The Associated Press (AP) ran an article that praised Senator McCain's acceptance speech as "a bipartisan pitch." The article outlined the main themes, but politely managed to ignore the fact that Senator McCain found it necessary to completely misrepresent Senator Obama's health care proposal. Senator McCain claimed that Obama's proposal would force people into a health care plan run by government bureaucrats. This is not true. Senator Obama's plan would give people the option of buying into a publicly run Medicare-type plan, but this would only be an option. Under Senator Obama's plan, no one would be forced to join the public plan, they would be free to stay with their current plan if they chose. Senator McCain also misrepresented his plan on taxes for ordinary people. He claimed that he would not raise taxes, but his health care plan would raise taxes for tens of millions of middle income workers. McCain proposes making employer payments for health care taxable income. This will be a substantial tax increase for many workers. It also would have been appropriate to note this misrepresentation since Senator McCain has made low taxes so central to his campaign. As a rule AP is not hesitant to criticize presidential acceptance speeches. The headline for its article on Senator Obama's speech was "Obama Spares Details: Keeps Up Attacks." It is worth noting that most other news accounts seem to have ignored Senator McCain's misrepresentation of Obama's position on this important issue.
--Dean Baker
