10-04-08, 5:43 pm
The McCain campaign struggled to present a coherent message on taxes this past week. During the vice presidential debate, Thursday, Oct. 2, Sarah Palin said, 'Barack Obama had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes, and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction, 94 times. Now, that is not what we need to create jobs and really bolster and heat up our economy. We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce.”
In these 94 votes, Palin included everything from higher fees on airline tickets to telephone fees.
In his rebuttal, Joe Biden pointed out that “using the standard that the governor uses, John McCain voted 477 times to raise taxes. It is a bogus standard.”
The 477 votes Biden referred to included McCain's votes on everything from higher prices for vaccines, increased excise taxes on public charities, and new taxes on items purchased on the Internet, according to public Senate records.
And now John McCain is proposing a $3.6 trillion tax on health care benefits. His health care tax would, for the first time in history, force employers to end existing employment-based plans and push workers and their families into the expensive individual insurance market. More than ever, families would be at the mercy of private insurance companies, unable to afford adequate health care coverage.
Two separate studies of McCain's health care tax indicate that as many as 27 million workers and their families could lose their insurance as a result.
What McCain offers by way of tax cuts is a mirror reflection of the Bush policies of the past eight years. McCain plans to give more tax breaks to the country's wealthiest two percent, wealthy CEOs, Washington lobbyists, and to largest corporations, some of whom are directly responsible for the financial meltdown on Wall Street.
To be fair, McCain's tax plan does provide a modicum of relief for working families, even up to 87 cents per day for millions of families, though just pennies for millions more, according to analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Aside from being stingy for working families, McCain's plan relies mainly on increasing the dependent exemption. According to analysis, that plan would leave out 101 million households without children.
Few analysts believe McCain's approach would 'bolster and heat up the economy,' as Palin insisted. Obama's plan to provide relief for 95 percent of working families, however, would focus on the 100s of millions of families and individuals who can use relief in tough economic times. In addition to his plans for investment in job creation, Obama's tax proposals put working families first and are more likely to fend off recession and generate economic activity.
