Critics: McCain Economic Plan Light on the Details
Posted by Matt Ortega · July 9, 2008 · Comments (0)
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) released an economic plan that is rooted in imagination rather than fact. Somehow the McCain administration will figure out a way to massively cut taxes and balance the budget within four years. These are merely platitudes because the McCain campaign does not explain how they will do that. New York Times: Read more »
McCain Economic Plan: Magic Wand Public Policy
Posted by Matt Ortega · July 7, 2008 · Comments (1)
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) released a thirteen-page economic plan this week entitled “Jobs for America” that the campaign touts as “comprehensive” that is rife with incoherent and nonsensical plans like massive tax cuts while promising to balance the budget by 2013. Josh Marshall summed it up as such:
I think we may have come to that moment, that quick turn of events, that encapsulates the fact that there is apparently no limit to the howlers and nonsense that John McCain can throw out and still not generate collective guffaws or even scrutiny from the national political press.
Bear with me on this one because it’s genuinely mind-boggling.
Marshall continued to rip the plan as well as the silence of the media on the plan’s flaws and just pure incoherence and lack of even the most basic application of logic.
Now, the general routine is the face of this kind of candidate announcement is that journalists and economists look at the numbers to see if they add up. In most cases, the exercises generates fairly unsatisfying contradictory opinions, with some experts saying one thing and other experts another.
But here’s the thing. McCain doesn’t have any numbers. None. Not vague numbers of fuzzy math. He just says he’s going to do it. Any other candidate would get laughed off the stage with that kind of nonsense or more likely reporters just wouldn’t agree to give them a write up. But this is all over the place.
The centerpiece of this plan includes extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy indefinitely and reaping all the savings from “victory” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is what’s behind McCain’s promise. I’ll do a lot of things that will get the deficit down. One of them is the the guarantee of victories in Iraq and Afghanistan and obviously that will save a lot of money.
As I said, this is the reductio ad absurdum of the mad pass John McCain gets on everything. He’s pledging to balance the budget in four years and when asked for details he says, ‘We’ll get back to you on that.’
Marshall wrote last night in prelude to the official release of the plan:
McCain’s people do realize that there is no budget mark down for ‘victory’. Whatever victory’s other merits, it is only reductions in expenditures directed (in the broadest sense) toward the war zones that get you actual budget savings.
Is McCain saying that both wars will be over by the end of his first term? And if so, is that victory with all or most of the troops staying on post-victory, as he’s implied? Or will they all have left by then? Remember, Adm. Mullen says we need more troops in Afghanistan to deal with spiraling situation developing there. But we don’t have any more because of our commitments in Iraq.
And if his four-year balanced budget promise is premised on rapid victory in both theaters, isn’t that sort of arbitrary timelines on steroids?
But, in actuality, what else could one expect from a guy who has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to economics? He may have just set the bar a bit too high for himself. I mean, thirteen full pages pages, single-spaced. Wow. Sounds like they pulled an all-nighter in Camp McCain like a lazy college student on a term paper — and the quality of product shows. To put it simply, this plan is pure imagination based on fantasyland expectations severely lacking in actual dollar figures and rife with inconsistencies — and that is a generous description.
McCain Continues to Distort, Change Record
Posted by Matt Ortega · July 1, 2008 · Comments (0)
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) spoke at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) in which he continued to pander to Latino voters and obfuscate his constantly changing position on immigration.
In the appearance, McCain vowed to enforce the borders first and then claimed to support comprehensive immigration reform within a matter of minutes between each other.
The presumptive Republican nominee did not stop the “Pander Express” there. He later claimed to support the Immigration Reform & Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 but he, in fact, did not support it at all, found the Washington Times.
On Saturday, he mischaracterized his own record on the contentious 1986 amnesty law that continues to define the sides in the current debate. He told NALEO he “supported that legislation way back then,” when in fact he voted against it and was a critic.
The Arizona Republic newspaper in 1986 reported that he had called the bill racist and quoted him as saying the bill’s requirements for employers to verify workers “would institutionalize discrimination.” He said employers would refuse to hire Hispanics to avoid running afoul of the law.
After his speech Saturday, a McCain campaign official said the senator “was referring to his support for a comprehensive solution - going back to that time. He did oppose some provisions and didn’t end up voting for the bill - that’s a point of record.”
The one-time “maverick” senator from the southwest, John McCain has seriously fallen.
In his quest for the White House, John McCain flipped on the Bush tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, comprehensive immigration reform, offshore drilling, ethanol, Roe v. Wade, closing Guantanamo Bay, Jerry Falwell as an “agent of intolerance,” campaign finance reform, Grover Norquist, the estate tax, nuclear waste and Yucca Mountain, on the role of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and so on. The list seems endless, and continues to grow.
Last but certainly not the least — despite railing against the influence of special interests, his campaign is run by and for Washington lobbyists with some of the most unsavory client lists.
John McCain long ago abandoned the “independent streak” that he carefully crafted on the national stage. He will say and do anything to be president, and no previously-held political principle shall stand in his way.
McCain Makes the Case: Third Bush Term
Posted by Matt Ortega · June 14, 2008 · Comments (0)
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) tried to counter charges from Democrats that his candidacy is offering a third Bush term in the infamous Green Monster Speech. Unfortunately for John McCain, he argued about his strident support for President Bush three years ago. Since that interview, according to Congressional Quarterly, McCain sided with the President 89 percent (2006), 95 percent (2007) and 100 percent (2008) of the time in the U.S. Senate.
Not a whole lot of “distance” there.
Graham: McCain = Bush on Healthcare, Taxes
Posted by Matt Ortega · June 8, 2008 · Comments (0)
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) appeared on the Sunday morning ABC News program, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and discussed the presidential candidacy of fellow Republican Senator John McCain.
Think Progress blogger Benjamin J. Armbruster provides the background:
In a widely-ridiculed speech last Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) noted that “you will hear from my opponent’s campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I’m running for President Bush’s third term. You will hear every policy of the President described as the Bush-McCain policy.” He added that he believes those comparisons are “false.”
But it seems that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), McCain’s chief surrogate and attack dog, disagrees. Today on ABC’s This Week, Graham stated unequivocally that McCain’s tax and health care policies were not only an extension of Bush’s polices but also an “enhancement.”
Watch the segment:
Just last week, top McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin attempted to cast Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois), the presumptive Democratic nominee, as offering a third Bush term. The charge, laughable on its face, prompted Republican operative Robert Novak to exclaim “how stupid it is.”
It is unclear what, if anything, the McCain campaign messaging is beyond “I’m not George W. Bush; I am independent of the special interests — honestly; Sunni, Shi’a, Tomato, To-mah-to; and, no really, I do understand economics.”
Latinos Hit Hard in Housing Construction Slump
Posted by Matt Ortega · June 4, 2008 · Comments (0)
In the Wednesday edition of the Washington Post, there is a report on the steep decline in the housing construction market that is putting thousands of Latinos out of work.
Latino workers have lost nearly 250,000 jobs in the construction industry during the past year, with Hispanic immigrants getting hit hardest, the report by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center said.
Joblessness among Latino immigrants rose to 7.5 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2008, compared to 6.5 percent for all Latinos and 4.7 percent for all other workers in the U.S. The rise in unemployment for Hispanic immigrants also marked the first time since 2003 that foreign-born Latinos had a higher unemployment rate than that of native-born Latinos, the report said.
Latinos are hit incredibly hard in the Bush economy and you can bet that four more years of the same failed economic policies will not attract them to Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) in the fall. Costly tax cuts for the uber-wealthy and corporations will do nothing to put these workers, and millions more of all colors, back to work with decent jobs and healthcare.
Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois), who clinched the Democratic nomination last night, and Democrats around the country will make sure every voter knows that John McCain and the Republicans who line up behind him offer more of the same that we can ill afford at this critical time in our history.
CA-11: A Tale of Two McNerneys
Posted by Matt Ortega · November 4, 2007 · Comments (0)
McNerney ‘06, meet McNerney ‘07. I don’t think you two have met.
So when we win this race in November a powerful message will be sent to those in Washington: Democrats can win in so called red areas when they run on Democratic issues not as Republican-Lites. [emphasis added]
Q: Do you support the permanent repeal of the federal estate tax?
A: No.
Jerry McNerney 2007 (Hat tip: babaloo, Firedoglake):
In the long term, I’d like to eliminate the estate tax permanently. [emphasis added]
Here’s a headline from the New York Times in June 2006, “G.O.P. Fails in Attempt to Repeal Estate Tax.” Think about that for a moment.
