KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is tangling with taxes again.
The Arizona senator found himself in hot water with conservatives after telling ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday that “nothing is off the table” in trying to protect the Social Security benefits system for seniors.
At a town hall meeting in Aurora, Colorado, McCain said: “I want to look you in the eye: I will not raise your taxes nor support a tax increase. I will not do it.”
He added, “I am opposed to raising taxes on Social Security. I want to fix the system without raising taxes.”
That statement earned the praise of the conservative Club for Growth organization in Washington, whose president, Pat Toomey, called it “exactly what the country needed to hear.”
McCain, at a fundraising event for his campaign, returned to the subject. “I am opposed to raising taxes. I am opposed to raising taxes,” he said.
“And any negotiation that I might have when I go in, my position will be that I’m opposed to raising taxes. But we have to work together to save Social Security.”
“This young man standing right in front — Social Security beneifts won’t be there for him when he retires. Is this right for us to lay off to the next generation of Americans a burden that we imposed on them? No. And it’s not America, it is not America,” he said.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Blake (covers of McCain and Obama biographies at ComicCon covention in San Diego)
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3 comments so far
Senator McCain wants us to recieve reduced benefits and rely on savings(401k)and pensions. Inflation is wiping out savings while currently less than one in five even have a pension. Actuaries disagree when, if at all, Social Security will go in the red, maybe in forty years. However there is no disagreement that Medicare will spend more than it takes in around 2017, again due to inflation. Why is Senator McCain silent on tnis matter? Certainly his Congressional health plan and his wife’s retirement must look pretty good right now.
- Posted by AnubisOK, so it is so unusual for a republican to say he will not raise taxes, they will instead just spend us into oblivion with war costs. Then they do away with true bankruptsy, but oh, unregulate the mortgage brokers and wall street, create a mortgage crisis after many fat and happy republicans become rich rich rich off an over heated excessive real estate market, but then say hey, us republicans should not have to pay for this mess! Middle class you take care of it.
And when hope arrives in the first Black American candidate for president and what is the white replicant challangers response:
Why it is “Look at that black man, isn’t he just too uppity”.
Keep going Republicans… I have to believe that one is going to come around and bite you right in the rear.
- Posted by WillMcCain says he will not raise taxes but isn’t that what Republicans do… say ANYTHING to get what they want? Then when they are in office its… “I don’t pay attention to poll numbers” or “That doesn’t matter, it doesn’t apply to us”… sheesh, give me a friggin break.
Anyone remember Bush Sr’s famous… “read my lips”… statement about taxes? If you do then you know it came back and bit him in the you know what when he DID RAISE TAXES. John McCain is that same same old tired rich republican crook in an old man’s suit.
Four more years of the same ole Bush (Sr or jr) style of government and our country WILL be on the trash heap of history.
Vote Obama, vote for freedom, vote for America!
- Posted by BushGuiltyAsSin