Q: Do the poor drive farther than the rich, as McCain claims?
A: No. McCain is wrong when he claims repeatedly that low-income people drive more. In fact, the affluent drive twice as many miles.
Person: John McCain
Soft on Iran
Summary
John McCain is attacking Barack Obama’s opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which (among other things) called for labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. McCain claims that Obama’s opposition means that he also opposed calling the IRGC terrorists. We find otherwise.
Obama cosponsored an earlier bill that also called for designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment did more than just label the IRGC terrorists. Obama stated at the time that he opposed the bill on the grounds that it constituted "saber-rattling."
Katrina Kerfuffle
Summary
McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had "voted for every investigation."
McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote,
The Budget According to McCain: Part II
In our last installment we looked at McCain’s pronouncements on spending cuts to help balance the budget. In Part II, we examine what he’s said on a subject that might be more pleasing to many Americans: lowering taxes. We found exaggerations and distortions here, as well.
The Budget According to McCain: Part I
McCain’s big promise is that he can balance the budget while extending Bush’s tax cuts and adding a few of his own. He likes to leave the impression that this can be done painlessly, for example, by eliminating “wasteful” spending in the form of “earmarks” that lawmakers like to tuck into spending bills to finance home-state projects. We found that not only is this theory full of holes, it’s not even McCain’s actual plan. In this story we examine the spending-cut side of McCain’s budget program. In Part II, we’ll look at what McCain has said about taxes.
McCain’s Record on Earmarks
Q: Has McCain ever made any earmarks?
A: Not for fiscal year 2008 and never explicitly, though over the course of his career, there are several that might deserve the label.
Gas Price Fixes That Won’t
Hillary Clinton and John McCain are offering overburdened motorists a federal “gasoline tax holiday.” But economists say that the proposal is unlikely to actually lower the price of gasoline. McCain’s plan would essentially give federal funds to oil refineries, while the net effect of Clinton’s plan probably wouldn’t be much at all, although it would create a lot of new administrative work.
McCain’s $5,000 Promise
McCain says in a new TV ad: “Let’s give every American family a $5,000 refundable tax credit” to buy health insurance. Sounds good. But McCain failed to mention how existing employer-sponsored health benefits would be affected.
DNC vs. McCain
Summary
The Democratic National Committee has produced two TV ads against McCain, hoping to soften him up while the party figures out who its own presidential nominee will be.
One ad shows selected portions of McCain’s comments that a 100-year U.S. presence in Iraq would be "fine with me." The ad uses dramatic images of war and violence, and omits any mention that McCain was speaking of a peaceful presence like that in Japan or Korea.
McCain Voting With Democrats More Than GOP?
Q: Is it true that even though John McCain calls himself a Republican, he has sided more with the Dems than with the Repubs?
A: Not true at all. He voted in support of President Bush 95 percent of the time last year, for example.