93crawler
09-07-2008, 05:36 PM
For those of you who always seem to have a hard time not talking shit about where I get content to post in threads, here is one from Factcheck.org. It details what non-truths were made about Obama during the GOP convention. The site is entirely independent, unbiased, and about as apolitical as you can get these days. Here it is, debate away.
We found a few factual issues in Tuesday night's big-name speeches at the convention in Minnesota's Twin Cities.
Obama on Your Side
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat (now Independent) who supports McCain, accused Obama of not reaching out to the other side:
Lieberman: In the Senate, during the three-and-a-half years that Senator Obama has been a member, he has not reached across party lines to get accomplish anything significant. ...
Lieberman at conventionWe don't know what Lieberman considers "significant." But Obama has co-sponsored bills with members of the other party, some of which have been noteworthy. Obama and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, for instance, teamed up on an initiative to lock down and secure both nuclear and conventional weapons worldwide, such as the shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles that have been proliferating in recent years. According to a report on the bill by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the legislation "enhances: (1) U.S. cooperation with foreign governments to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles around the world; and (2) the United States' ability to provide assistance to foreign governments aimed at helping them detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction." Lugar hasn't objected to Obama's characterization of their partnership or the bill, which became law in 2007, in his ads.
Another example: Obama worked with Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, to write the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which created a searchable database the public can use to look up details on federal grants and contracts. (McCain was also among the original co-sponsors of that bill, so Lieberman may have been tarring his own candidate when he disparaged Obama's legislative accomplishments). Obama and Coburn also got together on a bill to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from issuing open-ended, no-bid contracts for emergency response activities after abuses were found in post-Katrina contracting.
The Truth on Taxes (Again)
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who was in the race himself earlier this year, banged the now-familiar tax drum in his denunciation of Obama when he said, "You don't lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history."
Thompson at convention We've been here before (repeatedly), but we're happy to reiterate: What Obama is proposing is indeed a substantial tax increase for some, but not for most. Overall, Obama says he would raise income, capital gains and dividend taxes only for taxpayers with family income above $250,000 or singles making more than $200,000. He would also raise corporate taxes through selective “loophole closings.”
For most taxpayers rates would go down. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has described his plan this way:
Tax Policy Center: The Obama plan would reduce taxes for low- and moderate-income families, but raise them significantly for high-bracket taxpayers. ... By 2012, middle-income taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise by about 5 percent, or nearly $2,200 annually. Those in the top 1 percent would face a $19,000 average tax increase — a 1.5 percent reduction in after-tax income.
It’s true that Obama’s tax proposals overall would raise federal revenues by $627 billion over 10 years. Is that “one of the largest tax increases in American history” as Thompson claimed? And would it be a drag on the economy as he says?
When it comes to assessing the effect that a tax change will have on the economy, the single most relevant figure is the size of the increase or cut in relation to the size of the overall economy. And by that yardstick, Obama’s increase is hardly a history-maker. The largest was the 1942 increase enacted as the U.S. plunged into World War II, and it amounted to 5.2 percent of the entire economy in its first year.
President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increase, which Republicans regularly and misleadingly call the largest in history, was actually about one-tenth as large, amounting to 0.5 percent of the economy over its first two years. The TPC calculates that Obama’s overall tax increase, as described by his aides and on his Web site, would be roughly 0.1 percent in its first year, and 0.3 percent on average over 10 years, compared with what people are paying now.
And how would that affect the economy? Not much. The TPC says, “Neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified.” The tax plans of both Obama and McCain would leave the federal government wallowing in huge deficits for years to come, and compared with the economic drag created by deficit spending, the effects of either man’s tax plan is negligible.
Troop Funding Foul Play
Lieberman also said that "colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield." That's a highly misleading claim that McCain also touted in an ad this summer. Obama has voted in favor of war-funding bills at least 10 times since becoming a senator. The McCain camp and Republicans cite one vote Obama cast against a funding bill as justification for their claim – but that vote came after President Bush had vetoed a version of the bill that included a date for withdrawal from Iraq.
In fact, most Republicans voted against that 2007 war-funding bill Obama and the Democrats supported. McCain was absent for the vote, but he urged the president to veto the bill. As we said about this subject previously, "Based on those facts, it would be literally true to say that ‘McCain urged a veto of funding for our troops.’ But that would be oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading." And the same goes for Lieberman’s claim at the convention.
We found a few factual issues in Tuesday night's big-name speeches at the convention in Minnesota's Twin Cities.
Obama on Your Side
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat (now Independent) who supports McCain, accused Obama of not reaching out to the other side:
Lieberman: In the Senate, during the three-and-a-half years that Senator Obama has been a member, he has not reached across party lines to get accomplish anything significant. ...
Lieberman at conventionWe don't know what Lieberman considers "significant." But Obama has co-sponsored bills with members of the other party, some of which have been noteworthy. Obama and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, for instance, teamed up on an initiative to lock down and secure both nuclear and conventional weapons worldwide, such as the shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles that have been proliferating in recent years. According to a report on the bill by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the legislation "enhances: (1) U.S. cooperation with foreign governments to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles around the world; and (2) the United States' ability to provide assistance to foreign governments aimed at helping them detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction." Lugar hasn't objected to Obama's characterization of their partnership or the bill, which became law in 2007, in his ads.
Another example: Obama worked with Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, to write the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which created a searchable database the public can use to look up details on federal grants and contracts. (McCain was also among the original co-sponsors of that bill, so Lieberman may have been tarring his own candidate when he disparaged Obama's legislative accomplishments). Obama and Coburn also got together on a bill to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from issuing open-ended, no-bid contracts for emergency response activities after abuses were found in post-Katrina contracting.
The Truth on Taxes (Again)
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who was in the race himself earlier this year, banged the now-familiar tax drum in his denunciation of Obama when he said, "You don't lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history."
Thompson at convention We've been here before (repeatedly), but we're happy to reiterate: What Obama is proposing is indeed a substantial tax increase for some, but not for most. Overall, Obama says he would raise income, capital gains and dividend taxes only for taxpayers with family income above $250,000 or singles making more than $200,000. He would also raise corporate taxes through selective “loophole closings.”
For most taxpayers rates would go down. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has described his plan this way:
Tax Policy Center: The Obama plan would reduce taxes for low- and moderate-income families, but raise them significantly for high-bracket taxpayers. ... By 2012, middle-income taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise by about 5 percent, or nearly $2,200 annually. Those in the top 1 percent would face a $19,000 average tax increase — a 1.5 percent reduction in after-tax income.
It’s true that Obama’s tax proposals overall would raise federal revenues by $627 billion over 10 years. Is that “one of the largest tax increases in American history” as Thompson claimed? And would it be a drag on the economy as he says?
When it comes to assessing the effect that a tax change will have on the economy, the single most relevant figure is the size of the increase or cut in relation to the size of the overall economy. And by that yardstick, Obama’s increase is hardly a history-maker. The largest was the 1942 increase enacted as the U.S. plunged into World War II, and it amounted to 5.2 percent of the entire economy in its first year.
President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increase, which Republicans regularly and misleadingly call the largest in history, was actually about one-tenth as large, amounting to 0.5 percent of the economy over its first two years. The TPC calculates that Obama’s overall tax increase, as described by his aides and on his Web site, would be roughly 0.1 percent in its first year, and 0.3 percent on average over 10 years, compared with what people are paying now.
And how would that affect the economy? Not much. The TPC says, “Neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified.” The tax plans of both Obama and McCain would leave the federal government wallowing in huge deficits for years to come, and compared with the economic drag created by deficit spending, the effects of either man’s tax plan is negligible.
Troop Funding Foul Play
Lieberman also said that "colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield." That's a highly misleading claim that McCain also touted in an ad this summer. Obama has voted in favor of war-funding bills at least 10 times since becoming a senator. The McCain camp and Republicans cite one vote Obama cast against a funding bill as justification for their claim – but that vote came after President Bush had vetoed a version of the bill that included a date for withdrawal from Iraq.
In fact, most Republicans voted against that 2007 war-funding bill Obama and the Democrats supported. McCain was absent for the vote, but he urged the president to veto the bill. As we said about this subject previously, "Based on those facts, it would be literally true to say that ‘McCain urged a veto of funding for our troops.’ But that would be oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading." And the same goes for Lieberman’s claim at the convention.