Former Vice President Mike Pence has struggled to gain a foothold with Republican primary voters since his protracted presidential campaign began in June.
Mr. Pence consistently ranks in the single digits behind the top two candidates in the polls: his former vice president, former President Donald J. Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The former VP has broken with them most notably on their approach to Social Security and Medicare. He has also taken clear positions supporting a 15-week nationwide ban on abortion and fully supporting American involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Mr Pence has made a number of incorrect claims over time. Here’s a fact check of some of his recent campaign remarks.
abortion
What Mr Pence said
“I have this week called on every other candidate for the Republican nomination to support a minimum standard of a 15-week national abortion ban that would bring American law into line with most countries in Europe that literally ban abortions after 12 to 15 weeks. Our laws at the national level are now more aligned with North Korea, China and Iran than with other Western countries in Europe.”
– in a June interview on Fox News Sunday
This is misleading. Mr Pence’s comparison is too simplistic and glosses over how abortion laws work in practice in Europe. It’s also worth noting that many European countries are working towards easing abortion restrictions rather than introducing additional ones, The Upshot has reported.
Of about four dozen countries in Europe, almost all have legalized voluntary abortion before the 10th to 15th week of pregnancy. All of these countries allow post-natal abortions when the mother’s life is in danger, and about half do so in cases of sexual violence – two exceptions that Mr Pence says he supports. However, many also allow broader exceptions, such as socio-economic circumstances or the mother’s mental health, which are not included in Mr Pence’s proposal.
For example, in the UK, an abortion must be approved by two doctors, but these requests are usually granted for up to 24 weeks. In Denmark and Germany there are exceptions to the 12-week gestation period due to mental and physical health and living conditions.
At least three countries also have more permissive abortions than Mr Pence’s proposal: Iceland at 22 weeks, the Netherlands at 24 weeks and Sweden at 18 weeks.
In contrast, China allows voluntary abortions without setting pregnancy limits in its national laws, according to the World Health Organization. China, too, has said in recent years that it wants to reduce the number of “medically unnecessary” abortions, and at least one province has banned abortions after 14 weeks.
North Korea’s abortion laws are unclear. According to the World Health Organization, authorities in 2015 issued an order banning doctors from performing abortions, but said there were “no documents after 2015” about the legality of the procedure.
Since the US Supreme Court abolished the constitutional right to abortion last summer, the legal status of abortion has varied widely across states. In some countries the procedure is banned without exception, in others it is enshrined as a right without restrictions on pregnancy. A spokesman for Mr Pence named nine such states as exceptionally non-restrictive.
fiscal policy
What Mr Pence said
“Well, first of all, look, Joe Biden’s policy on our national debt is bankruptcy. And unfortunately, my former Vice President’s policies are identical to Joe Biden’s. Both say they will not even talk about common sense and compassionate entitlement reforms to save future generations from a mountain of debt.”
– in the Fox News Sunday interview
That’s exaggerated. When asked about his calls for Social Security and health insurance reform, Mr Pence criticized Mr Trump’s and Mr Biden’s approach to welfare programs as irresponsible. While both have said they would not cut benefits, only Mr. Biden has proposed tax increases to prop up both programs. But it is an exaggeration to equate this position with accepting full bankruptcy.
Both social security and health insurance are currently facing financial bottlenecks. The fund that pays Social Security retirement benefits is expected to be exhausted by 2033, and the fund that pays hospitals for Medicare patients will be exhausted in 2031. At this point, the funds can only pay 77 percent of pension benefits and 89 percent of planned fees to hospitals.
During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed raising taxes on high earners to fund additional Social Security benefits. The additional funds would reduce the program’s financial gap, although the revenue would not completely close the gap. While his most recent presidential budget, released in March, does not mention this proposal, it does include a plan to extend Medicare’s ability to pay by 25 years by imposing higher taxes on the wealthy.
Mr Trump’s position on social safety net programs is a little more difficult to pin down. In January 2020, he said he was ready to consider cutting social safety nets “at some point” – although he was quick to retract his comments and vowed to protect Social Security. His last budget proposal for the president in February 2020 did not include benefit cuts for either program, but instead sought savings at Medicare through a dozen tweaks, such as reducing payments to providers and lowering prescription drug costs.
Recently, in a March speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump vowed that “we will never go back to proposals” to raise the Social Security retirement age or cut Medicare benefits. But Mr. Trump has not detailed his stance on either program or addressed their solvency problems this campaign cycle.
The Pence campaign argued that neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Biden have a current plan for Social Security and that Mr. Biden’s plan for Medicare is merely delaying the fiscal deficit.
Secret Documents
What Mr Pence said
“I mean, when I informed the Justice Department that we might have classified materials at our house, they were at my house. The next day the FBI was on my doorstep. And what we found was that Joe Biden showed up at his office 80 days later, apparently alerting the Justice Department.”
— at a CNN town hall in June
That’s exaggerated. After the discovery of classified documents in their private homes, both Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden cooperated in the government investigation. Mr Pence points out that the Justice Department’s reactions to the discoveries were not identical, but he exaggerates the differences.
In Mr. Biden’s case, the searches took place a few weeks – not three months – after the discovery of classified documents. In Mr Pence’s case, the search came about three weeks later.
On November 2, lawyers for Mr. Biden discovered classified documents in the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a Washington think tank. That same day, the attorneys alerted the National Archives and Records Administration, which is responsible for securing such documents, according to Biden administration officials. The next day, the National Archives recovered the documents and referred the matter to the Justice Department. The FBI raided the think tank in mid-November.
On December 20, Mr. Biden’s associates discovered a second set of classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. On the same day, they alerted the US attorney leading the investigation to the discovery. A month later, on January 20, the FBI searched the home and confiscated more documents. And on February 1, the FBI searched Mr. Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., but found no other classified documents.
The discovery of secret documents in Mr Biden’s possession prompted Mr Pence’s aides to search his Indiana home as a precaution. On Jan. 16, they found about a dozen classified documents and notified the National Archives in a Jan. 18 letter of the discovery. On January 19, the Department of Justice, and not the Records Authority, collected the documents from Mr Pence’s home. Almost a month later, on February 10, the FBI searched Mr. Pence’s home and found another document.
The Pence campaign argued that by requesting Mr Pence’s documents directly, the Justice Department had circumvented standard procedures, which it did not do in Mr Biden’s case.
Unlike in the Biden and Trump cases, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has not appointed a special counsel to investigate Mr. Pence’s handling of classified materials. The Justice Department also declined to prosecute Mr Pence while the investigation into Mr Biden is ongoing.
funding of the military
What Mr Pence said
“Ever since Joe Biden took office, he’s been working to cut military spending.”
— at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in July
That’s wrong. Mr. Biden’s annual budgets have generally allocated more to the military, and actual spending has increased each year.
Mr. Biden’s first budget, released in 2021, earmarked $715 billion for the Pentagon, essentially maintaining funding levels. That was 1.6 percent more than in the previous year and 0.4 percent less when adjusted for inflation. In December of that year, he signed a $770 billion defense package.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Biden’s proposals and congressional supporters pushed military spending even higher.
The budget he released in 2022 called for military spending of $773 billion, a nearly 10 percent increase from the previous year. Eventually, he signed an $858 billion spending policy bill into law.
And Mr. Biden’s most recent budget, released in March, earmarked $842 billion for the military, up 3.2 percent year-on-year, and a total of $886 billion for national defense. This legislation is currently going through the approval process in Congress. The Pence campaign argued that this would amount to a cut as the rate of inflation exceeded the rate of growth.
At the Iowa event, Mr Pence cited Mr Biden’s debt ceiling agreement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as an example of a proposed 1 percent cut in the military. Under this agreement, military spending is fixed at the President’s proposed amount of $886 billion and would increase to $895 billion by 2025. But all spending, both for the military and domestic programs, would be subject to a 1 percent cut if Congress didn’t pass annual spending legislation by January.
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