McCain heads back to the ‘celebrity’ well for the 736th time
It must be rather frustrating for the McCain campaign to have so few honest arguments to make. I can sympathize — if I worked for McCain, I’m not sure what I’d do to sell this clunker of a campaign to the public, either.
Looking at the McCain gang’s latest ad, it’s painfully obvious that this team has decided the only way to win is to deceive as many voters as possible.
The voice-over tells the viewer, “Celebrity? Yes. Ready to lead? No. Obama’s new taxes could break your family budget. The press warns the ‘taxman cometh.’ Obama’s taxes mean ‘higher prices at the pump.’ Obama’s taxes a ‘recipe for economic disaster.’ Higher taxes. Higher gas prices. Economic disaster. That’s the real Obama.”
It’s a shame there are still 81 days until the election; I’m running out of adjectives to describe the McCain’s offensive dishonesty.
In this case
, McCain is clinging to the ol’ GOP standard — “Eek! The Democrat wants to raise your taxes!” — like an electoral life preserver. It is, of course, completely wrong.
Just yesterday, in a Wall Street Journal piece, Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, economic policy advisors for Obama, wrote about Obama’s tax policy in some detail.
Both candidates for president have proposed tax plans. But they are starkly different in their approaches and their economic impact. Sen. Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit.
In contrast, John McCain offers what would essentially be a third Bush term, with his economic speeches outlining $3.4 trillion of tax cuts over 10 years beyond what President Bush has already proposed and geared even more to high-income earners. The McCain plan would lead to deficits the likes of which we have never seen in this country. It would take money from the middle class and from future generations so that the wealthy can live better today.
Sen. Obama believes a focus on the middle class is appropriate in the wake of the first economic expansion on record where the typical family’s income fell by almost $1,000. The Obama plan would cut taxes for 95% of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples. In addition, Sen. Obama is proposing tax cuts for low- and middle-income seniors, homeowners, the uninsured, and families sending a child to college or looking to save and accumulate wealth.
The Obama plan would dramatically simplify taxes by consolidating existing tax credits, eliminating the need for millions of senior citizens to file tax forms, and enabling as many as 40 million middle-class filers to do their own taxes in less than five minutes and not have to hire an accountant.
Sen. Obama also recognizes that small businesses are the engine of job growth in the economy. That is why he is proposing additional tax cuts, including a tax credit for small businesses that provide health care, and the elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups. The vast majority of small businesses would face lower taxes under the Obama plan than under the McCain plan. In addition, Sen. Obama supports reforming corporate taxes in a manner that would help create jobs in America and simplify the tax code by eliminating distortions and special preferences.
Sen. Obama believes that responsible candidates must put forward specific ideas of how they would pay for their proposals. That is why he would repeal a portion of the tax cuts passed in the last eight years for families making over $250,000. But to be clear: He would leave their tax rates at or below where they were in the 1990s. […]
Sen. Obama believes that one of the principal problems facing the economy today is the lack of discretionary income for middle-class wage earners. That’s why his plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000 — not income taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend or payroll taxes.
In contrast, Sen. McCain’s tax plan largely leaves the middle class behind. His one and only middle-class tax cut — a slow phase-in of a bigger dependent exemption — would provide no benefit whatsoever to 101 million families who do not have children or other dependents, or who have a low income.
But Sen. McCain’s plan does include one new proposal that would result in higher taxes on the middle class. As even Sen. McCain’s advisers have acknowledged, his health-care plan would impose a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years on workers. Sen. McCain’s plan will count the health care you get from your employer as if it were taxable cash income. Even after accounting for Sen. McCain’s proposed health-care tax credits, this plan would eventually leave tens of millions of middle-class families paying higher taxes. In addition, as the Congressional Budget Office has shown, this kind of plan would push people into higher tax brackets and increase the taxes people pay as their compensation rises, raising marginal tax rates by even more than if we let the entire Bush tax-cut plan expire tomorrow.
The McCain plan represents Bush economics on steroids. It has $3.4 trillion more in tax cuts than President Bush is proposing, largely directed at corporations and the most affluent. Sen. McCain would implement these cuts without proposing any meaningful steps to simplify taxes or eliminate distortions and loopholes. In addition, Sen. McCain has floated over $1 trillion in new spending increases but barely any specific spending cuts.
Of course, McCain is desperately counting on the notion that voters are idiots, and won’t care about the facts. McCain could engage Obama in an honest debate about tax policy, but he can’t — he knows he’d lose.
So, we get garbage like his latest TV ad. Something digby recently said continues to ring true, “I am really starting to hate this unctuous, double-talking creep.”
Vermonter
says:Wouldn’t it be perhaps more accurate to suggest that McCain is desperately counting on the notion that the press are idiots, and won’t care about the facts?
TomB
says:I’ve always thought the media love stories that contradict some established belief – a form of “gotcha” journalism but one based in the longstanding journalistic attitude of skepticism. So it seems like McCain’s ads would provide an easy target for any news organization to show its “hard-nosed investigative” credentials by attacking and exposing McCain’s rubbish. But this hasn’t happened. I believe reporters have a greater loyalty to a good story than any candidate so it’s puzzling. Are these potential stories too obvious and too easy? Nahh, reporters love picking the low-hanging fruit. So what is it?
Mag7
says:Running out of adjectives to describe McCain’s dishonesty? How about WeenieWuss. He’s a snivilling coward to stoop so low. And stop yapping about being a POW. A lot of soldiers came home from Vietnam to unemployment, mental disorders, drug depenency, and zero help from their government. McCain owns 10 freaking houses. I bet there are rooms he’s never been in, while other vets live in cardboard boxes.
All McCain talks about is Obama because he knows his own platform is a loser.
zeitgeist
says:i don’t think that notion requires any desparation. McCain has rather safely predicated his strategy on the media refusing to call him on his lies. it takes a man of particularly low moral standards to do so, but it may yet prove to be a successful, if soulless, path to take.
not to do my daily “sky is falling” bit so early, but Obama’s lead at electoral-vote.com is now down to 25 EVs, McCain’s “solid R” number has nearly doubled in the past two weeks, and the Dems’ senate and house counts are both down as well — this is not just an Obama thing, the Republican brand as a whole seems to be recovering some.
SadOldVet
says:So what if it is all lies! Bring us something to discuss that is new. There are few, if any issues, that McBush is on the side of the amerikan public. The truth is unpalatible so lies and deception are the obvious path to a McSame victory. As long as the corporate media continues the ‘he said – he said’ discussions and does not address the truth of McCrap, it may be a winning strategy.
On a separate topic, the United States and Poland have agreed to the U.S. building silos and putting the ‘strategic missile defense system’ on Polish soil. Is there any verifiable value to Star Wars Missle Defense other than as a transfer of taxpayer $ to defense contractors who line the pockets of politicians (rethug & dumbocrat)? Does anyone remember the Cuban Missle Crisis? The Russians are pissed and our politicians and pundits wonder why!
Life Composer
says:Why can’t Obama quickly counter w/ something like this?
“Celebrity? Yes. Ready to lead? No. McCain and his economic policies are breaking your family budget. McCain and Republican economic irresponsibility have already eaten away the meager tax cut that the middle class received. Eight years ago oil was $34/gallon, now it’s over $120/gallon – McCain and the Republican leadership have watched gas prices soar from $1.75/gallon to over $4.00/gallon and done nothing to stop it or to help the middle class. Higher food prices. Higher education costs. Higher gas prices. Soaring medical costs. Your home value dropping like a rock. The stock market falling. Economic disaster. That’s the real McCain. ”
Plus, for a REAL eye-opener, check out this chart , paying particular attention to the years 2000-2008, when greasy, oily DICK and Bu$h and their oil buddies took power.
Will Hunting
says:What about a reduction or elimination on corporate income taxes tied to a meaningful increase in the minimum wage and/or mandatory minimum health coverage for companies over a certain size? The other issue with increasing taxes on incomes over $250,000, even to 90s levels, is that a lot of those incomes are sole proprieterships or subchapter-S corps. Those profits are reported as income on the owner’s 1040, but are really small businesses. The truth is that corporations, especially large ones, do not pay taxes at all, they just build the taxes into their pricing.
On another point, I have heard Obama say, from his own lips, that he would increase the taxes on dividends and capital gains. If he now has seen that since cutting those tax rates, tax reciepts have actually increased and so now feels it best to leave them at their current rates, he has moved up in my view. I am interested to see what programs he intends to cut when he says “cut wasteful spending”. Is that information on the campaign’s website?
The only line I really am scared by is:
Sen. Obama believes that one of the principal problems facing the economy today is the lack of discretionary income for middle-class wage earners.
The problem is that we continue to drive our economy further into a consumer economy and away from a production economy. Productivity drives growth; if you do not increase the amount of goods you make, you eventually run out of things to spend money on. If we can encourage productivity by giving small businesses breaks, great. If we can encourage savings and investment by keeping taxes on gains and dividends low, great. Let’s tie that in with a tighter monetary policy and I may yet be converted. 81 days to go. He still has to come around and promise to appoint judges that have, you know, read the Constitution though.
zhak
says:Is it worth pointing out the fact that recent Republicans have all ended up with huge deficits & outrageous spending while Clinton actually left behind a government in good order (despite the Republican majority in the house) that Bush squandered in about 5 minutes?
Obama should be showing a nice visual — an easy graph comparison or something — showing recent presidents (from Reagan onward) and how they spend. That’s all it takes. That & asking folks if their lives were better with Clinton in office than Bush.
zoe kentucky
says:I find the quotes in the ad that McCain used to be rather suspicious– they weren’t full quotes and didn’t mention Obama, taxes or any of his policies by name. I wonder if anyone has checked to see if they’re even about Obama at all– for all we know they could be about McCain himself. Considering how hacktacular McCain’s ads have been I wouldn’t be surprised.
stevem
says:Comeback ad: McCain wants to explode the deficit, leaving your kids and grandkids to pay the bill. Image: old man McCain in an RV, waving as he drives off into the sunset. The RV has a bumpersticker that says I’LL SPEND OUR GRANDCHILDREN’S INHERITANCE.
Will Hunting
says:Life Composer –
Dangerous chart you have posted there…increases before 2006 are pretty much inflation + increased demand from China & India. Major spike spike started in 2006, which happens to be when Ried & Pelosi took over in Congress. Wierd.
BuzzMon
says:stevem (re # 10) – Change that bumpersticker to:
MY GRANDKIDS WILL BE PAYING FOR THIS THEIR WHOLE LIVES
and you will be more accurate
amy
says:Income tax on the health insurance provided by employers?
My employer pays for my insurance to pay less payroll taxes and keep workers comp insurance lower. My employer pays the insurance instead of paying me and I pay the insurance. Taxing my insurance as income without contributing to FICA and Med FICA is highway robbery.
This plan discourages health care. I might be better off financially without the insurance.
This is not a health plan. This is an anti-health plan.
Prup (aka Jim Benton)
says:Heard on a Mets Broadcast, of all places — but Keith Hernandez, besides being the best defensive 1st Baseman I ever saw, is also an extremely knowledgable history buff.
Gary Thorne: “Keith, wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt referred to as the ‘greatest celebrity of the 20th Century?” (Unfortunately, I missed Keith’s response, but I’m sure he agreed, and the comment was obviously aimed at the Presidential race.)
If even the sports people are mocking the ‘celebrity’ meme — and I’ve heard no one discuss it without condemning it — even on the ‘awful MSM’ it won’t go very far.
Again, while there is a minor bump for McCain now, watch what happens after the conventions.
jimBOB
says:It’s the same old “tax raiser” charge the GOP has been making in every election since David Broder reached drinking age. I think it’s started penetrating the dim consciousness of the electorate that their taxes don’t get any lower when goopers are in charge, but that they do see the rapid-fire recessions (this being the second of the Bush II era), food, energy and medical inflation, and stagnant wages.
It’s the end of the line for campaigning based on mindless tax demagoguery. McCain is toast.
beans
says:McSame’s ads all look pretty much the mcsame. It makes it easier for the one smart punch at just the right time for a knock out. I think one day we’ll log on and there it will be making the headlines everywhere. The media is carrying water for him, but it’s been back-breaking work.
Life Composer
says:Will Trolling:
Remember, your repig friends have filibustered virtually everything Pelosi and Reed have tried to do, a RECORD number of fillibusters, OVER 90 of them, after you and your ilk whined and complained and threw temper tantrums when the Dems even threatened a fillibuster. You and your ilk have tied the hands of the Dems, making it virtually impossible for them to accomplish much of anything, and everyone knows it. Too bad your kind didn’t introduce the Nu-cue-lar Option, so we could have used it on you. And now, now you want to blame the last 8 years of bu$h and DICK making love to the Saudi’s, secret energy meetings on the public’s dime, no updated CAFE standards to help reduce demand, destabilization of the middle east, etc., on Pelosi!!?
Smarter trolls, please. This one makes Chad look like Einstein.
William
says:“Celebrity? Yes. Ready to bilk the middle class and breast feed the wealthy? No.
– I’m John McSame and I approve this trollop!
Basilisc
says:I’d actually be more reassured if McCain was using a lot of different themes instead of hammering away at one. Shifting themes signal desperation, but maybe they’re sticking to the celebrity thing because they have evidence – focus groups, polling, whatever – that it’s working. Same damn story as 04: while the Democrat rests, regroups, negotiates with internal rivals, the Republican works hard to create their desired image of the Democrat in the mind of the electorate. The setup is there: celebrity, shallow, tax cutter, somehow (kind of vague about details, but who cares?) linked to high gas prices. Now all that’s left to do is to spend eight weeks openly and implicitly filling in the picture they’ve created: not just shallow, but unpatriotic, naive, weak etc. And Obama will have the uphill battle: trying to change both his own image and McCain’s, in the middle of a swirling fast-paced media cycle with debates, crises, gaffes. My guess is, however ludicrous they and their candidate may seem to someone who actually knows something, the McCain people are pretty happy with how things have gone up to now.
Charles
says:C’mon, give Will a break. I’m guessing he’s just a Young Republican trying to get some street cred with with McCain campaign. They are still giving points for concern-trolling “lib’rul” blogs, I assume, and it’s obvious that he doesn’t have a lot of intellectual skills to let him get ahead any other way
Lance
says:Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee (WSJ) – That is why he would repeal a portion of the tax cuts passed in the last eight years for families making over $250,000. But to be clear: He would leave their tax rates at or below where they were in the 1990s.
This is essentially a lie. Obama doesn’t have to repeal anything. These lower tax rates were sunsetted in the original law, so the deficit wouldn’t ballon as the Baby Boomers retired. The Bushites demanded that reduced tax rate instead of dropping the rate by only a point or two because they said it would spur growth, and in exchange they agreed the rate would go back (after Boy George II left office mind). So to say that Obama has to repeal the tax cut is a lie, it’s automatically self-repealing.
As for JSMcC*nt’s tax plan for our health insurance benefits, I’d say the commercial writes itself:
“John McCain wants to raise taxes on working Americans $3.4 Trillion dollars, take away our employer provided insurance programs and leave it to struggling families to fight insurance companies to get adequate health care coverage for their families. This is one market where standing alone doesn’t make you stronger. But John McCain doesn’t know that. He’s never had to buy his own insurance or to fight the insurance companies to get health care.
Barack Obama understands that with Health Insurance, there is strength in numbers. He wants to allow every American the right to buy into the same Insurance Program John McCain has now. He knows that families need to be helped, not abandoned to the mercies of Insurance Companies.”
Lance
says:jimBOB said: …since David Broder reached drinking age.”
Was there a legal drinking age when Broder was young, or did parents just feed their children brandy to put them to sleep?
pfgr
says:I still think it has not sunk in with the public just how radical McCain’s recently adopted policies are.
The plan to eliminate employer deductibility of health care premiums for employees and treating premium payments as taxable income will cause chaos in the health insurance system. McCain’s mouthpieces have been on the networks claiming individuals will gain the “freedom” to “negotiate” the terms of their health coverage individually with insurers.
Will Hunting
says:I would like to thank both Charles and Life Composer (although LC less so) for validating my points by almost completely ignoring them in favor of personal attacks. I call it the “McCain Method”.
At what point did I attempt to to back any Republican in either chamber or the White House? All that I have said is that Pelosi et al have not delivered on a single item that they campaigned on, which is true regardless of why. The Republican congresses of the Clinton era were able to pass legislation that ended up getting signed, why can’t this group do the same? And I cited the facts on the chart. I am not campaigning for anyone, I have not yet decided who to vote for, although I am leaning away from Obama because I fear he is the next Carter, not the next Clinton. Notice that I’m not leaning towards anyone, just away from one. There are no good candidates here, McCain because he’s a moron, and Obama because I disagree with too many issues. I do really like Obama as the “face of the nation” though, so to speak.
Chad
says:…And Obama cherishes and revels in his celebrity role for the 736th time.
Mark
says:I still have friends in the U.S. who insist they will vote for McCain because voting for Obama would be “like handing over the hammer that would drive the last nail in their coffin”. They base this on a contention that Obama constantly flip-flops back and forth on his tax plan, coming out with a new set of numbers every week, and that he is going to drive the middle class out of existence. No president could afford to do that. I keep countering by suggesting (a) recognized economists who regularly express their distaste for Obama, such as Paul Krugman, acknowledge that midddle-class Americans would realize greater savings under Obama’s tax plan, and (b) McCain feels no obligation to honour anything he can’t remember saying, which encompasses everything prior to today. Stringing together his quotes regarding his support/opposition to tax cuts yields a good 30 seconds of guaranteed laughs, as he claims to have been always for/always against tax cuts, depending on the audience. If John McCain is not playing the American electorate for clueless suckers who just want the soothing placebo of white-noise lies, then he’s mentally unfit to guard Safeway, never mind being president. There must be a rule that says you can’t claim to be for and against something in the same year; everybody should be able to remember back at least that far.
Yes, I’m well aware that John Kerry claimed to have voted for something “before he voted against it”, but he was merely trying for a clever turn of phrase at at time when the Bush administration had successfully convinced the majority that anybody who was clever was probably French or a French sympathizer. That’d never play today, now that Sarko the American has Midwest farmers wearing berets and smoking Gauloises in their efforts to be more French.
Pelosi and Co. can’t get anything passed because of deliberate Republican obstructionism, and that’s been spelt out time and again – all you have to do is check the vote to see which way everyone voted. People seem to make some kind of mental translation from “Democratic majority” to “overwhelming Republican-crushing Democratic juggernaut”. It’s no such thing, and the balance is very fragile, easily allowing Republican mischief just for the sake of flouting the Democrats and making them appear like do-nothings. If the rules say you have to have so many votes and you can’t achieve that threshold because a certain body votes against everything you bring up, just because they don’t like your party, you’re helpless. Is this the way American politics are supposed to work?
Word, Will. John McCain as the dried-apple-doll “face of the nation” will make the country even more the butt of jokes than Bush’s spiteful and childish leadership did.