In a debate that allowed Sarah Palin to get better acquainted with Americans as the newcomer to the national political scene, the Alaska governor spoke at length about her record and her personal story. Much of it was true. But not all of it.
For instance, she said: "As mayor, every year I was in office I did reduce taxes."
In fact, she oversaw a 35% increase in the operating budget of Wasilla, Alaska. What happened was this: Palin reworked the budget in part by decreasing the tax burden on city residents via the property tax -- which was indeed lowered -- and spreading the responsibility to residents outside the city by increasing the sales tax, to 2.5% from 2%.
Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, met her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, for a 90-minute debate in St. Louis.
Some stretches of fact were virtually replayed from last week's debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.
For instance, Palin charged that Obama "supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year." The nonpartisan group FactCheck.org has debunked the claim, which involved a vote on a nonbinding measure that assumed that tax breaks would expire.
Biden appeared to commit fewer factual twists than Palin, but he also resorted to stretches of truth at times.
Palin's finances
Palin said that she and her husband, Todd, have spent their lives "in the middle class of America." Yet their position seems enviable: a half-million-dollar home on a lake with a float-plane at the dock; two vacation retreats; commercial-fishing rights estimated to be worth at least $50,000; and an income last year of at least $230,000.
That compares to a median income of $64,333 for Alaskans and $50,740 for Americans in 2007, according to the Census Bureau.
Housing meltdown
Palin asserted that McCain pushed hard to reform mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago. "He sounded that warning bell."
But according to nonpartisan fact-checking group PolitiFact.org, McCain's support for reforming the mortgage giants was quite modest.
In May 2006, he signed on to a bill introduced more than a year earlier by another senator, and he issued a statement in support of the bill.
PolitiFact.org said he didn't do much else, and the measure failed to pass.
Energy
