Jim's NowPublic Postings: Fact Check: Did Obama get second-most money from Freddie and Fannie?

Fact Check: Did Obama get second-most money from Freddie and Fannie? Posted: 10:30 PM ET
The Statement: At a presidential debate Tuesday, October 7 in Nashville, Tennessee, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats resisted regulating mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which ultimately collapsed and had to be taken over by the government. "Meanwhile, they were getting all kinds of money in campaign contributions. Sen. Obama was the second-highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in history — in history," he said.

Get the facts!

The Facts: Federal law forbids candidates from receiving money directly from companies. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tracks donations from employees of various companies. The center's list of contributions from Fannie and Freddie employees places Obama second. Ahead of him is Sen. Chris Dodd, Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

The total listed for Obama is $126,349 — a tiny fraction of the approximately $390 million his campaign has raised, according to the center. The list shows McCain has received a total of $21,550 from Fannie and Freddie employees. The list includes donations of at least $200 from those who receive paychecks from Fannie and Freddie. It also includes donations from political action committees — pooled contributions from employees.

The report spans from 1989-2008 — just a portion of the time since Fannie Mae went private in 1968 and Freddie Mac was created in 1970.

The New York Times has published a separate list looking at contributions from "directors, officers, and lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" for the 2008 campaign cycle. That list — using figures from the Federal Election Commission — shows McCain receiving $169,000, while Obama received only $16,000.

VERDICT: Misleading. No donations actually came from the companies. One method of measuring employee contributions does put Obama second overall, but another, for the current election cycle, shows McCain receiving significantly more.

Fact Check: Are business groups critical of McCain's health plan? Posted: 08:15 AM ET Sen. Obama criticized McCain's health care plane Tuesday night.
The Statement
At a presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 7, in Nashville, Tennessee, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama criticized the health-care plan of Republican opponent Sen. John McCain. "In fact, just today, business organizations like the United States Chamber of Commerce, which generally are
pretty supportive of Republicans, said that this would lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system," Obama said.

Get the facts!

The Facts
McCain's health plan includes a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, or $5,000 for families, but also would end the tax-free status that employer-provided health plans currently have. The McCain campaign says that "families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider."

Obama's comments appear to refer to an Oct. 7 New York Times article in which R. Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's executive vice president for government affairs, called elements of McCain's health plan "very discomforting" to some in the business community. "The private marketplace, in my opinion, is ill-prepared today with an infrastructure for an individual-based health insurance system," he said in the article.

The article paraphrases officials from groups like the Chamber, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Businesses saying that eliminating the income-tax exclusion would "accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of
uninsured from 45 million."

Josten says there is a "huge question" whether the $2,500 for individuals or $5,000 for families would be enough to buy the same kind of coverage. According to the article, officials with eight business trade groups contacted by the Times predicted the McCain plan would raise costs and force some employers to stop providing health benefits.

Verdict: True. Obama accurately expresses the tone and content of the news article.

Fact Check: Did McCain say the Iraq war would be easy, popular? Posted: 07:30 AM ET Sen. Obama suggested Sen. McCain was 'cheerleading the president to go into Iraq.'
The Statement
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said at the Oct. 7 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, that when Republican opponent Sen. John McCain "was cheerleading the president to go into Iraq, he suggested it was going to be quick and easy, we'd be greeted as liberators."

Get the facts!

The Facts
McCain repeatedly made comments like the ones Obama describes during the run-up to the March 20, 2003, invasion and in the days after.

On CNN's Larry King Live on Sept. 24, 2002, McCain said "I believe the success will be fairly easy." He said on CNN's Late Edition on Sept. 29, 2002 that "I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." He made the comments more than two weeks before the Senate voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refused to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

McCain also said, on MSNBC's Hardball on March 24, 2003, that "there's no doubt in my mind that once these people (the Saddam Hussein regime) are gone that we will be welcomed as liberators."

The Verdict: True.

Fact Check: Did Obama vote 94 times for higher taxes? Posted: 11:30 PM ET Sen. McCain said Obama 'has voted 94 times' for higher taxes.
The Statement:
Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain said at the Oct. 7 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, that Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama "has voted 94 times to either increase your taxes or against tax cuts. That's his record."

Get the facts!

The Facts:
The effort to convince voters that Sen. Barack Obama would support higher taxes is a central part of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. McCain and the Republican National Committee have repeatedly cited 94 alleged votes by Obama to bolster their argument.

Factcheck.org, a non-partisan project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, pieced through records to determine just what these 94 votes were.

Key findings:
–53 were votes on budget resolutions or amendments that "could not have resulted by themselves in raising taxes," though many "were clear statements of approval for increased taxes"
–23 were against proposed tax cuts
–11 were to increase taxes on people making more than $1 million a year, to help fund programs such as Head Start, school nutrition, or veterans' health care
–Seven were "for measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals."
– The total includes multiple votes on the same measures.

Annenberg says a close look at the record reveals that Obama has "voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers."

Verdict:
Misleading. McCain's summary ignores the fact that some of the votes were for measures to lower taxes for many Americans, while increasing them for a much smaller number of taxpayers. A nonpartisan examination also finds that the 94 total includes multiple votes on the same measures and budget votes that would not directly lead to higher taxes.

Fact Check: Has Obama never 'taken on' Democratic leaders? Posted: 11:15 PM ET Sen. McCain said Obama has never 'taken on' Democratic leaders.
The Statement
Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain said at the Oct. 7 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, that Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama has "never taken on his leaders of his party on a single issue."

Get the facts!

The Facts
Congressional Quarterly examined Obama's votes in the Senate. According to the analysis, Obama has voted with the Democratic Party 96 percent of the time during his tenure in the Senate.

CQ — a non-partisan and highly respected journal of congressional affairs — says McCain has voted in line with the Republican Party 86 percent of the time. McCain's total number of votes is much larger, since he has been in the Senate since 1986, while Obama is in his first term.

CQ also looked at what it deemed to be "key" votes. That analysis found Obama voted with his party on 29 out of 30 votes, which came out to 97 percent of the time. For McCain, CQ said there have been 335 "key" votes over the years, and that he voted with his party on 266 of them — 79 percent of the time.

However, the journal noted instances when Obama voted outside the party. In 2005, Obama was one of only 18 Democrats to vote in favor of a business-backed bill to limit class action lawsuits by forcing the most-expensive into federal court. The majority of Democrats voted against the bill, which was opposed by consumer groups and the trial lawyers lobby.

The journal also noted that Obama sided with Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, who wanted greater disclosure of earmarks in an ethics bill, by voting against an attempt by Obama's home-state mentor, Democratic Whip Richard J. Durbin, to kill DeMint's disclosure amendment.

And, Obama has criticized leading Democrats, including former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, for voting to authorize the Iraq war in 2002. However, many of those comments were made in the context of the Democratic primary campaign and that vote was prior to his time in the Senate.

Verdict: False. While McCain is correct that Obama has supported the Democratic leadership almost all of the time, to say he's never differed with them is not true.

How many more McCain lies and deceptions do I need to demonstrate here?

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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Fact Check: Did Obama get second-most money from Freddie and Fannie?

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