McCain Has So Many Houses, He Can’t Keep Track

by Seth Michaels, Aug 21, 2008

In the past week, Sen. John McCain has proven repeatedly he just doesn’t get it. He’s said, once again, that the economy is strong. He thinks you’re “rich” only if you make $5 million or more a year. And, in the thick of a housing crisis, he’s made a startling admission: He doesn’t even know how many properties he owns.

McCain told a reporter in New Mexico yesterday, “I’ll have my staff get to you,” when asked how many homes he has.

No wonder McCain says the economic crisis is mostly “psychological.” Maybe he thinks working families are worried about foreclosure because they haven’t asked their staff whether they have seven houses or eight.

In a speech on the foreclosure crisis, McCain said working families needed to work second jobs or skip vacations to pay their mortgage—and, if they didn’t, they were “causing trouble” and acting irresponsibly. (He wasn’t so hard on the irresponsibility of the investment banks, like the one that employed his top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist.)

As we’ve noted, McCain’s economic proposals are overwhelmingly slanted toward the rich and big corporations. In addition to giving billions in tax cuts to Big Oil and the insurance industry, McCain’s plans would put an extra $370,000 in his own pocket every year. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of people wouldn’t get much, if any, benefit from McCain’s tax agenda; indeed, they could see a tax hike on their health benefits.

(Meanwhile, 95 percent of Americans—households making less than $250,000 a year—would get a tax cut under Sen. Barack Obama’s proposal. Indeed, nearly every family in America would get a substantially bigger tax cut from Obama than McCain.)

McCain’s health care plan also could lead to millions of people losing their health care coverage. He’s spent 26 years getting taxpayers to foot his bill as a member of Congress, so he doesn’t understand the risks and failures that face working families in the private health care market.

McCain is also a supporter of privatizing Social Security, putting retirement at risk for millions. As the AFL-CIO pointed out in a recent mailer to retirees, McCain would do just fine without the Social Security check he gets every month, so he doesn’t understand what that guarantee has meant to generations of retirees who depend on it.

It’s clear that McCain’s sky-high wealth and privilege has left him sheltered and unaware of the economic crisis happening in our country. His plans to undermine Social Security and the health care system are clear examples of how out of touch he is with what working families need.

And senator? We checked. It’s 10. You own 10 houses.

UPDATE: Via Election Central, guess what McCain was up to around the same time he made that speech attacking struggling homeowners?

…a McCain family corporation closed on a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building in exclusive Coronado, California — at around the same time that John McCain offered his somewhat tone-deaf observation that struggling homeowners were “working at second jobs” and “skipping a vacation” in order to make mortgage payments on time.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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