At VP Debate, Biden Shows Obama’s Plan for Health Care, Taxes Best for America’s Workers

by Seth Michaels, Oct 3, 2008

Last night’s vice presidential debate between Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Ala.) proved again that Sen. Barack Obama‘s plans for improving our health care system and giving tax breaks to working families are the plans that will really help working families at this critical time.

Biden gave detailed, sharp answers that demonstrated why he’ll be a strong governing partner for Obama. Meanwhile, Palin mostly talked around the important issues. As did her running mate, Sen. John McCain, during last week’s presidential debate, Palin offered rhetoric that didn’t match the reality of the challenges facing our country.

On health care, the differences between the two tickets are wide. Biden explained to the millions of viewers that Obama’s health care plan would expand coverage, improve quality and cut costs. Biden also described the risks involved should McCain’s health care tax be implemented.

Much of the public got to hear, for the first time, that McCain would tax health care benefits. Biden laid out a stark fact for viewers and voters: If they’re among the 158 million working families covered by employer-based health care, McCain’s plan would put them at risk of losing that coverage entirely. Biden explained the tax credits promised in the McCain health care plan would not cover the cost of the average family’s plan—in fact, McCain’s “tax credit” is more like a subsidy to insurance companies.

So you’re going to have to replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the “Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.”

Palin didn’t show much depth of understanding on the issue. She focused on the McCain plan’s insufficient tax credits, and largely ignored the question of why that plan would impose a new tax on health benefits. Palin also bragged about the McCain plan’s deregulation of health care, but what she couldn’t explain was the fact that this policy means that insurance companies would have more power than ever to deny coverage and payment for care and leave out anyone with pre-existing health problems.

Palin even alluded to a time in her life when she didn’t have health care, and she and her family worried about paying out-of-pocket for health care. But she never made the connection: Families like that wouldn’t be helped by the McCain plan. It’s structured as though the uninsured don’t exist.

And how did the Palin family eventually get good health coverage that protected them? It was through union membership. Yet Palin is running on a ticket with a candidate who is hostile to unions—he voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field for workers seeking to form a union and bargain for family-supporting wages, and he’s voted against bargaining rights.

Tax policy in general also separated the two candidates. Biden said that the McCain plan to give $300 billion in tax cuts to corporations and the very wealthy showed the wrong priorities. The Obama-Biden tax plan, on the other hand, would offer tax cuts to 95 percent of working families

That seems to me to be simple fairness. The economic engine of America is middle class. It’s the people listening to this broadcast. When you do well, America does well. Even the wealthy do well. This is not punitive. John wants to add $300 million, billion in new tax cuts per year for corporate America and the very wealthy while giving virtually nothing to the middle class. We have a different value set.

Palin never addressed the fact that the majority of working families would get a bigger tax cut under Obama’s plan than McCain’s.

Palin claimed that education was “near and dear to my heart,” yet she never addressed McCain’s record of voting against vital education programs.

It seems that Palin doesn’t get it. The policies she’s supporting, as McCain’s vice presidential candidate, are completely disconnected with her rehearsed talking points about reform, change and helping the middle class.

Last night’s debate proved why Biden was a strong pick by Obama. His understanding of policy and how it affects real people’s lives, his judgment and his consistent record of supporting working families were apparent. He effectively laid out the most important question in this election: How to turn around the economy so it works for everyone.

You ask anybody…whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years. And then ask them whether there’s a single major initiative that John McCain differs with the president on. On taxes, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the whole question of how to help education, on the dealing with health care.

These people know the middle class has gotten the short end. The wealthy have done very well. Corporate America has been rewarded. It’s time we change it. Barack Obama will change it.

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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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