Heckled McCain raps Obama in speech on taxes, economy

Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) sought to derail his opponent’s two-week economic tour Tuesday morning, with a speech in front of a small business trade group aimed at pegging the Democrat as a tax-and-spend liberal.

McCain, who had to fight through three anti-war protesters early in his speech, said presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) would “enact the single largest tax increase since the Second World War.”

{mosads}Addressing the National Federation of Independent Business, McCain said Obama would hurt small businesses by repealing the Bush tax cuts, renegotiating foreign trade agreements, raising and indexing the minimum wage and eliminating secret ballots for union membership.

The Arizona senator blasted Obama’s economic policies all the while talking up the tentative plan for the two candidates to engage in joint town hall appearances.

“Our disagreements in these town hall meetings will be civil and friendly, but they will also be clear for all to see,” McCain said. “On tax policy, healthcare reform, trade, government spending and a long list of other issues, we offer very different choices to the American people. And those choices will have very different consequences for American workers and small-business owners.”

The Obama campaign responded with a morning conference call featuring Jason Furman, the Illinois senator’s economic policy director, who blasted McCain’s speech as full of “misstatements, distortion and omission.”

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) went line by line through McCain’s speech, criticizing the Arizona senator for adopting President Bush’s tax policies and saying he failed to offer a comprehensive healthcare plan.

“The fact is, the Bush-McCain healthcare plan isn’t designed to help small businesses,” Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said in a morning e-mail. “It’s designed for folks who are already healthy and wealthy enough to afford healthcare at any price.”

The heart of McCain’s speech and his biggest criticism of Obama’s approach to tax policy are rooted in the Democrat’s pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year.

In what amounts to a repeat of sorts of the same tax battle waged between Bush and Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) in 2004, McCain is charging that Obama’s plan to repeal the tax cuts translates into a tax increase for all Americans, especially small-business owners.

McCain argued Tuesday morning that because there are currently more than 21 million small-business owners filing individual tax returns, they would fall under the category of taxpayers making more than $250,000 a year.

McCain is also wont to hit Obama for increasing dividend and capital gains taxes.

“Under Sen. Obama’s tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise — seniors, parents, small-business owners and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market,” McCain said.

McCain added: “You work hard in small businesses to grow and to create new jobs and opportunities for others — and the federal government shouldn’t make your work any harder.”

McCain also reiterated his promise to veto any legislation that includes earmarks or what he perceives to be wasteful spending, and he is promoting a one-year moratorium on discretionary spending.

“We are going to get our priorities straight in Washington — a clean break from years of squandered wealth and wasted chances,” McCain said.

The jockeying over who has the better economic plan came as a controversy surrounding an Obama aide entered its second day.

As the Republican National Committee (RNC) continued to hammer away at Jim Johnson, the man tapped by Obama to vet his running mate, Obama addressed the issue at a press conference in St. Louis.

Johnson has come under fire since a weekend report that said he received favorable loans from Countrywide Financial Corp. while he was CEO of Fannie Mae, but Obama said Tuesday that Johnson is merely a volunteer and he is not “vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages.”

“I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters,” Obama said.

Obama’s refusal to distance himself from Johnson fueled the McCain campaign and RNC push to label the Illinois senator as a hypocrite.

“It’s preposterous for Sen. Obama to claim that the leader of his VP selection committee isn’t working for him,” Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said in a statement. “Barack Obama has castigated Countrywide Financial, but now that Jim Johnson has been exposed for taking sweetheart deals from Countrywide’s CEO — Obama is in a state of denial. It’s that brand of weak leadership and hypocrisy that shows why Barack Obama has no record of taking courageous stands or making change in Washington.”

Three female anti-war protesters interrupted McCain’s speech, which was supposed to be closed to the public and the audience screened by the Secret Service.

As McCain began to walk through what he would do for small businesses, the first protester interrupted him by shouting, “War is bad for small business.”

All three of the protesters were immediately escorted from the meeting, leaving McCain to make jokes to recover his momentum.