Fact-checking Marco Rubio on the fiscal cliff

The fiscal cliff negotiations are now over, but while they were happening, there were lots of accusations and finger-pointing.

Amid home stretch negotiations, Florida’s Marco Rubio took to the online messaging service Twitter to tell people what was happening. On the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 30, he tweeted: “Report that #GOP insisting on changes to Social Security as part of #fiscalcliff false. BTW those changes are supported by @barackobama.”

The next day, liberal columnist Paul Krugman said Rubio lied about the negotiations, and that “numerous reports tell us that McConnell did in fact make precisely that demand,” referring to the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

PolitiFact Florida decided to sort out the controversy by investigating Rubio’s claim that the GOP did not insist on changes to Social Security as part of the fiscal cliff, and whether Obama actually supported those changes. We ended up rating Rubio’s statement Half True. Read our full report to see what we found about Social Security and the fiscal cliff.