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Obama's Padding
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Obama has spent about $75 million on about 140,000 airings of ads so far. So of course last week he found it necessary to launch a new ad to introduce himself:
About 46 seconds into the ad, we are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” and in the usual manner of these political commercials we are given a little citation at the bottom.The problem is Senator Obama never voted for that legislation. Public Law 110-181 is part of the defense authorization bill which passed the Senate in January by a vote of 91 to three with six senators not voting. Obama was one of those six absent senators.
The citation reads “Public Law 110-181 1/28/08”. That law is the only federal legislation cited in the ad — the other two items mentioned were from the Illinois legislature and referred to other issues raised in the ad.
Some in the media overcame Obamamania and highlighted Obama’s false ad claims:
Chicago Tribune: “Obama ad cites bill he did not vote on.... While the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee authored provisions that ultimately made it into the law, he did not vote for its passage on Jan. 22, when he was busy campaigning in advance of the South Carolina primary.” (06/20/08)The fact checkers don't approve either:
New York Times: “Mr. Obama refers to three bills that passed during his time in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate, and he did have a hand in passing all three. But he did not actually vote on the third bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed overwhelmingly in January.” (06/20/08)
Washington Post: “Obama sponsored or co-sponsored – but did not ‘pass’ – the welfare and tax measures but does not mention that these were in the Illinois legislature in 1997 and 2000. He sponsored congressional measures that helped hospitalized veterans, but in a relatively minor way: extending beyond 90 days the period in which they can receive free meals and free phone calls to family members. Obama may have turned down Wall Street jobs after graduating from Columbia University in 1983, but he spent a year working for Business International Corp. in New York before becoming a community organizer in Chicago, and he later joined a law firm there.” (06/20/08)
PolitiFact says that Obama’s “third claim on veterans health benefits is less clear… Obama was not a sponsor of the bill, and without more detail we can't confirm whether he contributed to the law…” (06/23/08)In the human resources field, padding a resume is considered lying. Personnel types don't like it one bit. When a candidate is caught padding his resume, the candidate does not get the job. Voters could learn something from the human resource folks.
FactCheck.org: “[F]or Obama to say that he ‘passed a law’ casts him as a legislative Lone Ranger, hogging credit that properly belongs to other parties as well.” (06/20/08)
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