Bull in the china shop?

The presumptive Republican nominee for President, Senator John McCain, recently made this comment at a town hall meeting in Denver: “My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

Clarifying, the Arizona Republican said that he was talking about the first Gulf War and not the current conflict: “The Congressional Record is very clear; I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction.”

I’ll take the Senator at his word. He probably does believe that we invaded Iraq “because of weapons of mass destruction.” However, nobody seems to have asked him the follow-up question, which is, “If we invaded Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction, and they had none, then that means that the invasion was a mistake, so why are we still there?” Americans continue to be wounded and die for something that was a mistake, and Senator McCain wants us to see it through to “victory”? Victory over what? Non-existent weapons of mass destruction?

Now, I must admit that, although I’ve opposed this military adventure from its beginning, I'd begun to think that we couldn’t withdraw precipitously, that we have an obligation to rebuild a country that’s been destroyed because of our leaders’ mistaken belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I did, that is, until my fuzzy thinking was jolted a few days ago when I read something written about the Iraq War by Robert Waldrop, of the Archbishop Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House, Oklahoma City, at http://www.justpeace.org/:

“The people of Iraq are fully qualified to rebuild their nation. They do not need the merciless American government to ‘help.’ People are fond of saying these days that ‘we broke it, we have to fix it now.’ Actually, a better analogy would be the bull who wrecks the china shop. To clean up the situation, to make it better, first the bull must be removed from the shop.”

I was wrong, and Senator McCain is even more wrong. Robert Waldrop is right: We are the bull in the china shop.

Snake oil?

President-wannabe John McCain’s “solution” to the escalating price of health care is to give each family a tax credit of $5,000. The Republican Senator argues that families could then use that $5,000 to “shop around in the free market” for lower-priced health care insurance, thereby giving families “control” over their own health care.

Using the 2007 federal income tax rates (10 percent of the amount from $1 to $15,650 and 15 percent of the amount from $15,651 to $63,700), a family’s adjusted gross income (AGI) would have to be $38,550 or more for them to have a total federal income tax liability of at least $5,000: 0.10 x $15,650 + 0.15 x $22,900 = $5,000. Let’s consider a family of four (mom, pop and two children). This family would claim four exemptions at $3,400 each, and, assuming a filing status of married, filing jointly, their standard deduction would be $10,700. Their gross income would be $38,550 + 4 x $3,400 + $10,700 = $62,850.

Therefore, any family of four with an annual gross income of less than $62,850 would get a McCain tax credit of less than $5,000. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for a family of four in West Virginia is about $55,920, which means that more than half the families of four in West Virginia would receive a tax credit of less than $5,000 under Senator McCain’s proposal.

The average annual premium for family health care coverage is a little more than $12,000. Senator McCain wants to give less than half the families of four in West Virginia $5,000 with which to “shop around.” To the majority of families of four (probably the very families who are either uninsured or underinsured), he’d give even less than $5,000. Does anybody really believe that he or she could purchase suitable family health insurance with that?

Remember in November!