ActionScript 3.0 :: Flash Dynamic XML Buttons Size And Placement With Masking?

making an XML menu for a website. Each button has a background and and over-state background. The backgrounds are 9 sliced scaled movie clips, well the over-state background is set up to mask an animation movie clip that is larger than any button will be. The mask is 9 slice scaled and is always the same size as the regular background. These backgrounds are x-scaled in a function in the Button.as. The title passed in through the XML determines the width. All of this so far works perfectly.

Now a navigation movie clip processes and adds all of the button movie clips based on the amount of nodes in the XML, this also sets the X and Y coordinates as well as sets a "spacer" between the buttons. Here is my problem, every time the function runs to create a new button, it sets the x value at:

Code:
button.x = this.width;

This is great if I don't use the mask though. What happens since the movie clip I am masking in the over-state background is wider than the buttons are is that there is wayyy to large of a gap. When each button is added, actionscript sees the width of the button with everything in it, masked or not. So I've tried a for-loop in the button creating function to increment a number variable from 0 - the max number of buttons in the XML. I then want to set the x value to:

Code:
button.x = (button.background.width * i);

This is the background of the button that has the correct width that actionscript should be using. By multiplying it by the i variable, it should move the x right with every button. Unfortunately it's not working.