Fact-Checking Key Assertions in the State of the Union Address

ANALYSIS: Bush makes the potential expiration of his tax cuts sound like a big deal for the average American, but his estimate of the financial impact is skewed because the cuts have disproportionately helped the very richest citizens. That fact boosts the average cost of reinstating the taxes, a circumstance that doesn't reflect what the typical household might experience.

Here's another way of looking at it: the median American household will pay roughly $828 more in taxes in 2011 if the Bush tax cuts expire, according to the Tax Policy Center, a non-ideological think tank venture. The richest 1 percent of American households, in contrast, would have to pay an extra $64,154 a year when the tax cuts expire.

With the economy slowing, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected that the federal budget deficit would actually grow worse this year, not better. In predicting that a surplus will return in 2012, moreover, Bush is not counting the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, nor is he taking into consideration likely congressional action to mitigate the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, which increasingly threatens the middle class.

Bush's 2008 budget accounted for the cost of holding the AMT at bay for just one year. Congress obliged, with an AMT measure that cost the Treasury $50 billion. Bush has said the AMT should be repealed only when the tax code is broadly overhauled, a goal he did not mention last night.

The administration has repeatedly underestimated the costs of the wars. In 2009, it has budgeted $70 billion, only one-third the cost this year.

-- Steve Mufson and Jonathan Weisman

FOR THE RECORD: IMMIGRATION

"America needs to secure our borders, and with your help, my administration is taking steps to do so. We are increasing work-site enforcement, we are deploying fences and advanced technologies to stop illegal crossings, we have effectively ended the policy of 'catch and release' at the border, and by the end of this year, we will have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents."

ANALYSIS: Bush's claim that his administration has boosted prosecutions of companies or company officials that have hired illegal workers is debatable. Such activity decreased during his first presidential term and remains relatively rare.

While federal immigration authorities arrested nearly four times as many people at workplaces in 2007 as they did in 2005, for example, only 2 percent of those arrests involved criminal charges against the employers responsible for hiring workers. Only 92 owners, supervisors or hiring officials were arrested in an economy that includes 6 million companies that employ more than 7 million unauthorized workers.

Only 17 firms faced criminal fines or other forfeitures. The number of illegal immigrants arrested in workplace enforcement cases fell from 2,849 in 1999 to a low of 445 in 2003 before rebounding.