ABC News independently checked into the claims made during the final 2008 presidential debate.
Small Businesses and Taxes
Obama defended his tax plan against McCain's charge that "Obama's secret that you don't know is that his tax increases will increase taxes on 50 percent of small business revenue." Obama responded that "only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. So, the vast majority of small businesses would get a tax cut under my plan." TRUE...AND TRUE: Only 4.3 percent of the total U.S. businesses are small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year, according to tax data. It's also possible that a majority of "small business revenue" comes from these firms. Obama is referring to the number of firms, McCain is referring to the concentration of revenue at the top end of the small business food chain. Both managed to make the facts work for their arguments.
Pakistan
McCain charged that "Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly. In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan."
FALSE: Obama has not said that he would "attack Pakistan," but he has said that if Pakistan was unwilling or unable to move in on Osama bin Laden, he would.
This charge started with a speech Obama gave on Aug. 1, 2007, called "The War We Need To Win," in which he said: "I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
Computers
When asked what he would do to make Congress move quickly to address the environment, Obama said, "This is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and it's absolutely critical we understand it's not a challenge, it's an opportunity ... we can do it but we're gonna have to make an investment. The same way the computer was invented by a bunch of government scientists." Were computers invented by the government?
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