Obama blasts McCain on the economy
Posted: Monday, June 09, 2008 3:25 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Economy
From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy and NBC's Mark Murray
RALEIGH, NC -- In a speech kicking off his two-week economic tour through battleground states, Obama spent a considerable amount of time introducing many of his differences with McCain on economic policy that his campaign will emphasize between now and November.
VIDEO: Barack Obama takes aim at the Republican Party's economic policy.
In particular, Obama highlighted what he said was
President Bush's "fiscally irresponsible" record and McCain's defense of those policies. "We were promised a fiscal conservative," Obama said of President Bush. "Instead, we got the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history. And now John McCain wants to give us another. Well, we've been there once, and we're not going back."
Obama also connected McCain to the president on the issue of health care, claiming that McCain's proposal would amount to "four more years of a health-care plan that only takes care of the healthy and the wealthy." And he hit McCain on being slow to release a plan to address the housing crisis.
"As late as December, John McCain told a newspaper in New Hampshire that he'd love to offer a solution to the housing crisis, but he just didn't have one," Obama said. "It took him three different tries to figure it out. And in the end, his plan does nothing to help 1.5 million homeowners who are facing foreclosure, even as he supported spending billions to bail out Wall Street... Sen. McCain wants to turn Bush's policy of 'too little, too late' into a policy of 'even less, even later.'"
While rolling out his own proposals, Obama boasted that he was a believer in a pay-as-you-go system, while McCain's plan is to pay for his tax cuts with decreases in wasteful spending. This, Obama said, "indicates that John McCain was right when he said that he doesn't understand the economy as well as he should."
Obama said that every proposal he's made in his campaign is paid for, including the additional $50 billion in economic stimulus money he called for today, the $10 billion Foreclosure Prevention Fund that would deal with at-risk homeowners, and the tax cuts for households making less than $150,000 per year.
According to his speech today, those tax cuts would provide "relief to 95% of workers and their families," an argument that the Obama campaign will surely push hard to defend against McCain's argument that Obama is a "tax and spend liberal."
In addition to these steps, Obama made less specific calls for college tuition relief, increased oversight of the credit card industry and bankruptcy reform saying, "We'll make sure that if you can demonstrate that you went bankrupt because of medical expenses, you can relieve that debt and get back on your feet."
The conclusion of today's speech was the same as the beginning: Obama represents a new approach to the economy and McCain does not. "We have tried it their way for eight long years," Obama said. "And it has failed. It is time to try something new. It is time for change."
McCain campaign fires back
In a conference call responding to Obama's speech, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr criticized the presumptive Democratic nominee for voting to raise taxes 94 times since joining the Senate, for not describing in detail how he would pay for his stimulus proposals, and for devoting much of his speech to attacking McCain.
"I think the speech we heard today is what the American people are sick and tired of," Burr said, adding that McCain wants to reduce corporate and middle-class taxes and wants to make the tax system fairer.
Also on the call, McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said Obama was hypocritical in arguing in his speech that McCain's economic plan would include $1.2 billion in tax breaks for Exxon when Obama voted for an energy bill that was a boon to the oil industry. And he also blasted Obama for placing his veep selection process in the hands of a man -- ex Fannie Mae head Jim Johnson -- who benefited from preferential loans from subprime lender Countrywide.
