For Immediate Release
May 15, 2008
Contact: Damien LaVera – 202-863-8148
Dean: McCain Speech Highlights Hypocritical, Flawed Agenda
Washington, DC – During his remarks in Ohio this morning, Senator John McCain outlined a fictional account of what he expects the American people to believe he will do as president. In reality, on each of the issues he addresses, Senator McCain has either failed to outline any plans or has actually promised outdated ideas that would make the problem worse. Senator McCain’s health care plan would do nothing to reduce the ranks of the uninsured, leave people with pre-existing medical conditions uninsured, and gut employer-based health benefits while raising taxes on families. His reckless tax cuts for the wealthy and his special interest friends would take President Bush’s budget deficits to dangerous new extremes. His willingness to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years would continue to drain resources from our efforts to confront terrorists in Afghanistan.
Now, Senator McCain expects people to believe he will bring greater transparency to government, despite the fact that he never applied that same standard to his own political career. Before this year, Senator McCain never released a single year of tax returns during his 25 years in Congress. Now that he is running for President, he released just two years of tax returns–far less than any party nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980–and is refusing to release Cindy McCain’s tax returns despite well-documented links between Senator McCain’s political career and the McCain family’s business and financial interests.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement in response to Senator McCain’s speech:
“The reality behind Senator McCain’s new rhetoric is that his plans either ignore the problems he identifies or actually makes them worse. Whether he is taking President Bush’s fiscal policies to new extremes, continuing a stay-the-course strategy in Iraq that has distracted from the real war on terror, or pretending he would bring transparency to government after refusing to even release his own tax records, Senator McCain found yet another way to show he’s the wrong choice for America’s future.”
