Nonsense in Nashville

McCain was touting the former president and CEO of the popular Internet auction site, Meg Whitman, as a possible secretary of the treasury in a McCain administration.

Counting Errors
McCain exaggerated Obama's votes to increase taxes.

McCain: Sen. Obama has voted 94 times to either increase your taxes or against tax cuts. That's his record.

He's getting warmer — the first time we dinged him for this one, he said Obama voted 94 times to increase taxes, which is way off. He's now saying it's 94 votes either for increased taxes or against tax cuts. But that's still misleading. Seven of the votes were for lowering taxes for most people while increasing them on a few, and 11 votes were for increasing taxes only on those making more than $1 million a year (not "your taxes" except for a very few.)

Obama had his own misleading claim about vote counts:

Obama: And during that time, he voted 23 times against alternative fuels, 23 times.

We found that only 11 of those votes would have reduced or eliminated subsidies or tax incentives for alternative energy. The rest were votes McCain cast against the mandatory use of alternative energy, or votes in favor of allowing exemptions from such mandates.

More on that $860 Billion
McCain said that Obama has proposed more than $800 billion in new spending.

McCain: Do you know that Sen. Obama has voted for – is proposing $860
billion of new spending now? New spending.

That's based on a McCain campaign estimate of how much Obama's new proposals will cost, without figuring in any savings or reductions in spending. Any increase in funding and any created program counts as "new spending" in this estimate, whether or not it is offset by decreases in spending elsewhere.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has found that both Obama and McCain are proposing combinations of tax and spending policies that would increase the federal deficit. It found that in 2013, Obama's proposals would produce a net deficit increase of $286 billion, while McCain's major policies would produce a net deficit increase of between $167 billion and $259 billion. In talking to CNN, CRFB President Maya MacGuineas estimated that McCain's deficit increase would fall midway between the extremes of that range, at $211 billion.

Iraqi Surplus
Obama repeated a stale talking point when he said, "We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion."

As we've pointed out when Obama said it on the campaign trail, when he repeated it at the last debate, and even when Biden mentioned the figure in the vice presidential debate, that number is wrong. The Iraqis actually "have" $29.4 billion in the bank. The Government Accountability Office projected in August that Iraq's 2008 budget surplus could range anywhere from $38.2 billion to $50.3 billion, depending on oil revenue, price and volume. Then, in early August, the Iraqi legislature passed a $21 billion supplemental spending bill. The supplemental will be completely funded by this year's surplus, and that means that the Iraqi's will not have $79 billion in the bank. They could have about $59 billion.

$6.8 Million Boast
McCain repeated a questionable boast when he said, "I've taken on some of the defense contractors. I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion in a deal for an Air Force tanker that was done in a corrupt fashion."