Ed Morrissey is the latest person to bring out the notion that John McCain is a budget hawk and a tireless fighter against earmarks.
…McCain has long fought pork-barrel spending and bloated federal budgets. During the feeding frenzy between 2001-2006, McCain’s voice was left in the wilderness, warning about the consequences of the Republican majorities. Even his opposition to the last of the Bush tax cuts didn’t get based on a love of taxes, but in the refusal of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress to cut federal spending at the same time.
That’s a heck of a paragraph, but it’s not exactly true.
I suspect that Ed is basing his last sentence in part on this McCain quote from the end of 2007.
LOWRY: If you don’t mind, I want to ask you a domestic policy question, a straight talk question, if you will. In retrospect, was it a mistake for you to vote against the Bush tax cuts?
MCCAIN: No, because I had significant tax cuts, and there was restraint of spending included in my proposal. I saw no restraint in spending. We presided over the greatest increase in the size of government since the Great Society. Spending went completely out of control. It’s still out of control. Wasteful earmark spending is a disgrace, and it caused us to alienate our Republican base.
If you just used that quote, you’d get to the same place as Ed. Except that’s not what McCain was saying during the tax cut battle in Congress. He was singing a different tune, and it just happened to be the same tune his Democratic friends were singing.
Here are a few quotes from 2000 and 2001:
“…I am disappointed that the Senate Finance Committee preferred instead to cut the top tax rate of 39.6% to 36%, thereby granting generous tax relief to the wealthiest individuals of our country at the expense of lower- and middle-income American taxpayers.”
—Senate floor statement during debate over President Bush’s tax relief package, May 21, 2001.
…
“I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.”—Senate floor statement before voting against President Bush’s tax cut, May 26, 2001.
…
“I am concerned that repeal of the estate tax would provide massive benefits solely to the wealthiest and highest-income taxpayers in the country.”—Senate floor statement opposing HR 8, a bill to permanently eliminate the death tax, June 11, 2002.
…
“But when you look at the percentage of the tax cuts that—as the previous tax cuts—that go to the wealthiest Americans, you will find that the bulk of it, again, goes to wealthiest Americans.”—NBC’s “Today,” Jan. 7, 2003.
That doesn’t sound to me like spending restraint is his chief reason for opposing these tax cuts. That sounds a whole lot like the same old bogus class warfare garbage spouted by Democrats. Surely McCain would have mentioned spending somewhere in those snippets. But no. It was all about not giving “tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans”. McCain was one of only two Republican Senators who voted against the tax cut bill in May of 2001 as well. So Ed’s rationale for backing McCain as a guy willing to stand on principle even if it meant killing the tax cuts just doesn’t fly. It’s not why he did it then, no matter what he says now.
At the very least, John McCain is two-faced on tax cuts and, right now, the face he’s showing is a friendly conservative one. That’s all well and good, but what of the contention that he’s fought big federal budgets and earmarks?
I don’t see any proof of that either. To be sure, McCain has talked a big fight, especially lately. But what, exactly, has he done? I brought this topic up before, and even invited one of conservativism’s more ardent McCain supporters to answer it but I never saw a response. I’ll ask the questions again. Perhaps Ed, or one of his readers, will take up the challenge and show me where John McCain’s put his foot down on spending or earmarks.
1) What piece of legislation has McCain sponsored in the last ten years to end, or even measurably slow down, earmarks? Given his legendary ability to reach across the aisle and find Democratic co-sponsors for his ambitious legislation, where is the McCain/Kennedy Earmark Moratorium Act or the McCain/Feingold Spending Reduction Act? He seems to have little problem finding sponsors when the bills advance leftist agendas. Where are the conservative bills?
2) Is there one instance where McCain advised the President to veto a spending bill with the guarantee that he would build a coalition that could make the veto stick? Again, given his reputation as a bipartisan breach-sealer, this is something he should have been able to do at least once.
3) Is there one instance where John McCain has put one of his bipartisan political relationships at risk over spending?
Until someone can show me a single instance where McCain has worked at least as hard to reduce spending as he has to limit our First Amendment rights, pass shamnesty, or build a coalition to control Presidential judicial nominations, I have to conclude that he is all talk and very little action. As I’ve said before, I can definitely be convinced otherwise, but it’s going to take more than bald assertions. I need proof.
Show me.
Tags: Big Government, John McCain
