10/04/2008

Some more false statements by Biden during the debate

IBD has a brief summary of the inaccurate statements by Biden during his debate with Palin:

First, as InstaPundit's Michael Totten instantly noted after the debate, Biden — the great, seasoned foreign policy expert who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — falsely claimed France and the U.S. "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." . . .

There was also Biden's accusation that John McCain is soft on regulation, when in fact he tried to beef up regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — an explanation for why he got so little campaign money from Fannie and Freddie over the years — under $22,000 — as opposed to the more than $126,000 Obama received in his short time in the Senate.

Sen. Biden falsely claimed that Obama didn't pledge to meet with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; he falsely claimed Gov. Sarah Palin supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies; he said he's always been for clean coal in spite of his record of voting against it in the Senate.

Biden said we have to drill for more of our own oil, easily leading viewers to conclude he and Obama are in favor of more domestic drilling, but as the American Thinker blog's Rick Moran noted in a list of "Biden's Big Lies," "Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to 'raping' the Outer Continental Shelf."

Gov. Palin called Biden on his claim that Gen. David McKiernan in Afghanistan said that the surge could not be applied in Afghanistan; in fact, McKiernan has said that some aspects of Gen. David Petraeus' Iraq strategy could be part of our war efforts in Afghanistan.

And Biden was wrong when he claimed that both McCain and Obama opposed troop funding; McCain simply opposed legislation with a withdrawal deadline.

The Delaware Democrat falsely claimed that McCain's health care plan raises taxes, failing to mention his proposal's offsetting tax credit. And he was untruthful in claiming that under an Obama Administration the middle class will "pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan." Obama, in fact, says he will return income tax rates to the Clinton levels, which were significantly higher than those in effect after tax reform during the Reagan Administration.

National Review's Jim Geraghty noted Biden's claim that "we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country" and concluded Biden was "off by 2,000%."

Geraghty also found that "Katie's Restaurant" in Wilmington, Del., where good old Joe invited anyone to have a beer with him, apparently hasn't been around for decades. Maybe the senator was too busy conferring with imaginary French liberators of Lebanon to visit his constituency. . . .


1) How about this: "We believe -- Barack Obama believes by investing in clean coal and safe nuclear, we can not only create jobs in wind and solar here in the United States, we can export it." Compare to Biden's earlier emphatic promise from September of "No Coal Plants Here in America."

2) Or this: "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that."

Well, this guy was the chairman of the judiciary committee and lead the fight against numerous Republican judicial nominations? As Sonya Jones pointed out, the powers on the Executive branch are in Article II of the Constitution, not Article I. Here is all of Biden's quote:

The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.
And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.


1) I am glad that we agree that Article I of the Constitution has nothing to do with the Executive Branch. Article I covers the legislative branch.
2) The primary role of the vice president is indeed to support the president, but that is in Article II, not Article I. But that cuts against your point below where you try to defend him by writing that "does in fact define the role of of the VP," because you imply that it is the vice president's role in the Senate that is his primary role.
3) Biden doesn't even get the discussion of what is in Article I correct. For example, the only authority of the vice president "has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress." This is so completely wrong that it is laughable. The vice president is the president of the Senate when he is there. He controls the rules of the Senate! He is the one who recognizes Senators when they want to speak.

Biden is so clueless that he doesn't know what part of the constitution covers the executive branch and even more bizarre he doesn't even seem to know how the Senate operates.


3) After Palin said about global warming that "I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet," Biden said "Well, I think it is manmade. I think it's clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden -- Gov. Palin and Joe Biden." Does he really want to argue that 100 percent of the variation in temperature are due to man?

4) From Michael Krauss:
1. In VP debate, Biden said U.S. and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. They didn not. Hezbollah has been around in Lebanon for decades and grown stronger. It was never kicked out by anybody.

2. Biden said Obama warned against letting Hamas participate in Palestinian legislative elections in 2005. The Wash. Post fact-checker says there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Obama issued such a warning.


5) Biden also got the supposed surplus in Iraq wrong -- it was less than half what he claimed it was. The Iraqis currently have $29 billion in the bank.

6) For additional claimed points see this.

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