Checking Some Facts: Democratic U.S. Senate Debate In Bridgeport

Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Chris Murphy and Susan Bysiewicz debated each other Sunday in Bridgeport, less than four weeks before the Aug. 14 primary. You can read the full story about the debate here and watch video of the entire debate online here.

Both talked about the need to fix the economy, improve the nation’s health care system, and tighten gun control laws. But did they fight fair? Capitol Watch has checked a few of their statements for fact below:

Murphy, in response to a question about gun control: “…sensible gun control can start to reverse a trend that has led today to 100,000 people on annual basis being killed with a firearm.”

Murphy

False. Murphy overstated the number of people who are killed by firearms each year. In an email after the debate, his campaign provided links to an estimate by the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, a national gun control advocacy group that estimated nearly 100,000 people are injured or killed each year by firearms.

Using 2008 and 2009 statistics from The Centers for Disease Control, the group found that nearly 31,600 people died from gun violence and nearly 66,770 people were injured by gun violence but survived.

But Murphy clearly said during the debate that 100,000 people are killed annually by firearms. He did not mention the injured.

Bysiewicz, on the need for greater financial regulation: “Look what happened with J.P. Morgan very recently. Jamie Dimon came before Congress and said, ‘Oops, sorry, we just lost $5.3 billion of consumer money.’”

Bysiewicz

Not quite. Bysiewicz is referring to congressional testimony by J.P. Morgan & Chase Co. CEO Jamie Dimon after it was reported that his firm lost billions of dollars on trades by its London office. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the total amount of those loses has now increased to at least $5.8 billion, much higher than was estimated when the loss was first announced in May.

In mid-June, Dimon himself appeared before the House Financial Services committee. According to a written copy of some of his testimony, Dimon did say of the trades: “we have let a lot of people down, and we are sorry for it.”

But Dimon also emphasized that the people who lost money were not the company’s customers, but its shareholders, saying: “We will not make light of these losses, but they should be put into perspective. We will lose some of our shareholders’ money – and for that, we feel terrible – but no client, customer or taxpayer money was impacted by this incident.”

The company still reported a profit for the quarter that included the trades. But shareholders will lose money because the company’s stock price has fallen—16 percent from May through mid-July, according to the London-based Financial Times.

Murphy, in response to a question about improving the economy:  “Eight percent of this state is unemployed today and yet we are losing our share of manufacturing jobs to the rest of the world. I don’t think we can survive if we don’t make things here.”

Mostly true. A report this month from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Connecticut’s state unemployment rate had ticked up to 8.1 percent in June, up from 7.8 percent the month before.

And Murphy’s campaign points to statistics from the state Department of Labor that show that jobs in Connecticut’s manufacturing sector have fallen by almost 50 percent since 1990.

But how much danger that drop in manufacturing poses to the U.S. economy is debatable. In a March 2012 article for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, University of Michigan economics professor Mark J. Perry argued that America’s drop in manufacturing as a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is consistent with a global trend. Perry argues that the drop might be a good thing, reflecting the U.S. economy’s transition to a “services-intensive ‘Information Age’ economy.”

Perry also uses United Nations economic data to show that the U.S. drop in manufacturing is not a recent phenomenon—it’s been in progress since 1970, a period that has included both ups and downs for the U.S. economy, including the high points of the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s.

Bysiewicz, in rebuttal to Murphy’s response to a question on civil liberties: “I’m a little surprised to hear Chris give this answer because three times he voted to re-authorize the PATRIOT Act.”

True. A spokesman for Bysiewicz said after the debate that she was referring to three votes that temporarily extended the PATRIOT Act.

The votes came on bills in Dec. 2009, Feb. 2010 and Feb. 2011 and voting records on GovTrack.us show that Murphy supported those extensions. It’s important to note that two of those votes were on larger funding bills and that those extensions were temporary, for periods of three months to a year.

But, in the most recent vote to extend the PATRIOT Act for about four years, in May 2011, Murphy voted against extending the Act, as did most other House Democrats—including all of Connecticut’s representatives.

Murphy, talking about U.S. healthcare spending: “We spend twice as much money on health care in this country as any country in the world.”

Not quite. After the debate, Murphy’s campaign provided statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international group with a membership that includes 34 industrialized countries.

Those statistics show that the U.S. did spend more on a per-capita basis (about $7,960) in 2009 than any other OECD country. And it’s true that that figure is more than double the average per-capita annual spending among OECD countries ($3,233).

But Murphy clearly said the U.S. spends twice as much as any country in the world, which the statistics don’t quite bear out. Norway, which is second behind the U.S. in health expenditures, spends $5,352 on an annual per-capita basis on health care.

And a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation using 2008 statistics shows similar trends in terms of healthcare spending as a percentage of a country’s GDP. The U.S. spent a significantly higher share of its GDP (16%) on healthcare than the next closest country (France, at 11.2%), but it is not double.

Bysiewicz, adding to her answer to a question about gun control: “In Colorado, this past year, more people died by gun violence than in car accidents.”

Mostly true. The most recent year for which comprehensive Colorado statistics appear to be available is 2010; statistics covering 2011 or 2012 do not appear to be available.

According to a report for 2010 from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, there were more deaths caused by firearms (553) than by unintentional motor vehicle crashes (480).

Nationally, however, the death rate for motor vehicle-related injuries (14.4 per 100,000 people) is higher than the death rate for injuries caused by firearms (10.2 per 100,000 people), according to a 2010 report from the National Center on Health Statistics.