{"id":15830,"date":"2008-06-11T08:30:05","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T12:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15830.html"},"modified":"2008-06-11T08:30:05","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T12:30:05","slug":"mccains-mistake-putting-economic-issues-on-the-front-burner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccains-mistake-putting-economic-issues-on-the-front-burner\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain’s mistake: Putting economic issues on the front-burner"},"content":{"rendered":"

John McCain recently acknowledged<\/a>, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” That’s a perfectly accurate self-assessment, but the Republican presidential hopeful is in a bit of a jam — he hoped to ride into the White House merely by being wrong about Iraq. Now that the economy is the top issue on voters’ minds, McCain has no choice but to at least pretend like he cares about the issue and has a clue as to what he’s talking about.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, then, was a big day for the McCain campaign. The senator and his team rolled out a big speech, fanned out over the airwaves, and put the economy on the front-burner. The result: big mistake.<\/p>\n

First, as for the “not something I’ve understood” line, Fox News’ Carl Cameron asked the pertinent question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

CAMERON: Realistically, was it a mistake for you to suggest that overall your attentiveness to the economy is subordinated by national security?<\/p>\n

MCCAIN: As briefly as possible, when you’re on the back of the bus for hours with the media if they want to take a phrase out of context that’s fine, that’s one of the penalties you pay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poor guy is just making things worse. For a while, McCain flatly denied<\/a> ever having made the remarks about his own ignorance at all. Now, McCain is saying his comments were taken “out of context.”<\/p>\n

In reality, both denials were wrong and dishonest. McCain has made the admission, over and over again<\/a>, and not while hanging out with his reporter buddies on a bus. In 2000, McCain admitted he “really didn’t jump into” economic issues as a lawmaker. In 2005, he acknowledged, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” As recently as December, McCain announced, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” Just yesterday, on Fox News, one of McCain’s top advisers noted that “he did say it one time, no question, maybe twice.”<\/p>\n

And as it turns out, as ridiculous as this was as a defense for McCain’s admitted ignorance, the rest of the day’s rollout on economic issues wasn’t much better.
\n
\nMcCain claimed, for example, that Obama would enact “the largest tax increase since the Second World War.” A top McCain surrogate also insisted that Obama has not proposed “a single tax cut” and wants to “raise every tax in the book.” Both were lying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The statement that Obama would “enact” the largest tax increase since World War II is also overblown. Bush’s cuts will expire automatically at the end of 2010, so it is hardly a question of “enacting” a new tax increase. According to Obama economics adviser Jason Furman, the revenue raised from letting the tax cuts expire would be returned to middle- and lower-income taxpayers in the form of tax credits to pay for health insurance, so the overall effect would be revenue-neutral.<\/p>\n

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers pointed to an analysis by the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check that found that the gross tax increase would amount to $103.3 billion in 2011, the largest single-year tax increase since World War II. The Annenberg study pointed out, however, that “most economists” prefer to measure tax changes as a percentage of gross national product, in which case it would be the fifth-largest increase since 1943.<\/p>\n

According to Brookings Institution economist Douglas W. Elmendorf, Obama’s plan would eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans. “It’s very clear that taxes for lower-income Americans will decline under Obama,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The McCain campaign also said Obama would nearly double capital gains taxes. This, too, is wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The presumed Democratic nominee, taking questions from reporters Tuesday, also indicated he would raise the 15% capital-gains tax on the income from sales of investments to about 20%–not the near-doubling to 28% that Republicans and others have warned Sen. Obama would seek and would put the economy at some risk by doing so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The McCain campaign also said Obama would raise the cap on Social Security taxes, meaning a tax increase for millions of Americans. This became problematic, not because it’s false, but because McCain also has a record<\/a> of being open to raising the income cap on Social Security taxes.<\/p>\n

And in my favorite example, the McCain campaign relied on the classic “Tax Fairy” argument to insist that the government would collect more revenue if it cut taxes. This is not only demonstrably ridiculous<\/a>, but even the Bush White House’s own economic team has dismissed this as fantasy.<\/p>\n

Great rollout of McCain’s economic plan, guys. Quite an impressive show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 the Republican presidential hopeful is in a bit of a jam — he hoped to ride into the White House merely by being wrong about Iraq. Now that the economy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}