The New York Times already has a transcript of tonight's pesidential debate up, and since I'm on the road, I have a little bit of time on my hands.

I already commented on Zarq's page that tonight's debate would be a tedious exercise of trying to separate factual numbers from fiction. Nevertheless, as I watched I thought that some of John Kerry's numbers were particularly dubious, so I thought I'd comment below.

"He's also the only president in 72 years to lose jobs -- 1.6 million jobs lost." - The real number is closer to 600,000 and there are four months to go in the Bush presidency with jobs growing at approximately 100,000 a month. Remember when Kerry used to talk about 3 million jobs lost...then it was 2 million jobs lost....


"Tuitions have gone up 35 percent." - According to The College Board from the 2000-01 school year to the 2003-04 school year tuition and fees (in real dollars) has increased 10% at 2 year public schools, 15% at 4 year private schools and 28% at 4 year public schools. None of it is good, but none of them are 35% either.

"Medicare premiums went up 17 percent a few days ago." - That's true as far as it goes, however Senator Kerry was directly responsible for the increase so blaming it on Bush is unfair.

Republicans said the increase in premiums was automatic, and they attributed it to a formula over which the White House had no control. Moreover, they pointed out that Mr. Kerry had voted for the law that established the formula in 1997 as a way to bolster the finances of Medicare.

"The jobs that are being created in Arizona right now are paying about $13,700 less than the jobs that we're losing." - I'm not sure where this comes from, but a much lower number of $9,000 that he has used as a national figure was debunked a long time ago.

"They've cut the Pell Grants..." - I don't know where that came from. The House Budget Committee shows drastic increases.

"...and the Perkins Loans" - The Bush administration didn't cut this program, they just decided not to increase it past it's current levels. Reasons why are included in the link.

"Health care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent." - Thos could very well be true based on some initial research I did which is why I din't comment on it earlier in this post. However, I just read one of the moderator's questions to Bush a little later on in the debate - "Health insurance costs have risen over 36 percent over the last four years, according to The Washington Post." It's still significant, but that's a pretty big difference.

"But rather than help you, the taxpayer, have lower costs, rather than help seniors have less expensive drugs, the president made it illegal, illegal for Medicare to actually go out and bargain for lower prices. Result, $139 billion windfall profit to the drug companies coming out of your pockets. That's a large part of your 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums." - Here Kerry blames Bush again for an increase of his doing.

"Now maybe that explains why he hasn't fully funded the V.A., and the V.A. hospital is having trouble and veterans are complaining." - The fact is that Bush has increased funding of the V.A., and at more than twice the rate of the Clinton administration - up 38% in four years.

"Under President Bush the middle class has seen their tax burden go up and the wealthiest tax burden has gone down. Now that's wrong." I don't think he means tax burden, I think he means share of the tax burden (which only changed by a few tenths of a percent). Everyone got tax cuts.

"One percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut." - This analysis by the Citizens for Tax Justice shows that last year, 2003, the top one percent received $15 billion. Even adding all the years from 2001-2005, the estimate is $86 billion, just short of Kerry's number.

"Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America. And we had an initiative that we were working on to raise women's pay. They've cut it off. They've stopped it. They don't enforce these kinds of things." - Women's earnings at 76 cents on the dollar are higher during the Bush administration than any time in history and has consistently remained several cents higher than during the best years of the Clinton administration.

"I don't know how you can govern in this country when you look at New York City and you see that 50 percent of the black males there are unemployed." - This is my favorite one. This 50 percent number is not the unemployment rate, but a measure of the percent of the adult male population that is not currently working. By the same measure, 25 percent of white males are unemployed in New York City. All these figures are about 4 times the actual unemployment rate for each category.

There's probably somemore, but I'm too tired to go on.