Presidential Debate Tells All – If You Listened

The final Presidential Debate was held last night. Both candidates have their talking points and canned answers burned into their brains and can recite them in their sleep. Obama tries to make the case for McCain being the same as Bush and McCain ties Obama to his friend Bill Ayers who bombed and murdered innocent Americans three decades ago.

Clearly, no candidate can be termed a debate winner regardless of the questions and responses. The media eggs us on to pick a winner. They want us to vote on their websites and phone banks for a debate winner. In actuality, we shouldn’t be listening to the Presidential debates for a winner. We should be listening for probable policy statements and possible deceptions by the candidates not who was the “master orator” or who tripped up the other. We need to find out which candidate says and will implement policy that agrees with our thinking. And, which candidate has a track record of doing what we want and what he says.

Think about that. Which candidate plans, will, and has implemented policy we want.

Let’s consider some important policy issues the candidates discussed and try to judge them by their plan, their will to implement that plan and their past votes or advocacy for similar policy.

TAXES

Obama Plan: To give tax a refund or cash to individuals earning less than $200,000 while raising income taxes and FICA taxes substantially on those earning more than $200,000. Plans to increase maximum tax rate from 28% to 50%.
Obama Will: The last Democrat to run on lower taxes, Bill Clinton, raised them instead. Obama has no experience fighting Congress for lower taxes.
Obama History: Has voted dozens of times to increase taxes on individuals earning as little as $40,000. Has openly advocated redistributing money from companies and higher earning individuals so government can redistribute income to lower earners. (Ed. Redistribution of income historically has led to job declines and lower standards of living)

McCain Plan: To maintain Bush tax cuts on all individuals, including small business to spur job creation and consumer spending. Also to increase dependent deductions to help low income families.
McCain Will: Republicans have a history of keeping taxes low. Even so, the top 5% of wage earners pay 60% of all income taxes while the bottom 50% of wage earners pay less than 3%.
McCain History: Recently voted against Bush tax cuts because of fiscal deficits but has previously supported tax cuts during economic slowdowns.

GOVENMENT SPENDING

Obama Plan: To implement large spending projects such as healthcare, infrastructure, entitlements, and other pork barrel spending.
Obama Will: Democrats are well known to promote “big governement” with more spending and control of the private sector.
Obama History: Has voted the Democrat party line of more spending, entitlements, redistribution of income. Obama has a history of channeling funds to donors and friends regardless of project merit.

McCain Plan: Advocates a freeze on government spending during the current economic crisis and says he will reign in run-away government spending.
McCain Will: McCain has a passion to get government spending under control and has the best chance of being able to do so.
McCain History: Has voted repeatedly to control spending and entitlements even voting against the Bush tax cuts because spending cuts wheren’t included.

Below are voting and policy records of both candidates on some important issues. Most of these issues were not covered in last night’s Presidential debate. For more information on these issues including linked sites and videos, please visit our Barack Obama post.