Editor’s note: Through November, we will be regularly analyzing campaign claims via our new political polygraph.
Claim: “If you end up putting, as (rival Mark Udall has) proposed now, $48 billion in new taxes on American energy production, that’s a tax that low-income families will pay in order to drive their cars to their jobs.”
Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer, following a debate in Westminster on Friday.
Facts: Schaffer is talking about Democrat Udall’s support for an energy plan developed in the Senate by the so-called Gang of 10 — five Republicans and five Democrats — that includes a push to get 85 percent of all cars off petroleum-based fuel in 20 years. Much of that cost would be paid for by removing tax breaks for oil companies. Those deductions were given to the oil and gas industry in 2004 and are worth about $30 billion over several years, according to the plan (not $48 billion.) Calling the removal of a tax break the equivalent of a tax increase is questionable — inflating the number leans deceptive.
Claim: “Just yesterday, (U.S. Sen.) Ken Salazar and I announced a comprehensive energy plan . . . .”
And later in the same debate: “This polling suggests that my comprehensive energy plan is the way to proceed.”
Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall, during a debate televised last week on KBDI-TV 12.
Facts: Calling this his comprehensive energy plan is a stretch for Udall, given that he and Salazar have taken the detailed Gang of 10 plan and added two elements. The first is the idea of selling 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but that was proposed by presidential candidate Barack Obama two weeks before. The second is implementing a federal Renewable Electricity Standard, which would require that 20 percent of the nation’s electricity be generated by renewable sources by 2020 — an idea long advocated by Udall. Udall doesn’t always refer to the plan as his alone, but he has done it enough that the claim leans deceptive.
Michael Riley, The Denver Post
