McCain’s Dishonest Attacks on Obama’s Policy Positions

Does Liz Sidoti know John McCain lied here?

For all his talk of reaching across the aisle, McCain got in his jabs at Obama. After all, there are only two months until Election Day. He said Obama would raise taxes, close markets, increase government spending, eliminate jobs. He criticized Obama on energy, health care, and education policies.

Dean Baker recognized the lies:

Senator McCain claimed that Obama’s proposal would force people into a health care plan run by government bureaucrats. This is not true. Senator Obama’s plan would give people the option of buying into a publicly run Medicare-type plan, but this would only be an option. Under Senator Obama’s plan, no one would be forced to join the public plan, they would be free to stay with their current plan if they chose. Senator McCain also misrepresented his plan on taxes for ordinary people. He claimed that he would not raise taxes, but his health care plan would raise taxes for tens of millions of middle income workers. McCain proposes making employer payments for health care taxable income. This will be a substantial tax increase for many workers. It also would have been appropriate to note this misrepresentation since Senator McCain has made low taxes so central to his campaign. As a rule AP is not hesitant to criticize presidential acceptance speeches. The headline for its article on Senator Obama’s speech was “Obama Spares Details: Keeps Up Attacks.” It is worth noting that most other news accounts seem to have ignored Senator McCain’s misrepresentation of Obama’s position on this important issue.

During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush told a lot of lies and the press failed to note how dishonest his campaign was with respect to important policy issues such as government spending and taxes. The result? Bush became President. The same playbook is in force during this election and it seems our press is still incapable of calling dishonesty when they see it.