McCain to Green Bay-trickle down economics works

Senator John McCain claims he's an agent of change and a maverick.

But McCain hasn't changed his faith in trickle down economics.

In Green Bay on Thursday, McCain sang the same old supply side song that Republicans have always sung when he claimed Obama "...will tax the country into a recession."

Earth to John McCain!

We are already in a recession that you and advisers like former campaign chair Senator Phil Gramm created through your blind commitment to financial deregulation!

America is facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Trillions have been pledged to ensure that the system doesn't collapse entirely. We have lost 660,000 jobs since January. In the past year, Wisconsin alone has shed 23,000 private sector jobs.

The deficit, over $400 billion this year, will pass a half a trillion next! And these deficit projections don't include the money pledged by the Fed and the Treasury to bail out Wall Street!
McCain is wrong, dead wrong, about Obama's economic plan. It will provide a tax break to 95% of Americans, while increasing marginal tax rates on those making over $250,000.

McCain admits he knows little about economics. He apparently also has problems with history.

Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, he proposed and Congress added two marginal tax rates on high income earners, 35% and 39.6%. Much like McCain's doom and gloom projections in Green Bay, Republicans screamed that this would lead to economic ruin. Instead the US economy boomed during the Clinton years, creating 22 million jobs, more than four times the Bush record. Real hourly wages rose between 1997 and 2000 for the first time since the 1970s. And rather than operating at a deficit, the federal government actually ran budget surpluses from 1997-2000.

The Clinton era surpluses were so great, a projected $5.2 trillion, that when George Bush became President he felt the country could afford a tax cut and, like McCain today, that high income tax cuts would lead to investment, growth and prosperity. So he proposed and Congress agreed to cut taxes by $1.3 trillion, a fourth of the projected surplus. Fifty-two percent of these cuts went to the richest 1%, earning over $1.5 million. The result-the most anemic growth, only 5 million total jobs and falling, of any post-World War II recovery, but growing inequality and economic hardship for working Americans.

McCain's Green Bay critique of Obama is the same old, tired trickle down economic orthodoxy that Republicans have always peddled. The message is the same-no change at all. The only thing that has changed is that McCain whom opposed the Bush tax cuts is now the messenger.