.”
The Department of Education proposed two sets of rules in April 2023 to expand the interpretation of Title IX to prohibit discrimination based not only on sex but also sexual orientation and gender identity.
In April, the department only moved forward with one of the rules, clarifying “that policies and practices that prevent a student from participating in a recipient’s education program or activity consistent with their gender identity impose more than de minimis harm on that student on the basis of sex, and therefore generally violate Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate,” according to an overview of key provisions of the Department of Education’s 2024 Title IX final rule. That doesn’t include sports but does include any other program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.
The department put off a final determination on the rule related to application of transgender student participation on athletic teams.
“The Department’s rulemaking process is still ongoing for a Title IX regulation related to athletics,” a Department of Education spokesperson told us via email. “The Department proposed amendments to its athletics regulations in April 2023 and received over 150,000 public comments, which by law must be carefully considered. We do not have information to share today on a timeline.”
Although some argued the rule that was finalized would require schools to allow transgender students to participate on sex-specific teams consistent with their identity, the Department of Education made clear that the rule “does not apply to permissible sex separation of athletic teams.”
“The Department intends to issue a separate final rule to address Title IX’s application to sex-separate athletic teams,” the overview states.
“Until that rule is finalized and issued, the current regulations on athletics continue to apply,” the department wrote in its final rule.
The proposed athletics rule did call for establishing that “policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are. The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation,” according to a Department of Education fact sheet released on April 6, 2023.
The fact sheet says that “the Department’s approach would allow schools flexibility to develop team eligibility criteria that serve important educational objectives, such as ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury. These criteria would have to account for the sport, level of competition, and grade or education level to which they apply.”
For example, the fact sheet states, “elementary school students would generally be able to participate on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for a school to justify excluding students immediately following elementary school from participating consistent with their gender identity.” Teams at those grade levels “often focus on building teamwork, fitness, and basic skills for students who are just learning about the sport,” the release states.
However, it states: “For older students, especially at the high school and college level, the Department expects that sex-related criteria that limit participation of some transgender students may be permitted, in some cases, when they enable the school to achieve an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition, and meet the proposed regulation’s other requirements.”
Trump Tax Cut
Sen. Marsha Blackburn incorrectly claimed that the Trump-era tax cut was “the largest tax cut in American history” and misleadingly added that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “going to let them expire.”
As we’ve written before, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Trump was not the largest tax cut either as a percentage of gross domestic product (the measure preferred by economists) or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
A 2013 Treasury Department analysis on the revenue effects of major tax legislation said then-President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 were the largest as a percentage of GDP — 2.89% of GDP over a four-year average. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was the largest, costing $320.6 billion over a four-year average, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The 2017 tax law was initially projected to cost $1.49 trillion over 10 years, according to an estimate at the time by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
“That would make [the Trump-era] tax cut the 8th largest as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since 1918 and the 4th largest in inflation-adjusted dollars,” the CRFB wrote.
As for Blackburn’s claim that Biden and Harris will let the 2017 tax cuts “expire,” Biden has vowed not to increase taxes for taxpayers who earn less than $400,000. In order to keep his campaign promise, which he also made in 2020, Biden will have to extend the Trump-era tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000, which is what Biden has said he intends to do.
Not the ‘Greatest Economy’ Under Trump
A few speakers echoed a frequent, inaccurate talking point of Trump’s: that during his presidency, the U.S. had the “greatest” or “strongest” economy.
As we’ve written, most recently after the presidential debate in late June, economists’ preferred measure of the economy’s health is real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product growth. GDP growth exceeded Trump’s peak year of 3% growth plenty of times before he took office.
Despite that, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said it was “the strongest economy in history” under Trump. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas called it “the greatest economy in our lifetime.”
Under Trump, real GDP grew annually by 2.5% in 2017, 3% in 2018 and 2.5% in 2019. It then declined by 2.2% during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Those figures comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The annual growth rate has been higher than 3% 48 times and under every president before and after Trump dating to 1930, except Barack Obama and Herbert Hoover.
Inflation
Inflation has gone up while Biden has been in office, but some speakers wrongly pinned all the blame on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The primary reason for higher inflation in the U.S. was the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, economists say. Those factors were then compounded by the Ukraine war, they said.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin referred to “the silent thief of inflation unleashed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.” Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida talked about “the massive inflation created by” Biden and Harris. Other speakers referred generally to higher inflation, suggesting Biden was to blame.
When we wrote about this before, economists told us that the American Rescue Plan, a pandemic relief measure that Biden signed into law in March 2021, had contributed to inflation — though estimates varied on how much. Jason Furman, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama and now a Harvard University professor, told us in the summer of 2022 that the ARP had contributed 1 to 4 percentage points to inflation and when “pressed for one number,” he said he used the midpoint of 2.5. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s — whose work is often cited by the White House — said the impact of the stimulus measure by then had “largely faded.”
Economists we spoke to cited several reasons for inflation, with the pandemic being the root cause.
The year-over-year increase in inflation peaked under Biden at 9.1% in June 2022 (before seasonal adjustment), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 12-month percentage change had dropped to 3% in June 2023, and it was 3% again this June.
Transgender Day of Visibility
As she has done before, Greene made a misleading claim about Transgender Day of Visibility.
“For far too long, the establishment in Washington has sold us out,” she said. “They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.”
The Biden administration issued a proclamation this year acknowledging March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility — as it has done in 2021, 2022 and 2023. It just so happens that this year Easter also fell on March 31, leading some Republicans to claim Biden “mocked” Christians, as Greene wrote on X at the time, for issuing an annual proclamation to mark the occasion. “Biden and the Democrats decided Easter – the Holy Day of our Savior’s Resurrection – as transgender day of visibility,” she wrote.
Biden had nothing to do with the creation or timing of Transgender Day of Visibility. As we have written, Rachel Crandall Crocker, executive director and co-founder of Transgender Michigan, is credited with being the founder of International Transgender Day of Visibility in 2009. She set March 31 as the date.
IRS
Blackburn revived a misleading talking point when she claimed that Democrats hired “85,000 new IRS agents to harass hard-working Americans.” Most of the new IRS hires, funded by the Democratic-backed Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, were to be replacements for retiring or departing workers, and additional agents hired for tax enforcement were directed to target audits of high-income earners.
The Inflation Reduction Act — which passed in 2022 with only the support of Democrats and independents and was signed by Biden — was mainly a climate, health care and tax package. But it also included about $79.6 billion in additional IRS funding. IRS and Treasury Department officials said some of the money would go to hiring new employees, potentially as many as 87,000. While Republicans regularly claimed all of the new hires would target middle-class taxpayers with audits — Blackburn said “hard-working Americans” — government officials said most of the new hires would replace outgoing staff and would be on the customer service side of the IRS, doing tasks such as upgrading computer systems and answering phones.
Some of the new hires would be for tax enforcement, but administration officials said those employees would focus on auditing the tax filings of high-income individuals and businesses.
“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” then IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig wrote in an Aug. 4, 2022, letter to congressional lawmakers. “As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”
As we wrote in 2023, Republicans have already clawed back some of the IRS funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act, in part from the debt limit deal reached between Democrats and Republicans in June 2023. Budget experts told us those cuts would result in larger long-term deficits because tighter enforcement against high-income earners is expected to bring in well more than the cost of enforcement.
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