Day: October 18, 2008

Amazing:

Obama rallied 100,000 people underneath St. Louis’ Gateway Arch on Saturday, according to St. Louis police — his biggest event in America to date — and laid out the differences between himself and his rival on taxes and other issues.

Speaking underneath the landmark near the banks of the Mississippi River, Obama called taxes a values issue and said McCain’s proposals valued wealth more than the work that creates it. He refuted McCain’s criticism that his plan to provide tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans would amount to “welfare” for the 40 percent the Arizona senator says don’t pay federal income taxes. Obama said he would only provide a tax break to people who are paying payroll taxes.

“John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you’re facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people “welfare,” he said. “Well, let me tell you, the only “welfare” in this campaign is John McCain’s plan to give another $200 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations in America — including $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies that ran up record profits under George Bush. That’s who John McCain’s fighting for. I’m fighting for you.”

The Obama campaign has consistently sought to paint the Illinois senator as a champion for working people and his rival as beholden to big companies, special interests and the rich. Their effort has been helped by massive spending on advertising in key areas.

Other than bogeymen like Bill Ayers, the only line of attack John McCain has left is to claim that Barack Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, which is, of course, a baldfaced lie. Under Obama’s plan, only those who make over $250,000 per year would receive a tax increase.

It seems to have escaped the attention of the punditocracy, but during the debate last week, it was McCain who admitted that he would raise taxes on just about every American who had health insurance coverage:

MCCAIN: Now, 95 percent of the people in America will receive more money under my plan because they will receive not only their present benefits, which may be taxed, which will be taxed, but then you add $5,000 onto it, except for those people who have the gold-plated Cadillac insurance policies that have to do with cosmetic surgery and transplants and all of those kinds of things.

First, it’s revealing that McCain equates plastic surgery with transplants. But the main point is, with the costs of health care soaring, it’s puzzling why tax-hating, borrow-and-spend Republicans would choose to tax health care benefits.

Perhaps they’re proposing this tax as a stealthy, punitive first step in killing employer-based heath benefits, with the eventual goal of forcing everyone to buy insurance as individuals on the open market. If so — unless they can convince insurers to reduce the cost of premiums — it’s likely we’d see a huge spike in the number of uninsured.

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