Posted by Barry Slaff

Today, John McCain’s presidential campaign sent its internet subscribers an email message which harps on McCain’s supposed advocacy for all America’s “Joe the Plumbers,” a demographic recently named after plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, whose hard work and economic woes McCain referenced numerous times at the third presidential debate. McCain’s email alleges that “this campaign is all about… a choice between honoring the hard work of everyday Americans like ‘Joe the Plumber’ and increasing taxes to ’spread the wealth.’” Yet nonpartisan fact-checkers agree that, contrary to McCain’s suggestion, Joe– and millions of Americans who share his economic circumstances– actually will receive a tax cut under Obama’s tax plan, not a tax increase. FactCheck.org reports as follows:

McCain said “Joe the plumber” faced “much higher taxes” under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama’s health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers… ABC News reported the morning after the debate that Wurzelbacher admitted to a reporter that he won’t actually make enough from his new plumbing business to pay Obama’s higher tax rates. ABC said his admission “would seem to indicate that he would be eligible for an Obama tax cut.”

Senator McCain evidently was mistaken at the debate– but you wouldn’t know it from his shameless brandishing this “Joe the Plumber” anecdote as evidence that people like Joe will suffer a tax increase. Moreover, McCain’s continued assertions that Obama’s tax plan will increase taxes on middle-class Americans in general is simply wrong, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. CNN summarizes findings of the Center which show that in fact, people earning less than $227,000 each year will receive a tax cut under Obama’s plan, and people earning between $227,000 and $603,000 will see their tax bill rise only twelve dollars on average.
We naturally expect politicians to stretch the truth in presidential campaigns, but McCain’s antics go beyond truth-stretching: he is simply telling lies, and he is telling them over and over again. Whether or he honestly is (still) mistaken or he is deliberately spreading untruths, his conduct falls, without question, below the high bar a president should set.