McCain’s vision for a new ‘war on poverty’

April 24, 2008

John McCain recently acknowledged, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” That’s a perfectly accurate self-assessment, but McCain would almost certainly be better off if he didn’t spend so much time highlighting his lack of knowledge on the subject.

For example, yesterday, the Republican presidential candidate had the gall to talk up his concerns about poverty.

Republican John McCain, saying the nation is in a recession and “families are hurting,” retraced Lyndon Johnson’s steps in eastern Kentucky and pledged to mount a war on poverty different from that waged by the former Democratic president.

“I have no doubt President Johnson was serious and had the very best of intentions” in 1964, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said at a town-hall event in Inez today as he continues his week-long courtship of voters in America’s economically hard-pressed areas.

“Government has a role to play in helping people who, through no fault of their own, are having a hard time,” McCain, an Arizona senator, said. He defined that role as offering choices on education, health care and job training, rather than providing handouts.

First, this rhetoric might have carried more salience if the comments weren’t a couple of decades out of date. The Republican presidential candidate railing against “handouts”? Is this 2008 or 1988?

Second, McCain has a lot of nerve showing up in one of the poorest, most impoverished communities in Appalachia, railing against government handouts, while simultaneously touting one of the most regressive economic agendas imaginable.

Consider this WSJ item that ran earlier this week.

Sen. John McCain is proposing tax cuts that would either cause the federal deficit to explode or would require unprecedented spending cuts equal to one-third of federal spending on domestic programs.

Once thought of as a deficit hawk, the near-certain Republican presidential nominee is now putting more stress on the traditional Republican orthodoxy of tax cuts. Altogether, he proposes more than $650 billion in tax cuts a year, much of it benefiting corporations and upper-income families. That includes the cost of extending tax cuts implemented under President Bush that he voted against twice.

To help pay for it all, the Arizona senator says he would cut $160 billion a year from a federal discretionary budget that totals a little more than $1 trillion. He hasn’t specified where the cuts would come from.

So, on the one hand, McCain wants to cut taxes dramatically to benefit “corporations and upper-income families,” and on the other, McCain wants to cut federal spending. Since spending cuts for the military and national security are off the table — indeed, he’s vowed to increase spending on both — it would necessarily mean McCain would make billions of dollars in cuts in spending that would benefit those who aren’t in “upper-income families.”

But if you’re in Appalachia and living in poverty, forget about a “handout.” In a McCain administration, they’re reserved for the same wealthy interests that have benefited throughout the Bush years.

What’s more, in about five months, Republicans will tell these same people in impoverished areas that they shouldn’t even consider voting for Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) because what really matters are flag pins. It’s like an arsonist telling a family whose home is on fire not to trust the man outside in the firetruck.

He’s also going to tell them Obama is going to raise their capital gains taxes. And it’ll work. Just as people with no estates hate estate taxes, those with no capital gains hate capital gains taxes. It’s the American way.

  • “a couple of decades late” is a good way to describe John McCain. In another ten years he may “get it right” on Bush’s first recession. Ten years after that, he’s understand this one.

  • … in about five months, Republicans will tell these same people in impoverished areas that they shouldn’t even consider voting for Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) because what really matters are flag pins. It’s like an arsonist telling a family whose home is on fire not to trust the man outside in the firetruck.

    What’s truly sad is that these impoverished white folks in rural Kentucky — as well as in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio and in the other redneck bastions north of the Mason-Dixon line — will enthusiastically vote for McCain rather than for the scary negro.

    The Republicans are right about one thing — the poor will have to help themselves in order to get out of poverty. That means they will have to choose to vote for their own interests rather
    than for their prejudices.

  • The operative phrase here is “through no fault of their own,” which does not describe GOP voters.

  • The Republicans have been waging a war on poverty. And the Republicans are on the side of the rich and they are fighting those who are poor at every opportunity. It’s the one war their party is winning because those in poverty are getting their asses completely kicked by Republican policies.

    McCain’s “choices” for the poor are that they can either sign up for the military and doing his bidding in Iraq or they can continue to live in poverty. Their choice. Must be nice to be married to an heiress. Lucky for the folks in Eastern Kentucky that Paris Hilton is still single. There’s still a chance one of them can live the glorious life of McCain.

  • “I have no doubt President Johnson was serious and had the very best of intentions” in 1964, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said at a town-hall event in Inez today as he continues his week-long courtship of voters in America’s economically hard-pressed areas.

    This is the part that gets me. He acts like the War on Poverty was a failure. But the census data proves that the War on Poverty actually did a great deal to lift large numbers of Americans out of poverty.

    In the six years between the start of the War on Poverty and the time Lyndon Johnson left office, poverty rates in America underwent their sharpest decline in the postwar era. In 1964, 17.4% of Americans lived in poverty, while in 1969, just 10.4% would. After that, the poverty rate would rise in later decades, hovering at 13% in the 1980s and 1990s. Even today, the rate is still higher than it was when Johnson left office.

    And if you look at the census data for two groups targeted by the administration, African Americans and Southerners, the impact is even more apparent. Poverty rates in the South were cut in half over the course of the 1960s, falling from 35% to 17%, while poverty rates for blacks across the nation fell from 54% to 30% during the decade.

    LBJ did tremendous work on this. Hopefully the next president will be smart enough to know that and follow his example.

  • The Republican presidential candidate railing against “handouts”? Is this 2008 or 1988?

    Just to be clear, he is never quoted in the story saying “handouts.” That said, his economic proposals are the same old voodoo doo doo that they do so well. Screw him.

  • America has a bad track record on these “war on” stuff, usually the problem just gets worse

  • TR said:
    This is the part that gets me. He acts like the War on Poverty was a failure. But the census data proves that the War on Poverty actually did a great deal to lift large numbers of Americans out of poverty.

    This is part of the conservatives’ “Big Lie” strategy. They repeat complete falsehoods loudly and often until the lies become part of popular perception — like the concept of the “liberal media”. “Journalists” are too lazy or too ignorant to dispute the lie. And the popular media’s bias is neither liberal nor conservative, but toward defending the status quo and ‘popular perception’.

    TR, can you give us the URL for your census data, so we can do our small part to counter the Republican propaganda?

  • In the War on Poverty, McCain is on poverty’s side. Nothing in his economic proposal will decrease the amount of destitute in this country.

  • Looking over the data, it’s hard to believe so many people believe the myths about the WoP’s failure.

    I suppose LBJ has few defenders — liberal boomers despised him for the Vietnam War, conservatives for his civil rights and welfare policies — and his undeniable accomplishments were simply buried in the wake of all that.

  • The Republican presidential candidate railing against “handouts”? Is this 2008 or 1988?

    Hey, who knows more about handouts than a guy living off his wife’s fortune?

  • The Republican presidential candidate railing against “handouts”? Is this 2008 or 1988?

    Looks like 1932.

  • You guys don’t get it. Or maybe you do: the point isn’t the substance of what McCain is saying, it’s where he’s saying it and who to.

    They’ve made it very clear that they believe the only route to victory is “triangulating” against both the Democrats and the Idiot King. We know that Bush couldn’t care less about the poor–so long as they keep fighting his wars, anyway. McCain might or might not care, in the abstract, but it’s certain that he cares much less about the impoverished in Appalachia than he does about tonguing Grover Norquist’s taint shiny clean.

    Now, if there were a Democratic nominee, they could point out the obvious contradiction between McCain’s atmospherics and the implications of “his” policies. (The quotes are because, of course, they aren’t his; they’re Grover’s.) But the endless entitlement of the First Narcissists renders this an non-option, alas.

  • Roddy McCorley said:

    The Republican presidential candidate railing against “handouts”? Is this 2008 or 1988?

    Hey, who knows more about handouts than a guy living off his wife’s fortune?

    Hey that’s not fair. He takes a couple of hundred thousand from the taxpayers too.

  • TR @ 15;

    I visited LBJ’s Presidential Library in Austin last year, it’s well worth it. It is a shame that his term is overshadowed by Vietnam (which he was conflicted about) to the detriment of his Great Society programs. One of the most moving exhibits on display is a collection of letters from ordinary citizens, thanking him for enacting these programs. IIRC, one thanks him for enacting Medicaid, and so saving the writer from blindness, because he was able to get cataract surgery. He did a lot of good stuff.

  • “Government has a role to play in helping people who, through no fault of their own, are having a hard time,” McCain, an Arizona senator, said. He defined that role as offering choices on education, health care and job training, rather than providing handouts.

    i wonder if the people hearing this realize that at their income level the choice they have on health care is either buying insurance they can’t afford or going without.

  • Regarding “handouts”: Did this schmuck vote for the stimulus package a few months ago? If so, he has no problem doling out the cash. If not, there’s always the corporate welfare program to perpetuate.

    A Republican concerned the working man is takin’ a lickin’. It must be an election year and man are they scared.

  • dj spellchecka… That’s why McCain is offering them tax credits which will leave them with a couple hundred dollars they can use to buy health insurance. Sure, there’s no insurance plan they could afford with such a tax credit now, but who knows what we’ll have in the fantastical future of 2009?

    And school vouchers will help the poor afford the educations they’ve been getting for free all these years, like chumps.

  • McCain’s vision for a new ‘war on poverty’-stricken
    There CB, I fixed your header. You’re welcome

  • It just occurred to me while reading this thread, that if the neocons succeed in wrecking what’s left of our economy, they’ll have plenty of enlistees for their war efforts. There will be so many poor with no option other than military service that enlistment rates will max out. No draft required.

  • “He defined that role as offering choices on education, health care and job training, rather than providing handouts.”

    Weren’t the vast majority of Great Society programs designed to improve education, offer affordable health care, and provide job training?

    Yes you do have financial assistance that could be labeled “handouts”, but part of the Great Society’s long term goal was to ensure that more Americans could have an oppurtunity to raise themselves out of poverty through better education and a chance at finding a good job.

  • And it’s my understanding that the conservative agenda towards social welfare calls for so-called “mutual self-help” towards Industry, Self-Reliance and Personal Responsibility being the foundation thereof.

    So long as the Lower Classes developed such initiatives on their own accord; the argument here is that any attempts to request technical assistance would be seen as “promoting tendencies towards dependency,” yet I dispute that. After all, some assistance, technical and otherwise, may have to be necessary if mutual self-help is expected to benefit the Lower Classes all the more.

  • After only a short time of McCain pronouncements, don’t you get the feeling that the guy just isn’t very bright? — not that this would deter those who voted for Bush from being charmed by such sillines.

  • It seems odd the small town white Americans would support Republicans at least in the economic sense. However, if you analyze more carefully, you will find why.

    If someone is not disabled, not a single mother, and not old enough to be retired, what Federal aid he/she can get? I can only think about food stamps. And most of these small town folks are not qualified for food stamps or do not get food stamps for various reasons or they are not short of foods. So majority of these people do not really benefit from the welfare system which was really designed to help urban poors.

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