Obama hits McCain on Taxes

[Gan]

CHICAGO (AP) - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that Sen. John McCain reversed his position on President Bush's deep tax cuts in order to win the Republican presidential nomination, one of his sharpest criticisms yet of the Arizona senator he hopes to face this fall.

Criticizing GOP efforts to extend major tax cuts from Bush's first term and to eliminate the estate tax, Obama said: "These are all steps that John McCain rightly said were irresponsible when they first came up."

"He made a decision to reverse himself on that," Obama told reporters as he flew from Chicago to Washington for a series of Senate votes on budget issues.

"That was how, I guess, you got your ticket punched to be the Republican nominee," he said of McCain. "But he was right then, and he's wrong now."
McCain has said he supports extending the tax cuts, which he initially voted against, because the economy is struggling and tax reductions offer some stimulus.

Obama has proposed an array of subsidies for higher education, health care and other costs hitting middle-class families. He said he believes he can pay for such plans by closing tax loopholes, placing a new tax on carbon emissions, phasing out the Iraq war and ending the Bush tax cuts for the nation's highest earners.

"We have identified the cuts that we think are available, or the changes in our tax code that are available to pay for our middle-class tax cut as well as our proposals to fund higher education and so on," the Illinois senator said.

He said, however, "There will be a lot of special interests and lobbyists that will resist the kinds of changes that I've proposed."

Asked if he would scale back his agenda if some of his proposed tax increases fail, Obama said, "I am a strong believer in pay-go," a term for avoiding new deficits by paying as you go. "So adhering to pay-go means that if I couldn't find the revenues or reduce spending in other areas, then I couldn't pay for my proposals."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080313/D8VCJSJO5.html
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Rightfully so, Obama hits McCain on reversing his decision to support/not support the Bush tax cuts. I dont remember McCain's previous reasoning, so I look forward to see what the response will be from the McCain camp.

Something else struck me in this article, which I'm very impressed with. See the bolded part.

[Warriorbird]

Phasing out the massive bleeding spending and ideology hole that is the Iraq War would save a lot of money.

[Crazy Bard]

McCain must be experiencing some side effects from all that medication he's probably taking. It's almost like everyday he changes his stance on important topics.

[Hulkein]

His explanation is that he would still be against the tax cuts today because spending was never decreased, but since they have been in place for several years he will push to extend them otherwise it is akin to a tax hike.

[Daniel]

That's stupid.

[Hulkein]

Just saying whatever he could to get the nomination. It worked.

[Keller]

McCain was also a vocal critic of President Bush in general. I remember he used to go on the Daily Show and outright make fun of George. C'est la vie in politics. He's got to fall in line if he wants to stand a chance.

[crb]

McCain made a protest vote against the tax cuts. They were going to pass anyways, he was pissed at Bush for saying he had a black baby in 2000 in SC. So he made a protest vote to underline and bring attention to the fact that there weren't enough spending cuts.

He has always been more of a cut spending than cut taxes republican.

And yes too, it does make sense that now, that we'll have been living with them for 7 years when they expire in 2010, it would be a tax hike. For instance, just try to imagine what happens to the stock markets when the dividend and capital gains tax rates nearly double. Having them go up now is much much worse than if they had never been cut in the first place. It is the difference between pulling a rug out under someone and having the rug never being there in the first place. Surprise, panic, and a crash to the floor vs. not being as high off the ground.