Fact Check: President Obama's State of the Union 2010

A look at the president's claims in his address to Congress.

ByABC News
January 27, 2010, 6:55 PM

Jan. 27, 2010— -- President Obama made economy the focal point of his first State of the Union address, but he also touched upon a variety of other issues, from foreign policy to health care.

ABC News takes a look at some of the claims in President Obama's State of the Union address tonight to verify whether they are true.

The president has assailed the Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing, and tonight said, "The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign companies -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities."

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site from the St. Petersburg Times, did some research when Obama first made the claim in his weekly radio address last weekend and found that it was barely true. Obama's statements on whether foreign companies can spend money in U.S. political campaigns "overstated the ruling's immediate impact."

Current federal law prevents "a partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country" from making, "directly or indirectly," a donation or expenditure "in connection with a federal, state, or local election," to a political party committee or "for an electioneering communication."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was seen shaking his head tonight as Obama made the pointed attack.

"That's why -- for the first time in history -- my administration posts our White House visitors online. And that's why we've excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions," the president said tonight.

It is true that the Obama administration became the first to implement a policy disclosing visitors to the White House, but the claim on lobbyists isn't quite right.

Obama signed an executive order in January 2009 barring lobbyists who became members of the administration from working on matters they lobbied on for two years or in agencies they lobbied during the previous two years.