We stayed up all night, and into the morning, but we do have a full analysis of last night’s debate to show for our efforts. Feel free to check it out here and see all the items we found during our live coverage of the debate right here on The Wire.
FactCheck Posts
Judge’s Attack Ad Draws Complaint
Last spring’s Supreme Court race in Wisconsin featured some ugly ads, so ugly that we wrote about the false or misleading claims in them several times. Now, one of the worst of those spots (in our humble opinion) is the subject of a complaint by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission. The proceedings could alter the tenor of ads used in Wisconsin court races.
The ad was sponsored by the campaign of a lower court judge, Mike Gableman,
Obama on Taxes
Obama said that “I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans.” He also said the cut would go to “95 percent of families.” The latter is correct. The Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center analyzed the two candidates’ tax plans and found Obama’s would cut taxes for 95.5 percent of households with children. Overall, the TPC found that Obama’s plan would produce a tax cut for 81.3 percent of all households.
Obama was also off the mark when he said “if you make less than a quarter million dollars,”
$42,000 a year
McCain has claimed yet again that Sen. Obama “voted twice for a budget resolution to increase taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year.” As we’ve reported, a single taxpayer making more than $41,500 would have seen a tax increase, but a couple filing jointly would have seen no increase unless they made at least $83,000, and for a couple with two children the cut-off would have been $90,000. Regardless, the increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan.
Joe the Plumber
He certainly got plenty of airtime.
For those of you who don’t know what that exchange was all about, McCain and Obama were referring to an impromptu encounter between Obama and Toledo, Ohio, plumber Joe Wurzelbacher. Jake Tapper, at ABC News, has the full video.
The short version: Wurzelbacher is a plumber looking to buy a company. He’s concerned that Obama’s tax plan will raise his taxes. That may well be true. As we’ve written before,
John Lewis and the News
McCain was a bit off the mark when he said Obama did not repudiate the remarks of Democratic Rep. John Lewis. Obama did release a statement that said he “did not believe” McCain “or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.” But he did agree with other parts of Lewis’ statement. Here’s the story:
On Oct. 11, Lewis, an activist during the Civil Rights movement, published a statement on the Politico Web site that said in part:
“Sen.
Plumber Joe and His Health Care
Fines for small businesses? Higher income taxes? The government choosing your health care plans? Gold-plated Cadillacs? It all sounds bad (or at least confusing) for Joe, and everyone else … but luckily we’ve broken it all down for you. For the full scoop on both Obama’s and McCain’s health care plans, see our recent article Health Care Spin.
Constitutional Queries about the VP Debate
Hundreds of readers have written us asking why we didn’t point out Joe Biden’s confusion of Articles I and II of the Constitution during his debate with Gov. Sarah Palin on Oct. 2. We should have. While his rambling response was generally correct in describing the constitutional role of the vice president, he did make a small error. And in the interest of clearing up previous debate matters before tonight’s final face-off between John McCain and Barack Obama,
Health Care Spin
An Obama-Biden TV ad says Sen. John McCain’s health care plan would be the “largest middle-class tax increase in history.” A McCain-Palin/RNC radio ad says Obama’s plan “will rob 50 million employees of their health coverage.” Both are false.
We lay out the details of each candidate’s health care plans and the misleading claims being made about them in a new article on our main site:
Health Care Spin October 14, 2008
The $79 Billion Iraqi Surplus, Reconsidered
We’ve criticized both Barack Obama and Joe Biden several times now for claiming that the U.S. is spending $10 billion a month to Iraq while that nation is sitting on a $79 billion surplus. We wrote that the $79 billion figure was out of date because Iraq had since passed a $22.3 billion supplemental spending bill. Our criticism was based on a report from the Government Accountability Office. But we misread the report. The figure that Obama and Biden use is probably still too high,