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...McCain supports Social Security privatization, right-to-work
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having to pay any share of the costs of
union representation.” Right-to-work
comes from a provision of the anti-
union Taft-Hartley Act, passed in
1947, which says states can pass laws
banning union contracts that require
workers to pay union dues as a condi-
tion of employment. Twenty-two
states, mostly in the South, are right-
to-work, and generally those states are
where unions are weakest. In Mc-
Cain’s “right-to-work” Arizona, for
example, less than 9 percent of work-
ers belong to unions.
McCain also voted against the Em-
ployee Free Choice Act, labor’s top
priority, which would make it easier
for workers to unionize and get a first
contract, and would crack down on
employer abuse of workers’ rights.
Obama voted for the Employee Free
Choice Act, and has promised to sign
it into law if elected president.
McCain came to be known as a
“maverick” Republican mainly be-
cause his best-known achievement in
the Senate is a campaign finance re-
form law that was opposed by most of
his fellow Republicans. McCain be-
b h
m k
came a campaign finance reform ad-
vocate after he was tainted in the
“Keating Five” scandal. In the 1980s,
he was one of five U.S. senators who
intervened with federal regulators on
behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan —
after having received sizable campaign
contributions from Lincoln executive
Charles Keating. Keating went to jail;
McCain got a rebuke from the Senate
Ethics Committee for bad judgment.
After that, McCain spoke out against
the influence of big money in politics,
and co-sponsored a bill with Wiscon-
sin Democrat Russ Feingold. It finally
passed in 2002, and it limits campaign
contributions to political parties.
McCain also showed an independ-
ent streak when he opposed the 2001
and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which gave
the biggest cuts to the wealthiest tax-
payers. The cuts lowered the top mar-
ginal income tax rate (the nominal rate
paid on income above $300,000 a
year) from 39.6 percent to 35 percent.
[For comparison, the top income tax
rate was 91 percent during the Eisen-
hower Administration, the era of
America’s greatest growth.] But Mc-
Cain has since changed his position,
and now he wants to make the Bush
Bennett Hartman
Morris & Kaplan, llp
tax cuts permanent. What does that
mean? The Bush tax cuts were set to
expire after 10 years as an accounting
gimmick to get around a balanced
budget law that is supposed to force
cuts in government if Congress does-
n’t come close enough to balancing
the budget. The Bush tax cuts led to
the biggest federal budget deficits in
U.S. history.
Obama has said he wants to repeal
the tax cuts on the wealthy but keep
the parts of the Bush cuts that reduced
taxes for low and middle-income tax-
payers.
On trade, McCain voted for the
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) in 1993 and for every subse-
quent NAFTA-style trade treaty, in-
cluding CAFTA, which created a free
trade area for five Central American
countries plus the Dominican Repub-
lic. Labor union leaders say the treaties
grease the skids for corporations to off-
shore U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Obama voted against CAFTA, but
he voted for a NAFTA-style free trade
agreement with the Gulf state Oman in
2006. On the campaign trail, he has
said he would consider renegotiating
NAFTA to strengthen labor and envi-
ronmental commitments. Some doubt
was cast on that pledge by a leaked
memo describing a private meeting in
which Obama’s senior economic pol-
icy adviser told the Canadian ambassa-
dor that Obama’s NAFTA-bashing
“should be viewed as more about po-
litical positioning than a clear articula-
tion of policy plans.” But even if that’s
the case, Obama is nowhere near the
ardent free-trader that McCain is, or
that President Bill Clinton was when
he fought for passage of NAFTA
against the majority of congressional
Democrats.
On health care, no major legislation
has passed Congress since Obama
joined the Senate. But Obama’s and
McCain’s campaign proposals on
health care are worlds apart.
Obama proposes requiring all chil-
dren to be insured, and allowing indi-
viduals and small businesses to buy
into a new national health plan that is
similar to what members of Congress
get. Large employers that don’t al-
ready provide health benefits would
have to pay something to support the
program. Small businesses would get a
tax credit reimbursing half the cost of
providing health insurance to employ-
ees. Obama also wants to see a gov-
ernment watchdog agency set up to
regulate and evaluate private insurance
company offerings. And he proposes
to make it legal for Americans to im-
port prescription drugs from countries
where government action keeps the
price affordable.
McCain, on the other hand, is pro-
posing to end the tax rules that encour-
age employers to offer health care. In-
stead, McCain wants government to
offer tax credits to encourage individu-
als to buy private health insurance for
catastrophic expenses and set aside
money in special savings accounts to
pay for routine medical expenses.
McCain has also said he supports
privatization of Social Security along
the lines Bush proposed in 2001.
Obama opposes that.
“America’s voters are faced with a
fundamental choice,” said AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney in a Labor
Day press statement, “to continue
down the road we’ve taken and end up
in a swamp of inequality where corpo-
rations and the wealthy always get
more — or to turn around America
and ensure health care for all, fair
trade, the freedom to improve our lives
through unions, and a fair share of the
wealth that working people create.”
“Senator Barack Obama has a
record of putting communities — not
corporations — first, and helping aver-
age people get our fair share,”
Sweeney said. “Senator John McCain
plans to continue the Bush record of
putting corporate profit over working
families’ needs.”
The two candidates will face off in
three televised presidential debates,
scheduled for Sept. 26, Oct. 7, and
Oct. 15. The election will be decided
Nov. 4.
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SEPTEMBER 5, 2008