Democratic debate in Iowa

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated his claim that the North American Free Trade Agreement and permanent normal trade relations with China have cost the US “some 4 million jobs.” 

“I am sick and tired,” said Sanders as he drew a contrast with former Vice President Joe Biden, pointing to large multinational corporations that he says have reaped the benefits.   

Facts First: This is likely an overestimate of the impact trade agreements can have on the country’s employment.  

It’s difficult to measure the overall economic impact of the NAFTA since trade and investment trends can be affected by a number of factors, including economic growth, inflation and even a weakening dollar, according to the Congressional Research Service.  

Most estimates find that NAFTA had little, if any, impact on national employment levels, though the effect was uneven across regions and industries. 

The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that between 1993 and 2013, the US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased from $17 billion to $177.2 billion and displaced 851,700 US jobs.  

By contrast, the entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 likely had a much larger impact because of sudden competition from cheaper imports. But even the high end of job loss estimates from EPI found that the change in trade status for China caused a loss of 3.4 million jobs between 2001 and 2017. 

Another estimate, from a 2016 study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that normalizing trade relations with China cost the US between 2 million and 2.4 million jobs between 1999 and 2011. 

Billionaire businessman Tom Steyer said tonight he would declare a state of emergency on his first day if elected president.

Steyer went on to say his plan would create millions of jobs.

“It’s going to be the biggest job program in American history. So I know we have to do it and I know we can do it. I know that we can do it in way that makes us healthier. That makes us better paid and is more just,” he said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden repeated his false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq from the moment the war began. 

Biden said he made a “mistake” in casting a 2002 vote, as a senator from Delaware, to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. But he said he cast the vote because the Bush administration had said “they were just going to get inspectors” into Iraq to check for weapons of mass destruction – and that, once Bush actually went to war, he became immediately opposed: “From that point on, I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake.” 

Facts First: As fact checkers have repeatedly noted, Biden did not oppose the war in Iraq from the point it started in March 2003. He did begin calling his 2002 vote a “mistake” in 2005, two years into the war, but he was a vocal public supporter of the war in 2003 and 2004. And he made clear in 2002 and 2003, both before and after the war started, that he had known he was voting to authorize a possible war, not only to try to get inspectors into Iraq. 

CNN’s Facts First team has debunked various versions of Biden’s claim that he opposed the war from the moment it started. Read longer articles on that here, here and here. 

Here are a few representative Biden quotes: In a February 2003 speech in Delaware, he said, “Let everyone here be absolutely clear: I supported the resolution to go to war. I am NOT opposed to war to remove weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. I am NOT opposed to war to remove Saddam from those weapons if it comes to that.” 

It’s true that Biden criticized Bush’s approach to diplomacy in the lead-up to the war, warned in the lead-up to the war that Bush was not being honest about how hard the war would be, and he criticized Bush’s handling of the war from its first weeks on. But Biden made clear that he supported the war despite that criticism.   

In a July 2003 speech at the Brookings Institution, Biden said: “Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force and I would vote that way again today. It was the right vote then and would be a correct vote today.” 

During the Tuesday debate, Biden also offered a confusing timeline of his positions on the war, saying, “I said 13 years ago it was a mistake to give the president the authority to go to war if, in fact, he couldn’t get inspectors into Iraq to stop — what thought to be — the attempt to get a nuclear weapon. It was a mistake. And I acknowledged that.” 

When Biden said “13 years ago,” he appeared to be referring to how, in 2006 and 2007, he was calling his 2002 vote a mistake. The vote itself was more than 17 years ago. 

The Democratic candidates were asked tonight how they would prioritize affordable child care for families if elected president.

Here’s what some of the candidates said:

Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the group with more than 14 minutes of speaking time as of the second commercial break.

Here’s the breakdown (and you can follow along live here.)

Former Vice President Joe Biden was just asked if it would be harder to run against President Trump if he’s acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial.

Pelosi is expected to announce House impeachment managers tomorrow, kicking off the process of the Senate impeachment trial.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that President Trump “flat-out lied” when he claimed the US killed Iran’s top military general because he was targeting four US embassies. 

Facts first: Trump has yet to provide evidence backing up his claim that Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was actively planning new attacks against four US embassies and top administration officials have struggled to defend the President’s comments. But there is no way to know if Trump “flat-out lied” without seeing the underlying intelligence, which remains classified.  

Trump claimed at an Ohio rally last week that Soleimani “was actively planning new attacks.” He later told Fox News, “I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies,” naming Baghdad as one. 

Senior administration officials have repeatedly pointed to danger facing US embassies in the Middle East.  

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said this past weekend he “didn’t see” a specific threat against four embassies in the intelligence.  

“What the President said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well. He said that he believed that they probably, that they could have been targeting the embassies in the region,” Esper added.  

Similarly, Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in an interview on Sunday with ABC’s “This Week” that it was unclear whether embassies or US military bases would be targeted, but insisted Trump’s claim about four embassies being threatened was “consistent with the intelligence.” 

Citing two State Department officials, CNN reported on Monday that State Department officials involved in US embassy security were not made aware of imminent threats to four specific US embassies and didn’t issue warnings about specific dangers to any US embassy before the administration targeted Soleimani.  

The State Department sent a global warning to all US embassies before the strike occurred, a senior State Department official said and the department spokesperson confirmed, but it was not directed at specific embassies and did not warn of an imminent attack.  

Sen. Elizabeth Warren was just asked why her education plan includes calls for tuition-free public college — but an income limit for free child care. 

Here’s how she responded:

“Actually my plan is universal child care for everyone. It just has some people adding a small payment.”

Warren said child care is an issue she has personal experience with.

She said that had a family member not stepped in to help, she may have quit her job.

“And I think about how many women of my generation just got knocked off the track and never got back on. How many of my daughter’s generation get knocked off the track and don’t get back on.”

Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg argued on Tuesday about the boldness of their respective plans on health care, with the former South Bend mayor accusing the Massachusetts senator of solely judging a plan based on the cost and the way it would anger people who disagree.

Warren supports “Medicare for All,” a sweeping health care proposal that would begin transition the United States to a single payer health care system. Buttigieg, instead, has proposed a “Medicare for all who want it” plan that would not force all American onto government health coverage but would offer a public option for people who choose to enroll.

Warren answered a question about health care by saying the “problem” with plans like Buttigieg’s is that while they are an improvement, they are a “small improvement.”

“That’s why is costs so much less,” she said.

“It’s just not true that the plan I’m proposing is small,” Buttigieg said of Warren. “We have to move past the Washington mentality that suggests that the bigness of plans only consists of how many trillions of dollars they put through the treasury the, the boldness of a plan consists of how many Americans it can alienate.”

After Buttigieg hit Warren’s plan for the cost – his plan would cost roughly $1.5 trillion while a full Medicare for All plan could cost as much as $30 trillion – the senator responded, “The numbers that the mayor is offering don’t add up. … You can’t cover that with a kind of money that the mayor is talking about.”

Businessman Tom Steyer said Americans spend “too much” on health care “because corporations own the system.”

After Sen. Bernie Sanders asserted that, “We are now spending twice as much per person on health care as do the people of other country,” Steyer jumped in.