Retired Teachers Chapter News
McCain is a Bush ‘yes man’
May 22, 2008 10:28 AM
Human cloning may be illegal but it’s hard to believe it hasn’t happened when you compare Republican candidate John McCain with President Bush. While McCain is certainly not a physical clone of Bush, he certainly is a cognitive or ideological clone.
Sen. McCain has long touted himself as a “straight-talking maverick” who challenges his party and stands up to the president. But the facts prove otherwise.
McCain has voted with this administration’s policies 89 percent of the time and in 2007 that agreement rate reached 97 percent. He’s been a Bush “yes man” on almost every issue. He’s created a self-portrait of himself as the great opponent of torture but he voted against a bill to ban waterboarding and then applauded the Bush veto of the bill.
On issues that affect us as retirees, his record is scandalous. The Alliance for Retired Americans examined the voting records of 10 key Senate votes and 10 key House votes showing the roll calls on blocking Social Security privatization, lowering Medicare costs, expanding access to affordable health care, stopping oil price gouging and protecting voting rights. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama each scored 100 percent, while Sen. John McCain scored a zero — the same score Bush would get on these issues if he had a voting record.
Despite our overwhelming success in shooting down this administration’s attempts to privatize Social Security just a few short years ago, McCain is still manning the barricades. The president called for “voluntary personal retirement accounts” and here’s sing-along McCain: “There is only one solution if Social Security commitments are to be honored without breaking the backs of the next generation: bold reform — genuine reform — that allows workers to invest some of their Social Security savings, privately, in higher-yielding accounts.”
And take it a step further. In 2006 McCain voted for the GOP proposal to shift Social Security’s annual surpluses into a reserve account that would be converted into risky private accounts.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, D-Mont., said, “President Bush’s private accounts plan (and by extension the McCain plan) would increase debt held by the public by
$5 trillion over the first 20 years in operation. I will do everything I can to make sure that private accounts are not enacted into law.”
I thought we made ourselves clear when we defeated the last round of GOP attempts to privatize Social Security. Will we have to start all over again?
On the issue of health care, Paul Krugman in The New York Times noted, “The Democrats have been offering real plans: they’re not perfect, but they are serious.
“The GOP, by contrast — and that goes as much for Mr McCain as for the Bush administration — hasn’t even tried to address concerns about coverage. Instead, it has all been about costs, which Republicans insist (wrongly) can be dramatically reduced by a policy of, you guessed it, deregulation and tax cuts.”
Elizabeth Edwards — wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards — who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, recently criticized the McCain health plan, noting that the deregulation he supports would deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions like cancer — so both she and McCain would be at risk.
In April, the GOP candidate released a plan that would charge many seniors higher prices for their prescription drugs and jeopardize the long-term future of Medicare by means-testing the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan. The scheme would erode the viability of Medicare because higher premiums could lead many to opt out, thus weakening the universal social insurance nature of Medicare.
He ignored the opportunity to finally end the pharmaceutical industry’s sweetheart deal prohibiting Medicare from negotiating bulk discounts from drug manufacturers. He also ignored the chance to end taxpayer subsidies to large insurance companies — estimated to be $150 billion over the next 10 years — to operate privatized Medicare Advantage plans at a cost of between 12 and 19 percent higher than Medicare’s cost to serve people directly.
As health care costs continue to set record highs and health plans skimp on coverage, with co-payments for high-priced drugs rising beyond reach and even the insured feeling the strain, McCain continues to parrot the Bush script that the magic of the marketplace will solve all problems.
His health plan isn’t just a threat to seniors. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year and then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.
Voter discontent in 2006 increased the number of Democrats in Congress and the new Congress went to work to improve health care, reduce drug prices and end taxpayer overpayments to private insurance companies who operate Medicare Advantage programs. Unfortunately these efforts were stymied by opposition from the White House, from pharmaceutical and insurance lobbyists and from Republicans in Congress because our numbers are not large enough to pass the legislation needed or to overturn a presidential veto.
Retirees are taking it on the chin from every direction as McCain and Bush continue to look the other way. According to the Wall Street Journal, retirement planners are seeing large numbers of older workers put off retirement as the housing and stock-market troubles deepen. Older employees don’t have years to make up for downturns in the stock market. More and more S&P 500 firms are discontinuing retiree benefits, no longer offering new workers defined-benefit pension programs like ours, or are phasing out defined plans.
In the meantime, McCain and the Bush administration are in perfect harmony that the marketplace will solve all problems with an assist from tax breaks for America’s wealthiest citizens. Where did the myth ever begin that McCain is a maverick, an independent thinker?
“What is at stake is nothing less than the future of retirement in America,” ARA President George Kourpias has warned. “As our leaders in Washington vote on prescription drugs, Medicare, Social Security, health care and pensions, politically savvy seniors need to know where their elected officials stand on these important issues.”
We certainly know where McCain stands.
