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WASHINGTON: Republican White House contender John
McCain is reaching back through history to portray Barack Obama as
an old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberal who would destroy jobs and
growth.
On Tuesday, a day after Obama
painted McCain as a clone of President George W. Bush, the
Republican tied his Democratic foe to 1970s President Jimmy Carter
and to that era’s big government spending and over-regulation.
In a speech here to the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which lobbies for owners
of small enterprises, McCain said Obama would enact “the single
largest tax increase since the Second World War.”
“Under Senator Obama’s tax
plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes
rise—seniors, parents, small business owners, and just about
everyone who has even a modest investment in the market,” he said.
Obama’s policies, including
linking the federal minimum wage to inflation, were “a sure way to
add to your costs and to slow the creation of new jobs,” McCain
added.
The Democratic hopeful, 46, is
capitalizing on profound disquiet about rising unemployment and home
foreclosures, plus opposition to the Iraq war, to accuse McCain of
offering “four more years” for the hugely unpopular Bush.
“Frankly, John McCain’s
agenda simply continues the same economic approach that we’ve had
over the last eight years,” Obama said in a National Public Radio
(NPR) interview.
“It’s not working, and it’s
time for us to try something different.”
McCain, 71, has a new line of
retort, saying Obama would represent a “second term” for Carter,
a throwback to a time of queues at gasoline stations, surging
inflation and economic stagnation.
His attack at the NFIB hinged on
Obama’s promise to roll back multibillion-dollar tax cuts enacted
under Bush and levy higher taxes on those earning more than $250,000
a year.
In riposte, Obama said McCain,
who once opposed the Bush tax cuts, was guilty of fuzzy mathematics
and again mocked the Republican’s self-confessed weakness in
economic matters.
“I’ve said that John McCain
is running to serve out a third Bush term. But the truth is when it
comes to taxes, that’s not being fair to George Bush,” the
Democrat told reporters in St Louis, Missouri.
“Senator McCain wants to add
300 billion dollars more in tax breaks and loopholes for big
corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and he hasn’t even
explained how to pay for it,” he said.
Obama on NPR blasted McCain’s
“irresponsible” budge-ting and warned that the corporate tax
cuts were “going to burden future generations.”
The $250,000 threshold for annual
income would mean that 98 percent of workers would pay no more
taxes, Obama said, and middle-class families would get tax relief
starting at $1,000 to offset surging costs of living.
The Illinois senator also took
aim at McCain’s incremental approach to reform of health care,
whose rocketing costs are one of the biggest headaches for small
businesses, along with gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon.
--AFP
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