Nonpartisan Group Assails McCain for Making Misleading Tax Charges Against Obama

The nonpartisan FactCheck.org accuses John McCain and the Republican National Committee of engaging in Tax Tally Trickery in claiming that Barack Obama "voted 94 times for higher taxes." The group calls the charge "inflated and misleading":

After looking at every one of the 94 votes that the RNC includes in its tally, we find:

• Twenty-three were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all; they were against proposed tax cuts.
• Seven of the votes were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals.
• Eleven votes the GOP is counting would have increased taxes on those making more than $1 million a year – in order to fund programs such as Head Start and school nutrition programs, or veterans’ health care.
• The GOP sometimes counted two, three and even four votes on the same measure. We found their tally included a total of 17 votes on seven measures, effectively padding their total by 10.
• The majority of the 94 votes – 53 of them, including some mentioned above – were on budget measures, not tax bills, and would not have resulted in any tax change. Four other votes were non-binding motions related to conference report negotiations

It's true that most of the votes the GOP counts would either have increased taxes for some, or set budget targets calling for such increases. But by repeating their inflated 94-vote figure, the McCain campaign and the GOP falsely imply that Obama has pushed indiscriminately to raise taxes for nearly everybody. A closer look reveals that he's voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers. That's consistent with what he's said he'd do as president, which is to raise taxes only on those making more than $250,000 a year.