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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Freddie, Fannie and Barack

Update, Sept. 19: Portions of this post were based on incomplete data. We have struck through the incorrect sections. Please see here for our corrected account. We apologize for the inconvenience.
In a Sept. 16 stump speech in Vienna, Ohio, Republican presidential nominee John McCain went after Barack Obama, his Democratic counterpart, charging that Obama can’t possibly hope to change Washington. After all, McCain said, Obama is a big part of the problem.

Can’t be Fired

We noticed John McCain saying today that he would fire the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission if he were president. But, fortunately for the SEC chairman, the president can’t fire him.

McCain (Sept. 18, Cedar Rapids, Iowa): The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president. And in my view has betrayed the public trust. If I were president today, I would fire him.

ABC News points out that “while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair,

More on the Phantom 62 Percent

In our recent article “Sliming Palin,” we addressed the pervasive rumor that Gov. Palin slashed funding for special needs education. She didn’t. Instead, she increased funding. Here’s more detail on how an increase got mistaken for a 62 percent decrease.
The evidence that’s been cited to support the false decrease claim:

The special schools component of the education budget for fiscal year 2007, before Palin was governor, was $8.3 million.
The special schools budget for 2008 was $3.2 million.

Obama’s Iraqi Accounting Oversight

Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly conducted a sit-down interview with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama that is airing in four installments. (Parts three and four of the interview will air tonight and tomorrow night.)
The first segment was broadcast Thursday, and we noticed an accounting error on Obama’s part. When speaking about how much the U.S. is spending in Iraq, Obama added, “They’ve got $79 billion,” alluding to Iraq’s financial deposits and budget surplus. But that’s false.

Distorting McCain’s Remarks

Summary
Obama’s campaign is running a TV ad in Indiana that asks the question: "How can John McCain fix the economy, when he doesn’t think it’s broken?" But the ad uses quotes from McCain that are old and taken out of context:

The ad shows McCain saying, "I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession." But McCain said that in January, and he also acknowledged at the time that the American economy was in "a rough patch."

Pork-barrel Spending

Q: What percentage of the national spending is pork?
A: About 1 percent.

The Whoppers of 2004

Bush and Kerry repeat discredited claims in their final flurry of ads. Here’s our pre-election summary of the misinformation we found during the Bush-Kerry presidential campaign.

Pro-Bush Puffery on Economy, Medicare

New ad claims Bush inherited an economy “already in recession” and that 41 million seniors “now have access to lower cost prescriptions.” Wrong on both counts.