If it's Monday, it must be "Social Security is a Joke" day for the McCain campaign (again).
Those words come directly from the lips of Joe the Plumber, the man McCain invoked today for the sixth straight day to push his "Obama is a Socialist because he wants tax fairness" argument.
While Colin Powell was explicitly shredding that argument in his Sunday press conference (see quote below the fold), John McCain made clear who spoke for him:
Joe the Plumber is now speaking for me
Here's what Joe had to say about Social Security, two days earlier on national television:
Social Security is a joke.... Social Security, never believed in it, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me.
Joe also doesn't like the idea of setting tax policy by considering the relative burdens on different economic classes. Rolling back the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy to help the middle class ... well ...
That would be socialism!
But, wait.
Didn't McCain himself say this in 2001 about the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy:
I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans.
So, according to McCain 2008, McCain 2001 was a socialist!
As was Ike (top marginal rates on the wealthy 91%), Nixon (top marginal rates 70%), Truman (top marginal rates 82-91%), Roosevelt (top marginal rates 63-88%).
Obama wants top marginal rates to be 39.6%. The very same level defended by McCain 2001. And even according to the reasoning of McCain 2008, Obama is barely the socialist Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Truman and Nixon were.
Of course, the reality is that none of these men were socialists.
They were capitalists who believed the strongest and most sustainable market economies are those that are regulated and taxed to (1) support the very government that protects the market structure, as well as society's essential infrastructure; (2) ensure a basic level of fairness for working people, (3) foster broad prosperity, not just prosperity at the top, and (4) guarantee opportunity for more than the very wealthy and powerful.
As Powell said yesterday, taxes pay a central role in this equation:
Taxes are always a redistribution of money. Most of the taxes that are redistributed go back to those who pay them -- in roads and airports and hospitals and schools.
And taxes are necessary for the common good, and there's nothing wrong with examining what our tax structure is or who should be paying more, who should be paying less.
For us to say that makes you a socialist, I think, is an unfortunate characterization that isn't accurate.
And, on top of all that, McCain's own health care plan involves new taxes to redistribute wealth in tax credits to others -- the precise basis for his "socialism" charge against Obama.
The AP has noticed the discrepancy:
McCain, though, has a health care plan girded with a similar philosophy. He proposes providing individuals a $5,000 tax credit to buy health insurance. He would pay for his plan, in part, by considering as taxable income the money their employer spends on their health coverage.
Oops.
As MSNBC's Contessa Brewer asked on the air this morning, isn't this an example of "people who live in glass houses throwing stones."
Joe the Plumber ... used by McCain for inflammatory rhetorical points, betrayed by McCain on policy.
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McCain 2001 tax quote can be found in: Yeah, Right: "This Economy Is Strong" and Other Tall Tales, page 63
Online Source: Bloomberg News