Fact or Fiction? What the VP candidates said at the debate

Using Factcheck.org and other sources, USA Today’s Ken Dilanian and Richard Wolf checked some of the key arguments made in the Vice Presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, last Thursday night.

In their article, “Fact check: Context of key debate claims,” Dilanian and Wolf found that Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin both manipulated facts when discussing issues such as tax votes, tax rate changes, troop funding, troop levels, diplomacy, oil company tax breaks, and new spending.

Tax votes: Palin said that Obama voted 94 different times for tax increases.
Fact: 23 of the 94 votes would not have increased taxes.

Tax rate changes: Palin said that if Obama raised income taxes for people making $250,000 or more then it would affect millions of small business owners.
Facts: Only 1.3 % of small business owners make $250,000 or more and therefore about 97% of small business owners would not be affected by the tax increase.

Troop funding: Palin said that Obama voted against funding troops in Iraq.
Facts: This is true, but does not clarify that Obama only voted against funding because he wanted the legislation to include a plan to bring troops home.

Troop levels: Palin said that the number of troops in Iraq has been reduced to less than before the surge of troops in 2007 because of success in Iraq.
Fact: There are still 152,000 troops in Iraq. There were only 130,000 troops during the surge.

Diplomacy: Biden said that Obama never said that he would meet with the Iranian president.
Fact: In 2007, at a news conference in New York City Obama said that he would meet with him.

Oil Company tax breaks: Biden says McCain supports $4 billion tax cut for ExxonMobil.
Fact: McCain wants to cut income tax for companies in many sectors of the economy, not just oil companies.

New spending: Palin said that Obama had plans for $1 trillion in new spending.
Fact: Obama has planned for this much in spending but also this much in spending cuts in other areas.

Overall, I believe that Biden and Palin did a better job in the debate than expected. They were both civil, composed, and made good arguments. However, they tended to veer off course from the main topic of the questions and often manipulated facts to make their campaigns look better. Biden did a good job of attacking McCain more than Palin to not come off as sexist and condescending, and Palin did a good job of knowing more facts and not sounding as incompetent as she did in the interview with Katie Couric. I believe that more specifics would have been helpful in the debate on both candidate’s parts, however when the answers are somewhat spontaneous, we cannot expect perfection. On our parts, it is just important to do more research after the fact so you can find out what facts have been manipulated and who actually knows their stuff, not just who looks or sounds good. Image is very important in this campaign, but citizens of this country have to look past that when they make their decisions of who will run our country for the next four years.