[wei yau]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

I think he's talking about the $700 billion in foreign aid he wants to cut, not the $700 billion bailout.

I'm not sure if McCain is talking about foreign aid or money we pay foreign countries for oil. Either way, the $700bn isn't quite right

Originally Posted by factcheck.org

We found other exaggerations in McCain’s claims about his plan for energy independence:

McCain: We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much.

In fact, the U.S. doesn't pay nearly that much for oil from hostile nations. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. imported 4.9 billion barrels of oil in 2007. At today’s prices, that works out to about $536 billion, still a hefty chunk of change, but considerably less than $700 billion. More important, that's what we pay to all exporting nations, not just those that “don’t like us very much.” We note that 32 percent of U.S. oil imports came from Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Originally Posted by factcheck.org

McCain repeated an exaggerated claim that the U.S. is sending $700 billion per year to hostile countries.

McCain: Look, we are sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don't like us very much. Some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations.

That's not accurate. McCain also made this claim in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. He's referring to the amount of money the U.S. spends in importing oil. But the number is inflated. In fact, we actually pay more like $536 billion for the oil we need. And one-third of those payments go to Canada, Mexico and the U.K.

(Note: A few of our readers messaged us, after we first noted McCain's mistake, with the thought that he was referring to foreign aid and not to oil. If so he's even farther off than we supposed: The entire budget for the State Department and International Programs works out to just $51.3 billion.)