McCain’s senior policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has a memo out this morning explaining why the McCain campaign is attacking Obama for voting to “to raise taxes on folks earning as little as $32,000.” That vote, as has been discussed on Swampland and at Factcheck.org, was for a non-binding budget resolution to allow the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts to expire. The attack had a couple problems, one small and one big. The minor problem is that the $32,000 figure refers to taxable income, not total income, so the people affected by the budget resolution (which does not include a specific tax increase plan) are likely to actually make a bit more money, at least $41,000 or so.
The major problem is that Obama has proposed additional tax cuts for this same income bracket, so his vote on that bill does not fully represent his current tax plan. According to independent scoring of the Obama plan, people in that bracket would see a net tax decrease under the plan, even as the Bush tax cuts expired. In the memo this morning, Hotlz-Eakin more or less concedes the second point, because he says that is the whole point the campaign is trying to make.
[Critics] are claiming that this vote is not what Obama promises on the campaign trail. This is true; his words do not match his actions. As FactCheck.org concluded, Barack Obama’s vote on the FY 2009 resolution “bears no relation to [his] proposed economic plan.” That point goes to the heart of the problem with Barack Obama. His words on the campaign trail do not match the actions he has taken. He tells the American people one thing but has a record that is quite different. . . . As in the case of his changing positions on the FISA bill, Iraq, public financing, town hall debates, the D.C. handgun ban, NAFTA, welfare reform, corporate taxes cuts and a host of other issues, Barack Obama’s contradictory words on taxes are an issue of credibility. And on ensuring that we can grow our economy by keeping taxes low and more money in the pockets of taxpayers, Barack Obama has demonstrated that he has not earned the trust of American taxpayers.
Okay, so the argument is about credibility. That much is clear from the ad running in Virginia. “He is promising one thing and he’s doing another,” says the narrator of Obama. But the ad also goes further. “I don’t understand why Obama insists on raising my taxes,” explains the narrator. Here’s the bottom line, to help the narrator understand: Obama does not currently insist on raising your taxes. He says he wants to cut them. But there is one vote, where as part of a larger package, Obama sided with those who would have raised your taxes, without other tax cuts.
ALSO: Isn’t it ironic that McCain is making the tax cut flip flop argument?