Taxes and war and McCain … oh my

January 9, 2007

During Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) metamorphosis from independent-minded rebel to right-wing hack, the GOP presidential hopeful has said and done a lot of offensive things. This may be the worst.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked by Al Hunt whether he would support raising taxes on the very wealthy to help pay for a new $1 billion jobs creation program for Iraq that President Bush is set to unveil this week.

“I’m not sure what the point would be,” McCain said in response to whether wealthier Americans should be asked to pay more to offset the costs in Iraq. He added, “I’m not sure I would want to raise their taxes just because we’re in a war.”

Specifically, Hunt asked, “Why not ask some wealthy Americans to pay more [during a time of war]?” McCain responded, “Uh, umm, I’m not sure that that’s connected. I think if we have to, we ought to make some choices in defense spending if we need to.”

Shortly before the war in Iraq began, Tom DeLay announced, “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” McCain is quickly headed towards that level of stupidity.

This isn’t complicated. Wars are expensive, which is exactly why no U.S. president, from either party, has ever tried to wage a full-scale war and cut taxes cut at the same time — until Bush.

Lincoln raised taxes to pay for the Civil War. McKinley raised taxes to finance the Spanish-American War. Wilson raised the top income tax rate to 77% to afford WWI. Taxes were raised, multiple times, to help the nation pay for WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Even the first President Bush raised taxes after the first war with Iraq to, you guessed it, keep the deficit from spiraling out of control.

McCain doesn’t see how taxes are wars are “connected”? For anyone paying attention, and particularly for those in leadership positions, it should be self-explanatory. Countries should finance their own wars. They do so through taxes. Failing to do so is asking future generations to pay for our national security.

Real American leaders throughout our history have always known better. Indeed, it wasn’t even controversial — the electorate expected taxes to go up during a time of war. It’s one of the many breathtaking decisions that puts Bush in a league of his own. The fact that McCain is playing dumb — at least, I hope he’s playing — and going along with Bush’s reckless irresponsibility is just further evidence of just how far he’s slipped from reality.

It’s shameless.

Hell, McCain actually used to eviscerate Republicans for pushing tax cuts in a time of war, saying it was “fiscally irresponsible.”

You don’t remember the fight between Hastert and McCain in ’05?

***

The nasty exchange between McCain and Hastert began with a comment the senator made at a think-tank conference on the budget deficit on Tuesday. “My friends, we are at war. Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice,” McCain said. “But about the only sacrifice taking place is that by the brave men and women fighting to defend and protect the liberties we hold so dear, and that of their families. It is time for others to step up and start sacrificing.”

Yesterday, Hastert questioned whether McCain is really a member of Bush’s party. “A Republican?” Hastert said with feigned incredulity. He then criticized McCain’s opposition to extending tax cuts in wartime.

“We’re trying to make sure that they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it,” Hastert said. “And at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily but economically.”

McCain retorted: “The speaker is correct in that nothing we are called upon to do comes close to matching the heroism of our troops. All we are called upon to do is to not spend our nation into bankruptcy while our soldiers risk their lives. I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility.”

***

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41083-2004May19.html

It’s almost as if McCain is intentionally creating this two-headed monster as a way of ensuring the complete destruction of his party so he can rebuild it in his image, after his likeness.

McCain the Bionic Quasi-Christ! Fear him…err, it!

  • McCain is quickly painting himself into obscurity with his senseless decision to court the reactionary right.

    Good for you, John, but you certainly will not be elected president in 2008, unless, of course, the Dems are stupid enough to nominate Hillary. Then and only then, you might have a fighting chance…..

  • Great point Darren.

    I wonder what the Repub Party elders dangled in front of McCain to sell out what he once (allegedly) stood for?

    It seems that Satan can get a volume discount on Republican presidential candidate souls these days.

  • Not to mention:

    The Athenians: In times of war the Athenians imposed a tax referred to as eisphora. No one was exempt from the tax which was used to pay for special wartime expenditures.

    The British: A precursor to the modern income tax we know today was invented by the British in 1800 to finance their engagement in the war with Napoleon.

    And the U.S. under Madison: The first income tax suggested in the United States was during the War of 1812. The tax was developed in 1814 but was never imposed because the treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815 ending hostilities and the need for additional revenue.

  • “I’m not sure I would want to raise their taxes just because we’re in a war.”

    “I think if we have to, we ought to make some choices in defense spending if we need to.”

    “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.”

    Tell me again why the GOP is the pro-military party?

  • of course mccain’s basic point is rubbish, but…

    he is right that there are many choices we could make in cutting senseless defense spending as well, starting with the SDI and going from there.

    do i expect him to propose any of them? of course not.

  • “Uh, umm, I’m not sure that that’s connected”

    McCain is an idiot, but I think he is saying that raising taxes on the wealthy is not connected to the war. It’s not, but the poor and middle class can no longer afford it. I am assuming that if he needs to raise taxes, McCain would want to make sure he raised ALL taxes.

  • When A and B are mutually exclusive, reality-based folks tend to acknowledge the conflict and choose one or the other.

    Republicans, like McCain, cling to ideology with such ferocity that they deny the conflict, and instead of choosing, create a new reality in which both A and B can be true. The only problem is that their new realties don’t make any sense.

  • Democrats tax and spend; Republicans go into debt and spend.

    McCain is playing to a very deep and strong American trait, frrequently exploited by Republicans: Let Someone Else Pay For It (preferably those who can least afford it).

  • “The fact that McCain is playing dumb”— I’m always thought that McCain IS actually kinda dumb — and obtuse. Considering his past antics in Arizona and his other missteps over the years it could be that his desperation to be the Prez is exacerbating that characteristic.

  • During Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) metamorphosis from independent-minded rebel to right-wing hack,…-CB

    I’d change that to,During the metamorphosis of Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) image from independent-minded rebel to right-wing hack,…

    Also, I highly recommend watching the clip of McCain trying to answer Hunt’s question. You can almost see McCain trying to find a rock to crawl under rather than answer the question.

  • Taxes and war, rockets and fighter jets…two of many connections the McCainiac doesn’t get.

    Why do we even pay attention to this beady-eyed freak? Is it the same reason we look at horrible car accidents?

  • To riff off of Gridlock’s great post, didn’t the Cold War end when the Soviet Union collapsed under the sheer weight of it’s military spending to compete with the US and it’s failed Afghan adventure? McCain and other shortsighted Repubs want the US to follow down the same path as the USSR by spending money on the armed forces we don’t have.

    If this is pandering to the Repub base, they should no longer be called the haves and have mores, but the completely selfish and the utterly selfish.

    McCain has now officially descended into the next level of hell called “whoredom.” Lord knows how much further this guy will rapel into the depths of depravity to gain the Oval Office.

  • I am reminded of the original, black-and-white version of “Miracle on 34th Street.” During the trial of Santa Claus, the Judge is visited in chambers by his Party Boss. The Party Boss tells him that if he convicts Santa Claus, he can count on only two votes at election time—his, and that of the District Attorney who’s conducting the prosecution. Meekly, the Judge shakes his head and replies: “The District Attorney’s a Republican.”

    John McCain is in the same boat as that Judge. Come the election cycle, he’s “not going to have many votes to count on.”

    But he’s just not that cognitively stupid, and I have to ask the one question that should be getting asked: “If McCain is so obviously trying to lose his bid for the White House, two years before the Election, then who the hell is he “taking a dive” for? It can’t be Roo-dee, and it can’t be that “Miniscule Mormon guy….”

  • Poor St. John, skewered on the holy writ of Thou Shalt Not Raise Taxes.

    Darren, awesome post.

    Here’s a (somewhat) fresh angle…

    How much are the finance charges on this war? Can someone from the Democratic party please add up all the interest we’re going to have to pay because the Republicrooks can’t bear to pay their own bills? It’s bad enough that we’re in debt and we’ll be paying for this war forever, but we’ll also lose all the money we spend on the interest on that debt.

    Think of how many lives could be saved with all that money. How many cures for diseases could we pay for? How many poor kids could be fed?

    The price of the Republican Oil War is truly staggering.

  • What seems like a dive to us is actually the inevitable result of the Republican party metamorphasis.

    Despite never intending to vest them with any actual power or pursue their agenda, Rove sold the Republican party down the river by ficticiously promising the Christian conservatives that Bush would do a quid pro quo. The result is that any national candidate must play their game in order to win the nomination even if that’s not who s/he is or what s/he actually believes in.

    What we’ll see, of course, should McCain win the nomination is wink and a nod toward the “independent” as triangulates the voting public, saying things like “well, I had to do that to be standing here today…I didn’t really mean it…look at my record and remarks over the long haul, not just the last 24 months, etc.” Which, of course, will illicit the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Christian right, but they’re pretty much stuck: if they vote, they’ll vote for McCain simply b/c their paradigm doesn’t even acknowledge that Democrats actually exist.

    And precisely because McCain is forced to play this game, we’ll have an opening to bust his proverbial ass. Screw tagging him as a “flip-flopper”…that’s parasitic and looks as if we don’t have an original idea….rather, McCain’s a lying, two-faced piece of shit who will do and say anything, right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral, to keep drinking from the whiskey bottle of power that so intoxicates him right now. He has become what he says he despises: one of “them”…the very manifestation of the worst in American politics: the sell-out, the very product of the Christian right. By very act of saying it was all an act, that he didn’t really mean it, he transforms into the very incarnation of Falwell and Robertson, each of which, just like McCain, are well known and versed in the art of saying and doing anything so long as it results in their having a seat at the table.

    What we have before us are the Three Foolish Republicans, an idolatorous Trinity of the Christian Right: Falwell, Robertson, and McCain…doing their bidding, saying whatever it takes, to make sure that he, Falwell, and Robertson get to lord over the United States.

    Shove….it….up….his….ass. Make the fool pay for his pandering every second of his life from the very moment he wins the nomination until he draws his last breath. Make him and the Republican party regret for the rest of their existence their having catered to the Christian right.

    Destroy them to the point where they’ll never again rise up and take control of even the most minor, wholly insignificant office in the smallest municipality in the U.S.

    It can be done so long as we take no quarter and call them what they are.

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