WAYNE, Pa.- Barack Obama told voters today he would push an aggressive economic agenda as president: cutting taxes for the middle class, raising taxes on the wealthy, pouring money into “green energy” and requiring employers to set up retirement saving plans for their workers.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, a key battleground in the fall campaign, the Democratic candidate said he would take a much more hands-on approach than would Republican John McCain.
Obama again criticized McCain’s proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax. It would “actually do real harm,” he said, by reducing revenue for road and bridge construction even as oil companies make record profits.
Obama visited the flooded Midwest later, stopping in Quincy, Ill., to help fill sandbags.
Speaking to about 200 people in Wayne, a Philadelphia suburb, Obama made no new proposals but emphasized earlier ones in light of rising gas prices, inflation and job losses.
They include a $1,000 tax cut for most working families; a new Social Security tax on incomes above $250,000; a windfall-profits tax on oil companies; a $4,000 annual college tuition credit for those who commit to national or community service programs; and an end to income taxes for elderly people making less than $50,000 a year.
Obama said he could pay for his programs by eliminating the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy, winding down the Iraq war and spending more on alternative-energy programs that eventually will save money.
Meanwhile, McCain today canceled a fund-raiser at the home of an 86-year-old Texas oilman who once joked that women should give in while being raped.
The Texan, Clayton Williams, made the joke during his failed 1990 Republican campaign for governor against Democrat Ann Richards.
Williams compared rape to the weather, saying, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
Williams’ comments made national news at the time. McCain’s campaign said it hadn’t known about the remarks.
McCain isn’t the only Republican with fund-raising woes.
House rank-and-file Republicans are tens of millions of dollars short of meeting fund-raising targets set by their campaign committee in advance of this fall’s elections, heightening concerns inside the party about major losses in November.
Most recent figures show that GOP lawmakers have brought $27 million into the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee in the past 17 months, far short of the target of about $58 million. AP, with Post Wires