The following is a fact-check from the July 25, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | Latino unemployment is higher than white unemployment and African American unemployment is higher than Latino unemployment – TRUE

MR. MORIAL: I don’t agree that Latinos and Asians have not suffered discrimination in this country or that Native Americans have not suffered discrimination in this country . I think the question is, how do you target and tailor policies that are going to help all economically and socially disadvantaged people. And it’s a fair debate to have, but it also needs to be positive with facts . Look at the Latino unemployment rate . It’s higher than the white rate. The black rate is higher than the Latino rate. So to suggest that there are not disparities that affect the Latino community , that affect the Native American community , most in depth, the African- American community , we’ve got to have the discussion that Jim Webb wants to have. We have facts , real facts , that give a picture of how life is in this nation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s employment summary for June of 2010, Caucasians’ unemployment rate sits at 8.6% and Hispanics at 12.4%. African-Americans have the highest rate of unemployment at 15.4%.

Mr. Morial mentions that he believes that Latinos, Asians and Native-Americans have suffered from discrimination, then correctly states where the unemployment rates for Hispanics, Caucasians and African-Americans stand in-relation to each other. PolitiFact also did this check (same primary source/result – they have a few other sources as well) and we agree with their decision to additionally point out that the Asian community has the lowest rate of unemployment, at 7.7%. We then looked but were unable to find the current Native American unemployment rate.

Because Mr. Morial correctly stated where the unemployment rates of Caucasians, Hispanics and African-Americans stand in relation to each other, we rate his statement TRUE.

Special thanks to crowd-sourcer Shelley for assisting with this fact-check.

This fact-check took a combined 1 hour.

The following is a fact-check from the July 25, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

MARC MORIAL (Urban League President) | There have been more filibusters in the last two years than in the previous century – FALSE

MR. MORIAL: One of the things this distracts from is the news of the week that the Senate cut out $1 billion for summer jobs, but is prepared to spend $60 billion on a troop surge if — in Afghanistan. One of the things this distracts from has been the repeated use of the filibuster to block legislation and block measures that would help the economy in urban communities, and that, to me…

MR. MORIAL: …that, to me, and the persistent use of the filibuster, it being used more times in the last two years than in the previous century…

Even in the early days, representatives and senators used the filibuster to stall debate indefinitely. In 1917, US senators adopted a rule that allowed the debate to end by a 2/3 majority vote, which is known as cloture. Then, in 1975, senators reduced the number of votes required for cloture from 2/3 to 3/5 or 60 of the 100 senators.

According to the Senate historian’s office, which provides a list of the cloture votes since 1919, there were 553 cloture votes between 1919 and 2000. Currently, the 111th Congress (2008-2010) has had 65 cloture votes. Since the records of cloture votes held by the Senate historian’s office only goes back to 1919, we could not tally up the total amount of cloture votes for the previous century (100 years), but we are still able to do this check because from 1919 to 2000 there were 553 cloture votes and in the last 2 years, there has only been 65 cloture votes.

It is worth noting, however, that over the last 30 years the filibuster’s use has been increasing. The 110th Congress (2006 to 2008) tallied up a total of 112 cloture votes – the most ever recorded for a Congress. In the previous century, it took 81 years to have 553 cloture votes and in the last decade, there have been 341.

Regardless, because there were a total of 551 cloture votes between the years 1919 and 2000 and only 65 cloture votes in the last 2 years, we rate Mr. Morial’s statement FALSE.

The following fact-check took a combined 2.5 hours.