This past year in politics saw lots of questionable - if not flat out false - claims. But there were also more than a few comments that earned a True rating:
Facebook Post: Congress has an 11% approval rating, but 96.4% of incumbents were re-elected in 2014. Congress had roughly a 14 percent approval rate, and the incumbent re-election rate may be as low as 95 percent - but the point of the meme was solid. It's correct to say that voters hold Congress in low regard, but they re-elected almost everyone.
Rand Paul: "It costs more to shut the government down than to keep it open." Independent economic research groups have found that the government shutdown had tangible costs in lost revenue, curtailed economic growth, stalled private-sector activity and led to expenses for closing government for two weeks. The government had to pay all of what it normally would have spent during that two-week period and then some. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had his facts right on this one.
Barack Obama: "During the past four years, average wages have barely budged." Obama made this claim during his 2014 State of the Union address. We found two federal data sets that broadly agreed with him. A Republican, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, also earned a true rating for a similar claim - that "the average family (is) now bringing home $4,000 less than they did just five years ago."
Paul Ryan: " Over the past three years, 'deep poverty" has reached its highest level on record." In a report titled " The War on Poverty: 50 Years Latter," House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., cited record levels of "deep poverty," defined as a household that "makes less than 50 percent of the poverty line." We found that the period 2010 to 2012 produced the highest percentage since the statistic was first calculated in 1975.
Louise Slaughter: "By the fourth grade, 86% of African American boys and 82% (of) Hispanic boys are reading below proficiency levels." Slaughter, a Democratic House member from upstate New York, has the backing of government data for this depressing statistic, though we also noted that the United States has at least seen improvements in these scores across all races since the early 1990s.
Mitch McConnell: "More women are graduating from college now than men." Since the early 1990s, women have earned more postsecondary degrees than men - and in the 2011-12 academic year, women earned more degrees of all types (bachelor's, master's and doctoral) than men did. So the incoming Senate majority leader was right.
Rand Paul: "Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts." The government's 1033 program, which gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, has contributed to police militarization by offering free equipment. While the program (and Washington more generally) is not the sole reason for police militarization, we found strong evidence that it did incentivize it and allow that culture to continue.
Patty Murray: In the past three years, state legislatures have "enacted more of these restrictions (on abortion) than in the previous 10 years combined." Both abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates said they concurred with Democratic Senator Murray, Washington State. Murray was basing her claim on data from a Guttmacher Institute report that counted 205 restrictions from 2011 to 2013, compared to 189 from the previous decade.
Hillary Clinton: By 2009, "dozens of senior terrorists had been taken off the battlefield" by drones." It's difficult to find a definitive number but even a conservative estimate using credible accounts was enough for to rate her claim True.
Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Website used: www.politifact.com.