Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Second Presidential Debate: Facts and Funny Quotes

What I felt after the second presidential debate was this:
“Same sh$t, different debate.”

It seems the candidates keep rehashing the same ideas over and over.

So here are some clarifications.
(Note: I used npr.org along with factcheck.org to compile this information. They were my sources, but I didn’t just copy and paste what they wrote into my blog. These are things I feel have repeatedly been misrepresented.)

The Facts on Health Care:
McCain says that his plan would give a $5,000 tax credit to each American, but it is really a $2,500 tax credit per person or $5,000 per family. Americans could receive this tax credit to buy their own health care plan.

Obama would make medium and large companies either pay for health care for their employees or pay a tax that would go toward funding the uninsured. Small businesses would remain exempt from this tax, contrary to what McCain claims. Those Americans who remained uninsured would receive the same health care federal employees do. Obama has also said he would eliminate Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy to pay for this.

The average employer-sponsored family policy costs $12,680 per year currently, so it seems McCain’s plan would still require families to pay a lot of money out of pocket.

In the debate, Obama said that McCain voted against the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. McCain said he did so because he didn't want to finance the program by raising the tobacco tax.

The War in Iraq:
Obama said that the U.S. is spending $10 billion per month in Iraq when the Iraqi government has $79 billion in the bank. Actually, they have $29 billion, but that number could double by the end of the year.

Offshore Drilling:
McCain promoted offshore drilling as a solution to high oil prices. The drilling would take about 10 years to develop and would add less than 2 percent to the world’s oil supply, which would have a minimal impact on prices.

Tax Cuts and Increases:
McCain repeated his claim that Obama has voted 94 times to increase taxes. This is misleading. Obama has voted consistently to restore higher taxes on upper income taxpayers (taxes that Bush cut) but not on middle or low-income workers. This matches with what he has said he would do as president, which is only raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year. McCain also has claimed that Obama wants to raise taxes on small businesses, but most small businesses don’t fall into this category of income. Obama’s tax plan would not affect most small businesses in America.

--------------------------
And to finish off with some humor, here were some of my favorite quotes from the debate:

McCain: “You know, like hair transplants, I might need one of those myself.”

Obama: “Senator McCain, I think the ‘Straight Talk Express’ lost a wheel on that one.”

McCain: “Nailing down Senator Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall.”

Obama: “That's using a hatchet to cut the federal budget. I want to use a scalpel.”

McCain: “That requires a cool hand at the tiller.”

1 comment:

  1. Smokers for McCain!

    Completely unrelated though, I was also celebrating a sibling's birthday while in Vegas!

    ReplyDelete