Obama, McCain Skewing the Facts on Social Security and Taxes

by Meagan Gamble

As November draws closer, the candidates get louder. At a campaign stop in Daytona Beach, Florida on September 20th, Senator Barack Obama criticized Senator John McCain’s social security plan: “If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week.”

In a campaign ad entitled “Promise”, Obama also claims that the McCain plan will be “cutting benefits in half.” But according to McCain’s actual stance on Social Security, this isn’t entirely accurate.

While it’s true that McCain supports allowing citizens to invest portions of their Social Security into the stock market, the Arizona senator has never claimed or stated that he will cut benefits for seniors. At the GOP Primary debate in Orlando, Florida on Oct 21, 2007, McCain said: “And you have got to the American people and say we don't -- we won't raise your taxes. We need personal savings accounts, but we got to fix this system.”

The Obama “Promise” ad goes on to quote John McCain from a March, 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal, in which he said that he “campaigned in support of George Bush’s proposal,” referring to a 2005 proposal from George Bush which planned for “progressive price indexing.” This plan has nothing to do with privatization of social security. It was instead an attempt to stabilize Social Security benefits for future retirees – under the current plan, the rate of inflation would make it impossible for the budget to cover benefits for anyone by 2041.

Furthermore, a 2005 study by Jason Furhman (who is now an economic advisor for Obama), found that the 2005 Bush proposal would in fact cut benefits substantially, but only for future retirees – it would do nothing to impact those who currently receive benefits. The Social Security Network had similar findings.

But Obama is not the only candidate skewing the facts. Time and time again, McCain has misrepresented Obama’s tax proposal, going so far as to even claim that Obama would “voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year” in the first presidential debate. This is not true. While Obama voted twice this year on budget resolutions to allow tax cuts proposed by George W. Bush to expire in 2010, the budget resolutions do not have the force of law and would not specifically raise taxes at all.

In an ad entitled “Expensive Plans,” John McCain claims that Obama’s plan will include “painful tax increases on working American families,” which has been a repeated line throughout his campaign. But according to Obama’s actual proposed tax plan, no American family making less than $250,000 a year would see taxes increase.

Furthermore, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that: “Senator McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those tax cuts would be small as a share of after-tax income.”

As for Obama’s plan? “Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise significantly.” This is almost the exact opposite of what McCain claims that Obama is planning.

Lesson: in the fervor of the last leg of the election, each candidate attempts to gain last minute supporters, often by misleading and even outright lying about their opponent. In order to get the true story on each candidate, extra research outside of campaign speeches and debates is essential.