Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

To Vote or Not to Vote

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Nice ad, I think.  But there's a big problem with it.  That part where he extends healthcare to wounded troops and cites Public Law 110-181 on 1/28/08?  (pause it at 47 seconds)  It's a lie.  Do a little digging, and you'll find that 110-181 is the National Defense Re-authorization Act.

 Senator Obama was not present.  The vote was 91-3, so to be fair, his vote was essentially moot.  Even McCain didn't show up.  It was in the bag.

But McCain didn't put an ad out citing a piece of legislation he didn't even vote on.  Do a Thomas.gov search on Obama to see what he did on 1/28/08?  Nothing.  Try for yourself. 

Not voting in Congress while you're campaigning is nothing new to the Presidential races — you could say it's a politics as usual that both candidates are guilty of.  However, Obama's ad pushes it to a whole new level. 

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  1. McCain criticized the congress for taking the July 4th vacation by saying it was “incredible that Congress should go on vacation while Americans are trying to stay in their homes.”

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    p>McCain missed 367 votes (61.4%) during the current Congress, 10 points higher then Tim Johnson who had a brain hemorrhage.

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    p>http://projects.washingtonpost…

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    p>Also, if I’m not mistaken, the Reauthorization Act of 2008 incorporated Obama and Claire McCaskill’s Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act, so Obama may not have been one of the 91 who voted for it, but he was responsible for shaping a key part of the legislation intended to help wounded troops.

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    p>Remind me what the GOP has done to aid wounded troops lately.

    • cite public law 110-181 in the ad?  Did he or did he not cite the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act in the ad?  

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      p>It’s a dishonest ad.  

      • …and Obama helped author the Wounded Warriors policies in the first place, then he was instrumental in passing a law that “extended health care to wounded veterans who’ve been neglected”. What more could have Obama done to pass a law that “extended health care to wounded veterans who’ve been neglected”?  

      • he was correct in citing 110-181.  otherwise nitpickers would be saying “hey! that act never got signed into law!!!!”  and they’d rechnically be correct, because it alone didn’t get signed into law, 110-181 which contained it got signed into law.

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        p>funny thing is, Joe, that Obama is making some major mistakes.  you don’t have to nitpick how a law was cited in an ad for gotchas.  just look at his pandering and policy reversals – no stretch needed to find items worthy of criticism there.  why bother with this ad stuff at all?

        • Obama’s policy reversals don’t shock or suprise me because I was expecting them.  You see, his supporters got their hopes up and their money invested in a man who promised things he wouldn’t deliver.  Being a Republican and having GWB, this is business as usual and frankly, I’d keel over if he got off the terorrist rant and mentioned the millions of retiring baby boomers who are going to bankrupt the country in a few years when they go on Social Security and then medicare a few years after that.  Fiscal Wake-up Call Tour anyone?

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          p>Why bother with this ad stuff?  The ad stuff bothers me and surprises me that he would cite law he didn’t vote for.  His policy reversals and pandering?  It wasn’t a matter of if but when in my mind.  I hope that answers your question.

          • You have been corrected as to Obama’s involvement with this bill.  No, he wasn’t present for the final, foregone-conclusion vote.  But yes, his work in the legislative process resulted in superior veterans benefits becoming law.  

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            p>You can continue to harp on a semantic quibble, or you can man up and admit that you didn’t have all the facts.  What’ll it be?

            • I was unaware of the Obama-McCaskill part.  

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              p>That said, I would have been very weary of including this portion of the ad, given the fact he didn’t vote on the final bill.  If ANYTHING, it prevents him from taking a high-road in the who-is-doing-their-senate-job argument.  

              • First, for standing corrected. Second, for making a valid if arguable point about the reference. Perhaps the script could have been written a bit more precisely.

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                p>The larger point, of course, still stands: Bush got the troops wounded for a war that, as Obama correctly says, should never have been fought, and then didn’t do as much as he should have done to help them.

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                p>John McCain, by contrast, is an enthusiastic, and apparently blind, supporter of the Iraq invasion.

  2. you will find that Obama authored several key sections of an earlier version of the Defense Authorization Bill, HR 1585:

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    Obama Hails Passage of Key Veterans, Contractor Provisions in Defense Authorization Bill
    Monday, December 17, 2007

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    CONTACT: Michael Ortiz, 202 228 5566

    Legislation Includes Wounded Warrior Provisions, Contracting Reforms, and Improved Mental Health Support for Veterans

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) lauded the Senate’s passage of the Conference Report to the Defense Authorization bill (H.R.1585), which makes important investments in the nation’s defense and improves support for our uniformed service personnel, veterans and their families.

    “I commend the dogged determination of Senator Levin to get this important bill enacted into law. This legislation goes a long way towards providing our wounded warriors with the treatment and facilities they and their families need to heal and rebuild their lives,” said Senator Obama. “Every day, we are reminded that we must do more to ensure these heroes don’t have to wage another battle when they return home. I am also proud that this legislation invests in key programs vital to our national defense, promotes transparency and accountability, and provides an across-the-board pay raise of 3.5% for all uniformed service personnel.”

    The measure includes key provisions based on bills authored by Obama, including:

       * Provisions authored with Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act (S. 713) that the two senators introduced in February 2007, following news reports of extreme neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. These provisions would: improve living conditions at military facilities; enhance health care for recovering service members; slash red tape to ease the healing process; provide health care to family members assisting recovering service members; and reform the broken military disability review process. The bill also adopts another important Obama-McCaskill bill, the HERO Act (S. 1271), which would launch a major national research endeavor into the readjustment needs of returning service members, veterans, and their families.

       * A requirement that federal departments compile and report information to Congress on the role of private security contractors, such as Blackwater USA. With an estimated 48,000 private security employees operating in Iraq, and more than 1,000 contractors killed since 2003, little is known about what functions these security contractors are performing. Obama originally offered the Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act (S. 674) in February 2007.

         A requirement that the Department of Veterans Affairs provide all combat veterans with a mental health care evaluation within 30 days or less of a request from the veteran. This provision was included in the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act (S. 117), which was introduced in both the 109th and 110th Congresses.

    Obama is a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

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    p>Our “support the troops” president vetoed that bill.  However, Obama’s provisions made it into the new version, HR 4986, which as you note was overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and signed by the president.

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    p>So no, Obama didn’t participate in the final, foregone-conclusion vote.  Instead, he worked to get key provisions into it.  Seems fair to take some credit.

    • The ChiTrib’s John McCormick wrote up a post similar to Joe’s, but acknowledged Obama’s role in drafting the bill.

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      In a new 60-second ad set to start running in 18 states on Friday, Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign cites Public Law 110-181 when he talks about his efforts to extend “health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.”

      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.

      But neither did Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. He was also busy campaigning when the vote was taken on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The bill, H.R. 4986, was easily passed without either man’s vote.

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      p>Also, see this post on DKos for some of the legislative background.

  3. An attempted Republican gotcha melts when a bucket of reality is dumped on it.

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    p>The essential problem with your argument Joe is that you’re dodging the issue, which is who did more for wounded troops? President Bush, who launched our fiasco in Iraq and presided over its incompetent execution — which got them wounded in the first place — and then vetoed a bill that would have helped them, or Obama who actually put some language in the legislation that got passed and thus had a constructive result.

    • Why didn’t he say ‘I supported the bill’ instead of I VOTED for it?

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      p>The essential problem with your argument BOB is that you’re dodging the issue, which is who is running campaign ads which are not even factual?

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      p>I realize this interferes with the GWB mantra, but do you really think you” GAIN votes trying to depect McCain as being against veterans, when he actually IS one, by having Obama tell lies?

      • He didn’t say he “voted” for it.  He used the word “passed.”  Could he have chosen better words?  Yes.  But Bob’s point stands unrebutted: Obama has done a hell of a lot more for veterans through his work on this bill — as a result of which veterans benefits were indeed PASSED — than GWB.

    • It’s almost enough to make me toss in a Paula Cole album.

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      p>GOPers who have helped troops?  Look to men like Duncan Hunter.

  4. …two nights ago and see McCain take credit for the GI Bill that passed without his vote…and when he said he opposed the measure. Then he attacks Jim Webb for not caving into some scheme he cooked up with Lindsay graham. Meanwhile the VFW is praising Webb and his efforts on their web page.

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    p>In this fight. No contest. Obama is for more generous benefits for health care and education for returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans than McCain. That is the point of the ads.  

  5. As soon as I read your post, before I looked at any of the comments here, this is what I thought:

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    p>”Defense Re-authorization, huh?  Sounds like a big budget bill with a lot of provisions and amendments.  Obama is citing extending health care for wounded troops, so clearly he’s referring to a specific provision in this bill, not the entire bill.  What would be relevant is how that provision got into the bill, so that’s what I’d dig for.  If it passed 91-3 and he missed it, that suggests that he knew it needed no help in the final vote, but that doesn’t seem important.  I bet he had something to do with either passing an amendment to this bill, or authoring a provision that became part of this bill, that extended healthcare for wounded troops.  That’s what I’d dig for.”

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    p>I think that was completely obvious, merely from looking at your post.

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    p>Reading the comments now, I see that it was also correct.

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    p>Be careful when you call out a “lie”.  Do some real digging, or at the very least, pose it as a question.

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    p>Ironically, this is one of the key problems I see with John McCain: He tends to be very confident about some things he’s completely wrong about.  Anyone can be wrong, but the level of confidence he shows in his wrongness sometimes is scary.

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