A Club for Growth PAC TV ad released July 26 accurately cites Sen. John Kerry’s changing positions over the years on welfare reform, the death penalty for terrorists and gasoline taxes.

But it also falsely implies that he’s voted to raise taxes 350 times.

And the ad’s main conclusion – that Kerry “has a big problem making up his mind” – is a matter of opinion, not fact.

The Club for Growth, a Republican-leaning, anti-tax group, said it would spend $1 million on this ad, running it in Boston during the convention and in several Midwestern states afterward. It portrays Kerry as a weathervane, indecisive and “blowing in the wind.”

Death penalty for terrorists: It’s true, as the ad states, that Kerry once opposed the death penalty for terrorists and now supports it. He’s long been an opponent of the death penalty in general. In 1989, he was among a small minority of senators who voted against a bill to impose the death penalty “for the terrorist murder of United States nationals abroad.” The bill passed with a bipartisan vote of 79-20. (Kerry voted for an amendment to the bill that would have imposed life imprisonment without parole for the same crime, in preference to the death penalty. The amendment failed by a 20-79 vote.)

The ad also gets it right when it says Kerry still opposed the policy seven years later in 1996. During a Sept. 16, 1996, Senate campaign debate between Kerry and then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, Kerry said anti-death penalty countries wouldn’t allow the U.S. to extradite suspected terrorists who could be put to death.

So Kerry’s position did change – though he still opposes the death penalty in other cases. Was Kerry simply “blowing in the wind” of public outrage? His explanation is that he responded to changed facts, not changed public opinion. He told the Boston Globe on Dec. 18, 2002, that anti-death penalty countries would be more willing to turn over terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks: “I think 9/11 has changed the capacity for extradition.”

Welfare reform: The Club for Growth accurately cites two differing votes by Kerry on welfare-related bills. Kerry has an explanation for that as well.

Both bills emphasized work requirements for welfare beneficiaries. Kerry joined most other Democrats when he voted on June 22, 1993, to table – or kill – an amendment requiring states to ensure that at least 10 percent of welfare beneficiaries participate in a work program, with a two percent increase each year, or suffer cuts in federal funding. The tabling measure failed 34-64. The so-called “workfare” amendment went on to pass by a voice vote on the same day, but died in the House-Senate conference.

Three years later, on Aug. 1, 1996, Kerry voted for a broad-based welfare bill that included cutting benefits for recipients after two years if they didn’t work and setting a five-year lifetime cap on welfare eligibility. The bill passed with a bipartisan majority of 78-21. This time most Democrats supported the measure, and President Clinton signed it into law.

Why the change? Mike Gehrke, a Kerry aide, told FactCheck.org that Kerry voted against the 1993 bill primarily because it didn’t include funding for childcare or other services to help single mothers get back to work. The comprehensive 1996 bill included billions of dollars for childcare.

The gas tax: It’s true that Kerry once voiced support for a 50-cent gas tax and no longer does. The only evidence that Kerry ever supported such a tax comes from two newspaper articles from 10 years ago. In fact, Kerry never voted for a gas-tax bill in the Senate, and he didn’t co-sponsor a 1993 bill to raise the gas tax by 10 cents per gallon each year for five years. So yes, Kerry went from fleeting, weak support for a gas tax to none at all.

“Higher taxes” 350 times? Wrong: The ad’s claim that Kerry voted for higher taxes 350 times is misleading. It is simply false to imply that Kerry has voted that many times to raise taxes above prevailing levels. The Club for Growth is recycling a figure generated by the Bush-Cheney campaign. And as a Bush-Cheney campaign official cautioned when we asked for documentation: “It is important to note that these are votes for higher taxes, not necessarily tax increases, meaning it includes votes against tax cuts.” Most of the 350 votes the Bush campaign lists are actually votes to keep taxes the same, and against proposed cuts. Some of the 350 votes are actually votes to cut taxes, but because they were votes for Democratic alternatives to Republican-sponsored tax-cut bills, the Bush camp counts them as votes for “higher” taxes – meaning higher than they would have been had he voted the other way.

There is no question, however, that Kerry has voted to increase taxes in the past. He currently supports raising taxes on persons making over $200,000 a year by repealing Bush’s cuts for individuals at that income level. On that issue, Kerry isn’t “blowing in the wind” at all – he’s steadfastly against the Club for Growth’s agenda of making those tax cuts permanent.

Analysis provided by FactCheck.org, a service of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

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