The Case Against John McCain

None of those general quotes indicate that the plan was in fact given to them to peruse before signing, McG; only that the people quoted agree with McCain's general plan. Their signatures however are now being touted as approval for the specifics of the plan, which they didn't read or see.

Face it; the campaign used dishonest tactics to try and get economist support for McCain, who is currently trailing badly on this issue, and they got caught doing it.

Your use of those quotes doesn't invalidate my position; but it does provide for some laughter around my office. Why you try and swim with much bigger fish then you, will never be understood, McG.

Cycloptichorn

The New Republic

McContradiction

What's worse than flip-flopping? Consistently promising two opposing goals at the same time

Robert Gordon and James Kvaal , The New Republic Published: Wednesday, July 09, 2008



John McCain's fantastical pledge on Monday to balance the budget by 2013 through massive tax cuts and unidentified budget reductions deserved the bad reviews it received. But the most unfortunate element of his incoherent promise is that it's representative of his policy agenda these days. While the McCain campaign is trying to paint Barack Obama as a flip-flopper, the Arizona Republican is making diametrically opposed policy promises to different audiences at the same time. The contradictions are often in the details, but their obscurity is evidence of the campaign's cynicism.

Take McCain's ambitious health care plan. It would give every family a $5,000 health insurance tax credit at a cost of $3.6 trillion, by his campaign's own account. Despite its size, McCain aides have said, repeatedly, that McCain's health care proposal has no net cost. That's because it would tax workers' health benefits, which the Joint Committee on Taxation agrees will raise $3.6 trillion (in its analysis of the Bush proposal that served as the model for McCain's plan). Taxing health benefits solves the budget problem, but it creates another: It raises taxes on tens of millions of middle-class families, according to a Center for American Progress Action Fund report one of us co-authored.

Rather than face up to the difficult choice between higher deficits and more taxes, McCain advisors are attempting to have the best of both worlds. Jonathan Cohn noted "rumors" that McCain was actually subjecting health benefits to income taxes but not to payroll taxes--a policy that would help middle-class families but explode the deficit. And the McCain campaign told Daily Tax Report that "health benefits would only be subject to income taxes, not payroll taxes."

This makes no sense. The campaign's own $3.6 trillion figure is based on both income and payroll taxes. To say the plan cuts taxes by $3.6 trillion, has no budget cost, and doesn't raise payroll taxes is sort of like saying that Cindy McCain's passion fruit mousse recipe has no fat, burns calories, and eliminates male pattern baldness: It's impossible.

You see the same kind of doublespeak with tax policy. In June, the respected Tax Policy Center tallied up the cost of McCain's plans. The Tax Policy Center's report was based in part on conversations with McCain aides. It has since been cited in dozens of media reports. Yet the report's clarifications essentially rewrite the tax policies that McCain has publicly espoused.

For example, McCain has publicly promised to "abolish" and "phase-out" the Alternative Minimum Tax, the separate tax system that falls on about 4 million high-income taxpayers each year. His web site still says he will "permanently repeal" it.

But the Center, apparently based on the details provided by McCain aides, concluded that the Arizona senator "does not plan to repeal the individual AMT" but only to exempt more families from it. As David Leonhardt of The New York Times has pointed out, this will take more upper-income families off the AMT, but it is simply not a repeal.

That's not all. McCain proposes an enormous expansion of corporations' ability to write off their purchases--an expansion so large that a campaign position paper calls a $1.2 trillion tax cut suggested in a Bush Treasury report "modest" by comparison. But the Center says that McCain will limit the proposal to a narrow class of investments and sunset the proposal after five years--even though McCain himself regularly says on the stump that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would be akin to a tax increase. With the Center's limitations, the proposal becomes practically a footnote, not the game-changer McCain has suggested, costing just $18 billion over a decade.

The Center also reported that McCain would repeal a tax break for goods manufactured in the United States. Such a proposal would meet intense opposition from manufacturers in many swing states. The McCain campaign hasn't mentioned it anywhere.

All three differences suggest that McCain would be more judicious in cutting taxes than he has pledged. That is, of course, exactly the message that the McCain campaign wanted to send the Center's sober budget experts. But the campaign continues to describe its tax cuts in sweeping terms to voters.

It's the same pattern on other issues as well. In March, McCain said to The Wall Street Journal that he supports "private savings accounts ... along the lines President Bush proposed," letting workers divert some of their Social Security contributions into accounts. But McCain's website says he supports more personal accounts only as a "supplement" to Social Security.

This is not a small difference. It was the crux of the massive fight over Social Security privatization three years ago. McCain told the Journal he would fix the website. Four months later, he hasn't.

On education, McCain education advisor Lisa Graham Keegan in June said that McCain believes the No Child Left Behind Act is adequately funded. But a week later, McCain policy director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and his senior advisor Carly Fiorina told a group of reporters they would "fully fund" the law. This expensive pledge--about $15 billion a year--puts McCain in the odd position of simultaneously criticizing Bush for spending too much and then wanting more spending on a signature Bush initiative.

What is happening here? One explanation could be a disorganized campaign. Maybe McCain's aides never bothered to hammer down answers to these questions, forcing them to make up responses haphazardly, resulting in missteps. But it sells short Holtz-Eakin--a former Congressional Budget Office director and a respected expert on taxes and health care--to presume that he failed to consider some of the central questions of domestic policy.

The larger problem is the contradictory ambitions of the McCain campaign. The candidate wants to stand for "leadership, courage, and choices." Yet he also want to be both a supply-sider and a deficit-hawk. He wants to transform our health care system and Social Security without adding any money to either and without anybody getting hurt. He wants to be a tightwad on spending who doesn't cut any spending anybody cares about. These are impossible policies to explain, because the policies themselves are impossible. No wonder he ends up talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Robert Gordon and James Kvaal are senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Copyright © 2007 The New Republic. All rights reserved.

Economists' Statement:

We enthusiastically support John McCain's economic plan. It is a comprehensive, pro-growth, reform agenda. The reform focuses on the real economic problems Americans face today and will face in the future. And it builds on the core economic principles that have made America great.

His plan would control government spending by vetoing every bill with earmarks, implementing a constitutionally valid line-item veto, pausing non-military discretionary government spending programs for one year to stop their explosive growth and place accountability on federal government agencies.

His plan would keep taxes from rising, because higher tax rates are exactly the wrong policy to restore economic growth, especially at this time.

His plan would reduce tax rates by cutting the tax that corporations pay to 25 percent in line with other countries, by completely phasing out the alternative minimum tax, by increasing the exemption for dependents, by permitting the first-year expensing of new equipment and technology, and by making permanent a reformed tax credit for R&D.

His plan would also create a new and much simpler tax system and give Americans a free choice of whether to pay taxes under that simple system or the current complex and burdensome income tax.

His plan would open new markets for American goods and services and thereby create additional jobs for Americans by supporting good free trade agreements, such as the one with Colombia, and working with leaders around the world to avoid isolationism and protectionism. His plan would also reform education, retraining, and other assistance programs so they better help those displaced by trade and other changes in the economy. His plan addresses problems in the financial markets and housing markets by calling for increased transparency and accountability, by targeted assistance to deserving homeowners to refinance their mortgages, and by opposing so-called reform plans which would raise the costs of home-ownership in the future.

The above actions, as well as plans to address entitlement programs -- especially Social Security, Medicare and other government health care programs -- and his regulatory reforms -- especially in the area of health care -- constitute a broad and powerful economic agenda. Because of John McCain's experience working with the American people in all walks of life, with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and with leaders around the world, we are optimistic that these plans will become a reality and will create jobs and restore confidence and strong economic growth.

Howard Beales, an economist at George Washington University, explained that he signed the letter as "an expression of support for [McCain], not necessarily each and every detail of his plan, which I may not have had time to study closely."

Beales said he thought McCain had "a good plan," in general, and that his policy priorities were better than Obama's. In signing the letter, however, he did not intend to give a blanket endorsement to McCain's full agenda.

McCain's "advisers" are the key to his presidency and what its' true ambitions and goals will be. The "stunning" list of McCain campaign "chieftans" are listed below and should cause everybody a great deal of anger and resentment:

Charlie Black is John McCain's chief political adviser and formerly a partner at the lobbying firm he founded, BKSH & Associates. He took leave from the firm earlier this year.

The firm's client list have included military contractor Blackwater Worldwide and Phillip Morris, as well as Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi, and former dictators Ferdinand Marcos of the Philipenes and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Last year Black was registered to lobby on behalf of 29 clients, including AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Occidental Petroleum, and JP Morgan Chase.

Charlie Black has earned more than $1.8 million representing the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the leading foreign producer of gas and oil in Colombia. Significant in view of McCain's trip last week to Columbia.

Other Clients include:

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who looted his country during his reign and whose totalitarian regime was marked by human rights abuses.

Angolan Guerilla leader Jonas Savimbi, who brutally murdered and tortured civilians and planted land mines in his own country.

Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, who tortured and publicly executed political rivals, and pillaged his country's resources, enriching himself as the people of Zaire starved.

Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who supressed opposition political parties, and had a magazine editor critical of his abuses murdered.

Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, whose army slaughtered 5,000 unarmed civillians in ten months.

Rick Davis is John McCain's campaign manager from both this election cycle and McCain's run in 2000. However, he recently turned over day-to-day campaign operations to another staffer.
Davis took leave in 2006 from the lobbying firm he founded, Davis Manafort, in which he retains an ownership stake. Davis Manafort's client list has included Verizon and SBC Communications and Ukranian holding company System Capital Management. Although he has not been registered as a lobbyist for two years, his firm was actively involved working as an unregistered lobbyist representing the interests abroad of foreign politicians and businessmen. In 2006 Davis's firm represented Viktor Yanukovich, a Ukranian politician opposed by the U.S. Government because of his ties to Vladimir Putin.

Also in 2006, Davis represented Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska a close ally of Vladimir Putin, whose U.S. visa was revoked because of his organized crime and anti-democratic ties. Davis used his ties with McCain to set up a meeting between Deripaska and McCain at an economic conference in Switzerland.

Davis was still actively working as a lobbyist while also working as a paid consultant to McCain's Reform Institute, and later used his contacts with McCain to facilitate a merger between DHL and Airborne. McCain "thwarted [R-Alaska Senator Ted] Stevens's effort to insert language into legislation that would prohibit foreign-controlled companies such as DHL from holding certain military contracts."

Phil Gramm is an economic adviser for McCain who was until April a
registered lobbyist for UBS, the world's largest manager of personal
wealth. Gramm is also currently a vice chairman for UBS's investment arm. A former Texas senator and economics professor at Texas A&M, Gramm was still a lobbyist when he advised McCain on the campaign's economic policies unveiled earlier this year.

Additionally, Gramm was a senator who took cash from the banking industry and introduced - and passed - a law that removed consumer safeguards in place since the Great Depression. This allowed banks to merge with financial investment institutions and begin selling risky investment products, including speculating on mortgages. This led to the subprime meltdown we have today which is destroying our economy. Then Gramm quit the Senate and went to work for UBS, a gigantic international bank that took advantage of Gramm's new law and gobbled up investment firms, then had Gramm lobby George W. Bush to remove the remaining consumer safeguards on predatory lending.

John Green is a lobbyist who announced in March that he planned to take leave from his post as a managing director at Ogilvy Government Relations to coordinate the McCain campaign's efforts with congressional Republicans. In recent years, the firm's clients have included European Aeronautic Defense & Space, which beat Boeing for a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract. Also, his firm represented Ameriquest Mortgage, one of the most notorious lenders in the current mortgage crisis.

This year, he is registered to lobby for 57 clients including Pfizer, United Health Care Group, the Carlyle Group and the American Petroleum Group.

John Timmons is a fundraiser for McCain and a former aide in his Senate office. He is also a founding partner of the Cormac Group, which took in more than $2 million in revenues in 2007. The firm's clients include the City of Hollywood, the National Association of Broadcasters, News Corp. and Time Warner. This year Timmons is registered as a lobbyist for US Airways Group, the City of Hollywood, the Association of American Railroads, Time Warner and a group called Americans for Democracy.

Previous Timmons clients include AT&T, SBC Communications and America West Airlines.

Kirk Blalock is a fundraiser for McCain and chairman of Young Professionals for McCain. In 2002 he joined the firm of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock. The firm was collecting more than $7 million in lobbying fees as recently as last year. His firm's clients include Coca-Cola, Time Warner and the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of large U.S. companies.

Previously he was the White House director for business outreach and a "Pioneer" for the Bush campaign, meaning he raised more than $100,000 for the candidate.

Randy Scheunemann is a foreign policy adviser to John McCain. Scheunemann has served as a lobbyist with Orion Strategies and Scheunemann & Associates for foreign governments such as Georgia, Macedonia and Taiwan. He has also lobbied for the National Rifle Association and a group called the Caspian Alliance.

He has reportedly lobbied for the Republic of Georgia while working for the campaign. This year he was registered to lobby for the NRA.

Scheunemann was a board member for the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, in addition to creating The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in late 2002 and serving as its executive director.

Carlos Bonilla was described earlier this year on the McCain campaign Web site as an economic policy adviser. A McCain spokesman said Bonilla left the campaign in May after the campaign imposed new rules restricting the involvement of lobbyists.

A recent White House report said Bonilla took favors from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff while working in the White House. Bonilla is a lobbyist and senior vice president at the Washington Group. His firm was bringing in more than $10 million annually a few years ago, representing corporate clients such as Motorola, Delta Airlines and Rent-a-Center.

Bonilla is registered this year to lobby on behalf of 27 clients, including Time Warner, Motorola and the National Automobile Dealers Association.

Kristen Chadwick is a fundraiser for McCain and served on the steering committee (pdf) for Women For McCain. She is also a lobbyist and partner with Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, which had more than $7 million in revenue in 2007. She worked for the Bush White House before joining the lobbying firm.

She has personally represented Sprint and Nextel. This year she is registered to lobby for 38 clients, including financial, health care and retail companies. In April, The Hill named her one of the top lobbyists in Washington.

Wayne Berman is a top McCain fundraiser who joined the McCain camp in April 2007. Berman is listed as the managing director of Ogilvy Government Relations, which took in about $22 million in lobbying fees in 2007. The firm's clients include top financial firms, insurance companies, and those in the energy and telecommunications services. In particular, the firm represented Ameriquest Mortgage, one of the most notorious lenders in the current mortgage crisis.

This year Berman is registered to lobby on behalf of 51 clients including AT&T, Chevron, Motorola, Fannie Mae and Visa.

Susan Nelson is a finance director for the campaign. As recently as last year she was a registered lobbyist for the Loeffler Group, which collected more than $5 million last year. Nelson has reportedly received payments from Loeffler and continued to lobby since joining the campaign.

Last year she was registered to lobby on behalf of five clients, including Southwest Airlines and Toyota.

Christian Ferry is a deputy campaign manager for John McCain. He has partnered with Rick Davis to represent telecom companies SBC and Verizon from 2003 to 2005. He has also registered as a lobbyist for Deutche Post, ImageSat International, a group called Preserve Luke Air Force Base, and DHL Holdings USA.

David Crane has served as a senior domestic-policy adviser for McCain's campaign. He is also a lobbyist and the president of Quadripoint Strategies. Crane was a senior policy adviser to then-Majority Leader Trent Lott and worked with McCain on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

This year he is registered to lobby on behalf of four clients, including CSX and Bank of America.

Thomas G. Loeffler, is a lobbyist whose clients have included Saudi Arabia, stepped down as national finance committee chairman, the senator's campaign reported on May 18, 2008. Loeffler is a former Texas congressman who had been a top fundraiser for President Bush. He took over McCain's fundraising apparatus last summer when McCain's campaign ran out of money.

His law and lobbying firm, the Loeffler Group, has counted as its clients Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and the state of Hidalgo, Mexico.

Peter Madigan lobbies for the government of Columbia to promote free trade and "seek appropriations for the Government of Columbia." Has also defended Columbian President Alvaro Uribe against allegations of ties to paramilitary groups. Uribe has also reportedly been linked to drug trafficking and bribery. Lobbies on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), because the UAE faces a class-action lawsuit alleging they enslaved thousands of children and forced them to be jockeys in camel races for the entertainment of the Arabian elite.

Eric Burgeson was an Energy Advisor to McCain. Resigned. Eric Burgeson had to resign as McCain's advisor on energy policy, because he was the head lobbyist on behalf of the energy industry for Barbour Griffith and Rogers (BGR), a lobby firm in Washington, DC. Yes, you're reading right. John McCain let an active energy lobbyist "advise" him on energy policy.

Doug Goodyear Was GOP convention Chair chosen by McCain. Resigned in May a few hours after Newsweek posted a report online saying the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the government in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Goodyear's firm , DCI Group, represented the same junta still in power today that withheld aid to its citizens after a cyclone destroyed much of Myanmar's coastline in May of this year. Goodyear's firm also launched a PR campaign on behalf of the Burmese junta with the goal of denouncing "falsehoods" by the US government about them. Other clients of Goodyear's firm include ExxonMobil and General Motors.

Geez, you just don't quit with the old canards do you? How many times must it be explained to you? Veteran benefits have gone up throughout the terms of the Bush Administration, it has been demonstrated time and again yet it just doesn't sink in does it?

I'm not even sure I know what it means to say you don't agree with your chief economic advisor's comments about the economy. If he is McCain's chief economic advisor, what good is he?

Yeah, I know McCain isn't obliged to take all of his advice but on something as critical as the state of the US economy wouldn't you think he's advising McCain on what the problems and solutions are?

So if he hasn't told McCain he thinks the economic problems are all in our head what has he told him? If a candidates chief adviser differs so much from the candidate what value is he to McCain?