Making Sense Alerts

In recent weeks, conservatives have ramped up their name-calling and accusations, telling voters that progressives such as Barack Obama are “socialists” who want to take money from the middle-class and give it away to the poor. According to John McCain, Obama “believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans.” McCain claims that progressive tax policies will raise tax rates on small businesses and “hard-working families to give ‘welfare’ to those who pay none.”

John McCain and other conservatives promise to crack down on “earmarks”—federal spending allocated in legislation for a specific project or location. No more bridges to nowhere. That’s great, but it doesn’t add up to much. Want to root out waste in government? Over the past 8 years, you’d do better to look at the Iraq war, subsidies for big corporations, waste and fraud in the Pentagon’s budget, and tax breaks for the rich.

Conventional wisdom holds that America has to get the federal budget deficit under control. John McCain and many conservatives have vowed to impose a government-wide spending freeze (excluding spending on the military, veterans, and entitlements). But cutting federal spending during a recession is a recipe for depression. To climb out of the hole that conservative economic ideology and policy has thrown us into, we need federal spending to reinvigorate economic growth. We should use this moment to make investments that will improve our future. It is time to rebuild America.

On October 14, Sen. John McCain rolled out his most recent “stimulus” package. Its centerpiece: cutting the capital gains tax in half during the next two years. Another tax cut for the rich. This is the latest in a long series of conservative efforts to bamboozle Americans into thinking that a tax cut for the rich will somehow help the middle class. It won’t.

“Will conservatives do to health care what they did for banking?” That’s the question posed by a New York Times “op-ad” by the Institute for America’s Future. Roger Hickey’s column goes into greater detail. The choice between the McCain insurance plan and the progressive plan for affordable health care for all is a central issue in the current political debate. Today, we look at the issue from a different angle: what does our experience with Medicare tell us about the progressive and conservative approaches to health care?

Americans accept the need for taxation, but they don’t like taxes. And they never have—remember the Boston Tea Party? That’s why Americans are susceptible to conservative assaults on the federal estate tax. Progressives need to understand the public mood and change the conversation. Supporting a continuation of the 90-year-old federal estate tax does not mean we favor higher taxes, it means we support tax fairness.

So far this year, one issue of special importance to women has largely been ignored: pay equity. In 2004 election exit polls, sixty-percent of women said that “equal pay for women” was not discussed enough. In 2006, over half of women said that gender equality should be a high priority for Congress. Any progressive advocate seeking to persuade women this year should have the facts on pay equity.

For years, conservatives have kowtowed to the heads of big corporations, who want trade deals that pave the way for them to move manufacturing operations overseas—at tremendous cost to American workers and our economy. John McCain wants to continue this trend, vowing to “remove barriers to free trade,” even though a majority of Americans view foreign trade as a threat to our economy, according to a CNN poll. Only one in four Americans share McCain’s view that free trade offers the U.S. an opportunity for economic growth. Progressives can offer Americans the choice they want by securing America’s place in the global economy through fair trade and a revitalization of America’s critical manufacturing sector.

Now that Congress has voted to bailout Wall Street bankers, what about the rest of us? No one seriously believes that the $700 billion bailout will stop the oncoming recession. This morning, we learned the economy continued shedding jobs in September. Yet this week, Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill a modest stimulus bill. We need help for the real economy, not just for the mess on Wall Street.

Over 80 percent of Americans believe our health care system needs to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. While progressives and conservatives have both proposed health care reforms, polls show that when the opposing plans are explained to Americans, they clearly favor the progressive solution. Conservatives such as John McCain use sound bites about not “putting a bureaucrat between you and your doctor” and “restoring control to patients.” But conservatives don’t say much about what their policies would mean for an average American family. Progressives shouldn’t let them obscure the real-life impact of their proposals. Americans need to know the truth.