McCain's Doublespeak

The New Republic: Ariz. Senator Has Contradictory Ambitions

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Robert Gordon and James Kvaal.

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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 tailed 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 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.

[nskduke2]

ERoosevelt08, This country needs a middle class president. A president must come the middle class, believe it or not it is possible.

[eroosevelt08]

Senator McCain''s policies are geared toward helping the top 2% of the population, male or female, the same as Bush. McCain cannot win on these issues with low and middle class women. To have an estate tax to worry about, a woman (or man) now has to die with $2,000,000.00 (two million dollars) in assets. That leaves out every woman I know personally. The estate tax is irrelevant to most of us. Who are the Republicans kidding? They are still looking out for the super rich.

[nskduke2]

The truth is that the President has little influence over the economy,
Posted by vranger

Posted by ainttaken
what a load of crapp
the Iraq war hasnt affected the economy? You are even more senile than McLame.

Yes the Iraq War is affecting the economy but its not bring our economy down. The credit crunch and the mortgage crisis is whats slowing down this economy not the war. If you would listen to the news and read the paper you would know that.

[vduran27]

The current oil crisis is one more doublespeak...
Everybody (Bush/Chaney/McCain) are all crying we need to drill for more oil in the US...
More wells and no new refineries - very shortsighted rhetoric with no concept of the real solution. Wells will take a long time but we need to do them as well as refineries but we need something now - what''s the plan raid the American pocketbooks and retire???
I am with T. Boone the man with a plan and knowledge
Vince Duran
www.DuranAds.com

[caldwellptr]

The hallmark of the Bush Presidency, and especially his Presidential campaigns, has been the ability to call day night, economic bad times good, 6 years of War mission accomplished, Swift Boat Vietnam vetran not deserving of being a Swift Boat Vietnam vetran, no Weapons of Mass Destruction in plain sight, Iraq instead of Afganistan, Meetings with Oil Executives not attended by Oil Executives, a President elected as an isolationist is a President who wants to invade and establish friendly governments around the world .....

This is not Democracy! No More of the OLD POLITICS !

[jsl45]

Should we be surprised by the Doublespeak.....McBush is just a cookie cutter of Shurb the Dumbnificent..The Shurb speaks out of both sides of his mouth and lied to the American Public on top of that.

[samthetvcat]

Or is it the Strait? :/

[samthetvcat]

clestes - oh I guess in my mind, I was factoring in the possibility that while Barack is withdrawing troops from Iraq, Iran might take the opportunity to fill the vacuum with their troops to ''help out with security'' . . . since Barack appears to be a borderline sociopath who strives first and foremost for vain-glory, I''m guesstimating he''ll feel the need to counter taunts of being ''wimpy'' from the GOP by taking an aggressive stance against Iran within Iraq if it were to come to that.

Which would put the blockage of the Gulf of Hormuz back into play, wouldn''t it?

I mean, I don''t see Barack saying Iran being neighborly towards Iraq is just the price that needs to be paid to meet the fulfillment of getting the troops out. Like isn''t that what most of us anti-war folk would hope for? And wouldn''t we be likely to point out that like geez, Iran''s there at Iraq''s invitation?

[element51]

vranger....I''d like to point out to you that while it is true that the democrats have a majority it is not enough to over ride a presidential veto or to get anything past the republicans. It is impossible to get anything done when the republicans block every piece of legislation that the democrats come up with. It is easy for you to blame the democrats when you so conveniently forget to mention all the facts.

[clestes-2009]

SamTheTVCat,

read my last post and then decide.

[clestes-2009]

Fourth, Israel is a sitting duck.

Just the THOUGHT of a McCain presidency is enough to make sensible people have nightmares.

This is the last gasp of the old ***. Time for him to retire and live off Cindy''s money and be with his kids and grandkids, and great grandkids.

[clestes-2009]

Furthermore, my biggest problem and I have many, with the old fossil is his desire to attack Iran.

The reason attacking Iran is NOT going to happen is the hardline resistence from the Pentagon, the Sec of Defense dept and the State dept.

Robt Gates, the Sec of Defense, Mike Muellen the chairman of the Joint chiefs and Condi Rice, Sec of State are ALL ADAMANTLY OPPOSED to attacking Iran.

Why? Because they see nothing positive and a lot of serious negatives to come of it.

First off, there is no reason for it. The latest NIE says Iran has no nuclear weapon program since 2003. They have never backed away from that claim.

Second, the already rocky economy would take a nose dive to depths never before seen. With oil at better than $200 a barrel and gas over $7.00 a gallon, businesses would go belly up and unemployment would skirocket. Food and heating would be prohibitedly expensive and there could easily be riots in the streets by people out of work, out of money and desperate. It would the 1930''s shanty towns all over again.

Third, the cost in US troop lives would be high. It is easeily conceivable that the Shiite majority in power would turn on the US troops and they would have to fight their way out of Baghdad taking heavy casualities. That does not even count the cost in civilians lives or the destruction of what little infrastructure build up there has been.

[samthetvcat]

PS Oops, clestes - I meant that yeah I totally agree with your assessment, but that wow I don''t know what to do when it comes to actually picking between the two of them :)

[samthetvcat]

---"As I said, Obama may not be liked, but at least he has realistic ideas and offers details of his plans.

Fossil John just throws out ideas that make no sense, don''t stand up to scrunity"---

Posted by clestes

Yeah, that basically sums up the choices doesn''t it? Wow, I don''t know . . .

[clestes-2009]

Furthermore, what few details fossil John offers on his ideas are just plain laughable.

My current favorite is how he is going to balance the budget by winning the war in Iraq in 2013. Huh?????

First of all, how can any predict the outcome of a war 4 YEARS in advance? There are any number of scenarios that could happen that would scuddle that plan between now and then. What other plans are there if that doesn''t work out?

Second, what is going to happen between now and then??

I mean, he is so off base and illogical and unrealistic that anyone listening to him has NOTHING to grasp or build on.

As I said, Obama may not be liked, but at least he has realistic ideas and offers details of his plans.

Fossil John just throws out ideas that make no sense, don''t stand up to scrunity and offer no hope.

This election is over.

[wardoglrs]

Robert Gordon and James Kvaal.
I am impressed with this article from the Neo Con CBS''
You two better be careful you speak the truth and truth in the media is not exceptionable.Thanks for your straight talk views....

[samthetvcat]

The labels are just kind of ''terms of art'', aren''t they?

When Barack double-speaks, it''s to hold the positions of two different constituencies. Like he''s committed to getting out of Iraq within 16 months AND in the exact same breath he''s also warning that he''s not at all committed to getting out of Iraq within 16 months, which appeals to the anti-war crowd (''far left'') AND the ''get out with dignity crowd'' (''centrist''). Most of our minds don''t work that way - mine doesn''t - so the danger is in our tendency to hear what we want to hear and discount the contradiction.

With McCain, what''s being called ''doublespeak'' such as his claim that he can cut spending without raising taxes AND balance the budget isn''t intended to appeal to two separate groups - he''s just making a pie-in-the-sky overoptimistic overpromise. Everybody wishes for that ideal, but when confronted with the nitty gritty reality knows that''s not really achievable. I think in Magoo''s case, he''s really just not spending a lot of time in the weeds cross-checking A with B.

Barack''s the more slippery ''double-talker'' because how do you really debunk his double-talk? How do you guard yourself against falling into the trap of only hearing what you want to hear when he limits his double-talk to ones that can''t be debunked with reality? With Magoo all you do is cite facts.

So, I guess in conclusion yeah they''re both politicking, but wow I sure see Barack as a WAY more dangerous political animal . . .

[briannorwood]

clestes:

Couldn''t agree with you more. McCain is such a pathetic little figure. I am quite amazed that this is the best the GOP could cough up this time.

And to call McCain''s campaign anemic is an understatement. I can only imagine what he''ll look like when he has to stand side-by-side during the upcoming debates. The difference will be dramatic.

[clestes-2009]

I think the years as a POW are starting to take their toll. He is befuddled, confused, vindictive, belligerant and can''t even control his campaign message or direct his campaign which is full of competing advisors each of which have his ear on a different day.

What does THAT say about controlling WH policies??

No matter how one feels about Obama, he has a message, he stays on focus, his campaign runs like a well oil machine and there are no temper tantrums.

This election is over. It was over when fossil John was picked as the rep nominee and Obama beat out Hillary. If the rep''s had picked a different nominee, it might have been more of a race, but the only question is how big a blowout will it be.

[kommoncents-2009]

Oh, yeah, and Obama has all the perfect solutions... you liberals make me laugh. Pathetic.