WASHINGTON — Wednesday night, two of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination faced off in Iowa in the last debate before voters there cast the first ballots in this year’s primary election.
Former President Donald Trump once again qualified for the debate, but opted instead for a separate town hall. Without him, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley challenged one another, they said, to “stick to the facts.”
Both DeSantis and Haley made claims about how changes to the economy have impacted Americans' lives in the last few years.
THE CLAIM
Nikki Haley: “Republicans and Democrats have both done this, the fact they’ve done all of this wasteful spending, they did a $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that expanded welfare, that’s now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That’s a third of our country.”
SOURCES
ANSWER
Haley did not consider that many people would get both Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
WHAT WE FOUND
The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget breaks down the spending allocations in the CARES Act, the COVID-relief package passed in early 2020. All $2.2 trillion of it.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, on the Medicaid.gov website, tallies more than 88 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid as of September. That is 10 million more than in 2019, as states were incentivized in the intervening years to expand Medicaid health insurance offerings to more of their population during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to non-profit policy group Kaiser Family Foundation, neither Florida nor South Carolina have expanded Medicaid availability.
SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, also expanded to more people during the pandemic. Pew Research Center reports that the number of people on food stamps varies month to month, but was 41.9 million Americans as of April 2023, which is the most recent data.
The Census Bureau counts more than 335 million Americans in the population, so if none of the people using those programs also used the other, Haley would have been correct. However, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services, 60% of SNAP recipients also got care through Medicaid, and 40% of Medicaid participants also take SNAP benefits. That comes to well over 30 million people, making Haley's claim false.
THE CLAIM
Ron DeSantis: “Trying to afford a new home today, your monthly mortgage payment will probably be twice as much as what it would’ve been if you were starting out five years ago.”
SOURCES
ANSWER
DeSantis' math is off, but not by much.
WHAT WE FOUND
The most recent data about the average price of homes sold in the U.S. comes from the third quarter of 2023. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average sale price was $513,400. In the third quarter of 2018, the average sale price of a home was $392,900.
Freddie Mac shows the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for the week ending Sept. 28, 2023 was 7.31%, while the rate was 4.72% for the week ending Sept. 27, 2018.
According to the National Association of Realtors, the average homebuyer put 14% of the purchase price as a down payment, using a loan to pay the rest. Using a mortgage calculator, the average monthly mortgage payment based on the 2023 numbers is $3,030, while the average homebuyer in 2018 paid $1,757.
Therefore, the average monthly mortgage payment for a new homebuyer is 1.72 times more now than it was five years ago. That is a significant amount, but not double.