Did Obama Vote 94 Times to Increase Taxes?

Yes... if you are John McCain and you live in la-la land. McCain & Company have been repeating this highly misleading statistic quite often in recent days, trying to scare voters away from Obama. He even repeated it during the second presidential debate... all this in spite of the truth.

FactCheck.org did an in-depth analysis of the 94 votes in question, and came up with the following findings:

• Twenty-three votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all; they were against proposed tax cuts.
• Seven of the votes were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals.
• Eleven votes would have increased taxes on those making more than $1 million a year – in order to fund programs such as Head Start and school nutrition programs, or veterans’ health care.
• The GOP sometimes counted two, three and even four votes on the same measure. We found their tally included a total of 17 votes on seven measures, effectively padding their total by 10.
• The majority of the 94 votes – 53 of them, including some mentioned above – were on budget measures, not tax bills, and would not have resulted in any tax change. Four other votes were non-binding motions related to conference report negotiations.

A closer look reveals that Obama has voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers. That's consistent with what he's said he'd do as president, which is to raise taxes only on those making more than $250,000 a year.