1 of 1- DollyLongstaff
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GOPs Hate Good Economic News
"92 million Americans aren't working."— Ted Cruz on Sunday, February 8th, 2015 in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union"
Our ruling: Cruz said that "92 million Americans aren't working." Once you strip out senior citizens and school-age Americans, the number is less than half that. The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.
UPDATED, Feb. 11, 2015: After this fact-check was published, Cruz’s office got back to PolitiFact with sourcing for the statistic. The statistic, they said, came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- Table A-1, for the total civilian, non-institutionalized population not in labor force, seasonally adjusted, for January 2015. The total for that month was 92.5 million. Spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said that Cruz was "relying on objective federal labor statistics" in making his statement. However, our fact-check didn’t question the veracity of the BLS statistics – only their relevance to Cruz’s point.
We continue to believe the statistic includes Americans too young and too old to be expected to work, and we stand by our rating of Mostly False.
Last edited by DollyLongstaff (11/10/2015 10:20 am)
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- DollyLongstaff
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Re: GOPs Hate Good Economic News
“The more than 91 million Americans who are out of the workforce and stuck on the sidelines deserve action on the part of the president and the Senate.”
–Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), opinion article in The Tennessean, Jan. 28, 2014
A confused reader wrote The Fact Checker about this sentence, wondering how it was possible that 91 million Americans could be unemployed.
The Pinocchio Test
Black may have not intended to mislead, but she certainly did so by using the 91 million figure in a wholly inappropriate manner. She did not only say that 91 million people were not in the labor force, but she said these people were “on the sidelines” and would benefit from government action. She cannot with a straight face argue that all of those people want a job; in fact, the vast majority are simply retired. She only barely escapes Four Pinocchios because this is a BLS figure.
Three Pinocchios 
Last edited by DollyLongstaff (11/10/2015 10:24 am)
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