More Crooked Talk From The Straight Talk Express

John McCain was in Chicago yesterday to deliver a speech on the economy and explain how he's not going to just continue Bush's policies. I'm sort of hurt that I wasn't invited. Sure, I'm not a member of the National Restaurant Association, but I figured a maverick like McCain would want someone like me to be there. Oh well.

(All of the quotes from his speech in this post are from the copy provided on NBC's web site.)

I propose to bring some very different ideas to the presidency.

McCain is the candidate of change. Ignore for the moment the fact that over the past couple of years he has abandoned many of the positions that made him a "maverick." Don't pay attention to his many flip-flops and contradictions. He's all about change. Change, change, change.

As president, I will keep the current low tax rates...

Different Idea #1: Maintain Bush tax cuts.

What's more, we're going to double the size of the child tax exemption, so that moms and dads can spend and save more for their own children.

Aww, doesn't that sound good? Funny that someone who is so concerned about moms and dads having more money for their children would oppose a law that promotes equal pay for women and makes it easier for them to sue their employer over wage discrimination. Of course, something like that would be a limit on corporate activities, which McCain opposes flat out, across the board. (Unlike every other neocon in Washington -- see how different his ideas are?)

He also proposes phasing out the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will help rich people; add a flat tax system, which will help rich people; give tax credits for people to buy private insurance, which will help the rich people who run insurance companies; and reduce the capital gains tax, which helps rich people. (And before any of you fans of supply-side voodoo economics tell me about how reducing the capital gains will increase the revenue from it, read this article, which explains things like how the revenues from capital gains taxes were higher under Clinton, even though the rates were higher.)

Different Idea #2: Reduce taxes to help rich people.

McCain then goes on to explain how he wants to expand benefits to American workers who lose their jobs to globalization.

It is not enough to keep offering employment programs designed for the problems of the 1950's. We have to help displaced workers at every turn on a tough road, so that they are not just spectators on the opportunities of others. And I have made that commitment with reforms to expand and improve federal aid to American workers in need. We need to help millions of workers who have lost a job that won't come back find a new one that won't go away. As American companies invest abroad, we need to invest in our own country and in our own workers.

Different Idea #3: Expand a program of government handouts. (Keep in mind that at the beginning of the speech he said it was the Democratic candidates who would "spend more of your money in Washington.")

If I am elected president, this country will honor its international agreements, including NAFTA, and we will expect the same of others. And in a time of uncertainty for American workers, we will not undo the gains of years in trade agreements now awaiting final approval.

Different Idea #4: McCain will push for the same free-market trade agreements that have been a centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy agenda.

Then McCain did something that would be surprising if I didn't already know what a flip-flopping hypocrite he is: he lambasted Congress for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. He said, "I have proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rate..."

Oh, wait, that's the part of the speech where he was for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. In the part of the speech where he was against it, he said,

...along with the [farm] subsidies comes the usual harvest of tax breaks, bailouts, and other forms of corporate welfare. To take just a few examples, the thoroughbred industry hit it big this year with 93 million in tax breaks for race horses. The timber industry made off with 260 million dollars in tax breaks. And then there's a company that describes itself as, "the largest and most geographically diverse land owner in the nation." That doesn't sound like a hardship case to me. But the Congress has just voted to give that same company 250 million dollars in public money.

Different Idea #5: Support giving tax breaks for corporations, but don't support giving tax breaks to corporations. Don't like where "straight talk" McCain stands on an issue? Wait five minutes.

McCain then wraps up his speech with a slew of abstract promises about free markets and helping farmers and blah blah blah.

So what are the "different" ideas that McCain promises to bring to Washington? I'm not sure; from the speech he gave yesterday it sounds like he's offering more of the same: Bushonomics, flip-flopping, and empty rhetoric. Conservatives have been spouting on about how voting for Obama would be choosing the unknown, but what is their candidate offering? Which McCain would show up to any given meeting? Pro tax cut or anti tax cut? Pro handouts or anti handouts?

And the one thing that McCain didn't mention, that I really wish he did, is how he plans on paying for the occupation of Iraq. He claims he wants to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington, but Bush has been paying for the occupation on borrowed money. Would McCain do the same, or would he use tax dollars? Where would those extra few hundred billion dollars per year come from? Where's the straight talk when you need it?

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