“The biggest lie of the year” last year, according to Politifact.com, was President Obama’s promise regarding the Affordable Healthcare Act when he said, “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”

PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times to help people find the truth in American politics. Reporters and editors from the paper fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups and rate them on a scale of true to false on their truth-o-meter.

After the State of the Union Address, a lot of people were left to wonder if the President’s statements were true. However, according to the Washington Post, a State of the Union address is often difficult to fact-check. In an article by Glenn Kessler on washingtonpost.com he writes, “The speech is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted, so major errors of fact are relatively rare.”

PolitiFact cites several facts from the State of the Union address. The first has to do with the gender wage gap. President Obama said, “Women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.” On the truth-o-meter, this statement came in as mostly true and says that this is a fact that President Obama and other White House officials have cited frequently. Obama uses this statistic to imply that twomen make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns for the same work or in the same job, which is not true. The more accurate version is that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, period. PolitiFact concludes, “ultimately, Obama’s statement that women deserve equal pay for equal work was aspirational rather than a part of his statistical claim.”

Another claim PolitiFact checked into is the president's statement that “for the first time in over a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest; America is.” This statement is based on the conclusions of the A.T. Kearney Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index, which surveys corporate executives from 302 companies in 28 countries. In fact, the United States was listed on this survey as number one for the first time since 2001. This statement was rated mostly true because there are other studies that still do not cite the U.S. as number one place to invest.

Next, PolitiFact explored the validity of a statement the president made about the oil industry. He said, “There is more oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world – the first time that’s happened in nearly 20 years.” PolitiFact rates this statement as true. To check this statement, PolitiFact checkers matched the statement against the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to the November 2013 report by the Energy Information Administration, the United States produced an average of 7.8 million barrels of oil per day in October and imported 7.5 million barrels.

Overall, the facts presented by the president were mostly true. However, in order to remain an informed citizen when voting and forming political opinions, there are many tools at your disposal. Along with PolitiFact, there is also a website called ProjectVoteSmart.com that is dedicated to providing unbiased information on political issues, political candidates and more. These resources are super helpful, especially when you want to impress that super cute girl or boy in your political science class… or, you know, vote.