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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Obama’s Gun Ban?

Q: Did Obama promise last year to ban all semi-automatic guns during his first year as president?
A: A widely circulated e-mail quoting Obama is baseless and almost certainly fabricated. He does support reinstatement of the expired "assault weapons ban" but isn’t calling for a wider ban on all semi-automatic weapons. He said repeatedly during the campaign, "I am not going to take your guns away."

Long Term Debt Forecasts

Q: What’s a good source for the U.S.A.’s long-term debt, annual revenues and expeditures, and long-term deficit forecasts?

A: The Congressional Budget Office publishes data on the federal government’s budget – that’s revenues and expenditures, deficits and debt. The Treasury Dept. is the best source for daily debt figures.

Georgia Ad Attacks

In recent weeks, we’ve posted two articles on our main site on the misleading ad war being waged on Georgia airwaves. The Senate run-off election is set for tomorrow (Dec. 2) to determine whether Republican Saxby Chambliss holds onto his seat or challenger Jim Martin, a former state representative, adds to the Democratic majority.
Before the votes are tallied, we wanted to give Georgians the low-down on one last suspicious claim we hadn’t addressed. A Chambliss ad says that Martin "tried to raise property taxes 150 percent"