Ad Watch - Barack's Video Lies

For a guy who hasn't had much of a career, Barack obviously has to engage in a bit of puffery to create the impression of having been a legislator.

Just to review his 'career' - in his three years in the U.S. Senate, he's spent two running for president. Three years into his state senate term, he ran for Congress and lost, then ran for reelection, then ran for the U.S. Senate a couple of years later. This guy hasn't had any time to legislate - he's busy trying to get out of whatever job he has.

So, his new TV commercial tries to trick people, as you would expect. First deception - make it seem like he's done something in Washington.

In order to establish his bona fides as a politician who cares about working families, Obama cites his success with three relevant bills. But he doesn't mention that two of the three pieces of legislation were actually passed by the Illinois Senate, not the U.S. Senate.

There is one law passed by Congress that the ad mentions, but this one Barack had nothing to do with!

The only national law in Obama's ad is the one that "extended health care for wounded troops," and... H.R. 4986, which became public law 110-181 in 2008, includes provisions from several Obama-sponsored bills. His ideas made it into law, but Obama was not a sponsor or cosponsor of H.R. 4986 itself.

Not only was Barack not a sponsor, but he didn't even show up for the vote!

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.

With all this campaigning, perhaps Barack doesn't remember how it all went down. A call to the Obama campaign reveals:

Obama's campaign tells us that when he says, "I passed laws moving people from welfare to work," he is referring to the bill that created Illinois’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1997. Obama was one of five original sponsors of the bill, which set limits on public assistance and required welfare recipients to outline plans for moving into the workforce.

One of five sponsors! So he may have had nothing to do with it. Even in the state senate, he has to misrepresent things grotesquely to create the impression that he got anything accomplished.

The law that "cut taxes for working families" is a 2000 bill, on which Obama and 35 others were later added as cosponsors, instituting an earned income-tax credit for the state. Both bills affected only Illinois residents.

Here's the ad again.

The conclusion from Factcheck.org:

Finally, it has always been our position that it's misleading when a member of a legislative body says that he or she "passed a law," "cut taxes" or makes any similar claim to single-handed lawmaking. It takes more than one legislator to get these things done. In addition to the sponsors and the cosponsors, sometimes dozens of them, the bill needs the support of a majority in both houses. Usually, a governor or president needs to then sign a bill into law, unless the legislature comes up with a veto-proof majority.

So for 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.