Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain says that repealing the tax cuts granted to the wealthiest Americans by the Bush Administration and passing the savings on to middle and lower income Americans, in the form of tax cuts for them, is “socialism.”
What does Barack Obama have to say about all of this?
“It’s true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate they paid under Bill Clinton,” he said at a campaign stop on Monday. “John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets is that just a few years ago, he himself
said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn’t ‘in good conscience’ support a tax cut where the benefits went to the wealthy at the expense of ‘middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.’ ”
Is this true? Did Sen. McCain actually oppose the tax cuts for the wealthy that he now calls Barack Obama a “socialist” for promising to rescind them?
Yes. According to “political ticker’, a feature on the CNN website, the facts are these…

On May 26, 2001, speaking on the Senate floor, McCain said, “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 who most need tax relief.”
McCain was one of only two Republicans to vote against President Bush’s $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut. Two years later, in May, 2003, McCain was just one of three Republicans to vote against additional Bush tax cuts because, he said, the cost of the Iraq war was not yet known. He later told a Wall Street Journal reporter that he opposed the 2003 tax cut because it was “too tilted to the wealthy.”
Then, on May 11, 2006, McCain sided with the president by voting for an extension of the tax cuts. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said the reason for the change was that “the economy had adjusted — the tax cuts were there.” He went on to say that voting against the extension would have been “tantamount to a tax increase.”
In recent months, along the campaign trail, McCain has repeatedly said he supports making Bush’s tax cuts permanent rather than have them run out when the law expires in 2010.
What everyone forgets is that there was a whoop and a hollar when Bush first proposed actually cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans–and the only way the president got his tax cuts for the wealthy through Congress was to write a law that expired in 2010.
The point of that expiration date: The economy “at that time” would reveal and dictate what was next in the best interests of the country. The president did not say then that anyone who wanted to allow the tax cut law to run out as scheduled in 2010 would be labeled “a socialist.”
The Republicans have left that for John McCain to do–even though McCain himself opposed the tax cuts for wealthy people when Bush first proposed them.
Hmmmph. I guess you can’t ask a man to never change his mind…but how about this change of mind? John McCain complained bitterly in a previous run for the presidency about “robo-calls” being used against him…these are automated calls placed to people in key states where the vote may be close, and they usually contain hateful and often misleading (if not outright inaccurate) information about the opposing candidate.
McCain said then that he would never, ever use such calls, never, ever stoop to such slimy, dirty politics.
He is using the calls now in key states in the final two weeks of this election — and now defending the practice.
Hmmmph.
Oh, yes…and yesterday Sarah Palin told CNN that she had more experience than Barack Obama and was therefore better qualified to be president of the United States…
Is everyone living in la-la land here?