Is Obama Misrepresenting McCain in Bush Comparison
It may be just me who thinks that Obama is sounding a bit weak in his McCain-Bush comparisons – but then again, maybe not. Newsweek online just did a comparison of many of McCain’s proposals that have no relation to anything Bush has proposed. Some of these ideas include:
— McCain wants to use half of the $700 billion financial rescue package that Bush signed into law to buy up troubled mortgages at full face value and then negotiate easier loan terms.
— McCain has called for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox because he has “betrayed the public’s trust.” Bush appointed Cox in 2005 and has stood by him.
— McCain has proposed sweeping changes to the health care system, replacing existing income tax breaks for worker’s health coverage with refundable tax credits of up to $5,000. Bush had proposed replacing income tax breaks with a standard deduction for health insurance, but it was not as large a proposal as McCain’s and it died in Congress.
— McCain differs with Bush in several ways over energy policy, points that his campaign argues would have a big impact on the economy. Among them: McCain supports a mandatory cap-and-trade approach to cutting greenhouse gases, which allows industries to either reduce their pollution or to purchase credits from companies exceeding pollution targets.
— McCain wants to eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits.
On the flip side, Obama want disparately to avoid any ties to the concept that he’s part of the ‘Tax and Spend’ Democratic Liberal group. But his voting record is with the Democratic majority 96% of the time as reported by the Washington Post – Is he really his own man? Of course that’s when he does vote. Again according to the Washington Post, Senator Obama only has only exercised his vote a little over half the time:
Barack Obama has missed 303 votes (46.3%) during the current Congress.
While Obama shows a clear lead in the polls this last week before the vote, one wonders who it is that the US public is really voting into office.