McCain File

"One File, One Resource, to explain One vote this November." [will be updating until November. Please help me improve this file and/or challenge the accuracy of file info. Email me at Jim.Nichols@gmail.com]

Economics

McCain emphasizes Job Creation --Just like Bush?

Senator McCain's economic proposals center on maintaining the tax cuts put in place under the Bush administration. The economy has sustained the slowest pace of job creation on record during the Bush years, creating jobs at annual rate of just over 700,000 a year (0.5 percent). By contrast, it created jobs at almost a 3 million annual rate during the Clinton years.

It would be wrong to attribute the entire falloff in the pace of job creation between the Clinton and Bush administrations to President Bush's tax cuts, but it would be difficult to argue that an economic policy that centers on maintaining these tax cuts has a "emphasis on job creation"

Mavrick no more
unreliable at best.

A cautious foreign policy realist in the 1980s, he emerged as a leading neoconservative in the '90s. Voting analyses placed him as relatively moderate in 2001 and '02, when he was enraged at the Republican Party that had rejected him, but saw him snap back to relative down-the-line conservatism after 2004, when he began seeking the presidential nomination.

Health Care
Is McCain's Health Care Market Oriented or Insurance Industry Oriented?

The NYT tells us that Senator McCain's health care plan is market-oriented, but it is hard to see how this is the case. The plan breaks up existing employer insurance pools and would have each individual buy their own insurance.

There are large disparities in health care costs with the sickest 10 percent of patients accounting for almost 90 percent of costs. Insurers make money by not providing insurance to these sick people. When workers are put together in large pools, then insurers have no choice to provide insurance to sick people, however when they contract with each person individually then they have the opportunity to exclude people with health problems.

It is difficult to see how shifting from a system of employer-provided insurance to individual insurance is a market-oriented reform (there is a market now for employer-provided insurance). It is very difficult to see how this change will lead to more efficiency, as claimed by the expert cited in the article, since it will almost certainly lead to more resources being wasted in screening individuals for prior health care conditions and efforts to conceal these conditions by individuals.

McCain's Swiftboat redux

Listen to Republican Chuck Hegal mid-way who was dead on in regards to how innappropriate John McCain's recent attack on Obama. 

Here is the real story via MSNBC

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports that there was never a plan for Obama to take the press to Landstuhl, despite the claim by McCain folks and others. The plan was to go with his military aide, retired General Scott Gration. The Pentagon said Gration was off-limits because he had joined the campaign -- violating rules that it not be a political stop.

Obama had gone to see wounded troops in Iraq earlier in the week, without even confirming he'd been there. No press, no pictures. He has done the same when he goes to Walter Reed -- never any press.

Imagine if McCain hadn't voted against the New GI Bill?  Instead he stated that he was against it because it created incentives for soldiers to leave after one tour.

He could have said thank you for one tour of service! Which is above and beyond in its honor and valor.  He decided the paying for college for young men and women was too much to ask of tax payers.  Some of us believe one tour of duty earns them a good education and quality health care.  Imagine if John McCain did as well... 

Imagine if McCain was not still supporting a failed Iraq policy that was underfunded, poorly planned, and has only created a larger terrorist threat? 

What if he took the postion held by most forigen policy experts that the past 8 years of go it alone has harmed our national security, weakend our security across the globe, and left our troops to fight--with no sacrifice called for from the citizens at home. 

Taxcuts in a time of war is unprecedented... that is John McCain... that is what he should be talking about.  But when you are on the wrong side of issues it always good to throw mud...

Thats why he's attacking Obama...