FOX News - Associated Press
Published: 09-19-08
CANTON Ohio — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday called Republican John McCain’s answers to the current economic crisis “the ultimate bridge to nowhere” and said that paying higher taxes would be patriotic for wealthier Americans.
Biden said the GOP presidential nominee was out of touch with the problems of average Americans comments designed to resonate with voters in economically troubled northeast Ohio and keep up pressure on McCain during a week of bad news from U.S. markets and financial institutions.
Biden’s two-day bus trip in the region includes stops in areas devastated by thousands of job losses in manufacturing and the auto industry. With the economy a top concern in Ohio polls were tight in this essential swing state.
“John McCain’s answers for the economy — and we’re in such desperate shape — is the ultimate bridge to nowhere” Biden said from a turf field outside the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The reference to the infamous Alaska project dubbed “the bridge to nowhere” was a dig at McCain’s running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin who supported building the bridge until Congress moved to kill it as an example of wasteful spending. She has since claimed that she stopped the project — a nearly $400 million structure designed to link an Alaskan village of 50 residents to the mainland — and told Congress “thanks but no thanks” when in fact the state diverted the money to other projects.
In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Biden said wealthier taxpayers would indeed pay more under the proposals of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Under his plan people earning more than $250000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less — the vast majority of American taxpayers — would receive a tax cut.
“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people” Biden said. Of those who would pay more he said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in time to be part of the deal time to help get America out of the rut.”
McCain misstated Biden’s remark when he told supporters at a rally in Cedar Rapids Iowa that Biden had said “raising taxes is patriotic.”
“Raising taxes in a tough economy isn’t patriotic. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just plain dumb” McCain said. “The billions in tax increases that Sen. Obama is proposing would kill even more jobs during tough economic times. I’m not going to let that happen.”
Although McCain claims that Obama would raise taxes the independent Tax Policy Center and other groups conclude that four out of five U.S. households would receive tax cuts under Obama’s proposals.
In a new TV ad that repeats widely debunked claims about the Democratic tax plan the McCain campaign charges that Obama would increase the size of the federal government amid an economic crisis. Contending that “a big government casts a big shadow on us all” the ad features the image of a shadow slowly covering a sleeping baby as a narrator misstates the reach of the Obama tax proposal.
“Obama and his liberal congressional allies want a massive government billions in spending increases wasteful pork” the ad says. “And we would pay — painful income taxes skyrocketing taxes on life savings electricity and home heating oil. Can your family afford
