Biden Rips McCain for Protecting Off-Shore Tax Shelters
EmailABC News’ Matt Jaffe Reports: Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden Tuesday ripped John McCain for promising on a trip to Bermuda to protect tax breaks for American companies that stash money in off-shore accounts, a pledge that helped the Republican presidential candidate rake in $50,000 from insurance company executives and lobbyists.
"This continues something that has been a disturbing trend lately with John McCain – claiming the mantle of reform in public, but promising business as usual in private," Biden said at a Woodbridge, Virginia campaign event, just outside of Washington, DC.
"On the floor of the United States Senate, John spoke out against these off-shore tax breaks not long ago. Then, while he was in Bermuda, according to the Bermuda Royal Gazette, the newspaper, he started singing a very, very different tune."
McCain visited Bermuda last summer and according to published reports in the Royal Gazette, during his three-day stay there, sought to reassure business leaders concerned over possible clampdowns on offshore business operations.
"This is the same old Washington game," Biden continued in remarks today. "And the problem with the Washington game is everybody loses except the people playing the game in Washington."
"You know folks, maybe, maybe John should be asking those companies that he promised not to close this loophole for, maybe he should be asking those companies to put America first," Biden said, ripping off the Republican ticket’s "Country First" slogan. "And by country, by country, I don’t mean Bermuda."
Biden, whose comments coincided with the release of a new Obama-Biden campaign ad entitled "Destination" also hitting out at McCain’s Bermuda remarks, outlined what the $4-7 billion that he said these companies are saving would be put towards should the Democrats win the White House and close the tax loophole.
"Instead of giving those companies tax breaks for going off-shore, we believe that middle-class Americans should be getting tax breaks so you can pay for your gas and your groceries, afford your mortgage, be able to send your kids to college," said the Delaware senator. "And that’s why we’re going to close that loophole."
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At least McCain has a PLAN – what exactly is obama’s?? Still waiting for the “Politically correct” response.
Looks like the Obama gang will have to give up that “FREE” Medical Plan.
Posted by: Abby | September 23, 2008, 10:59 am 10:59 am
This an excellent article , thanks , I’m grateful to you .
Posted by: العاب شمس الدين | September 23, 2008, 11:03 am 11:03 am
Obama – bamboozling the easily bamboozled!
Posted by: dl | September 23, 2008, 11:21 am 11:21 am
Abby-
What McCain plan are you referring to exactly?
Posted by: sandy | September 23, 2008, 11:22 am 11:22 am
what plan is that? To fire the SEC! lol
Or is it to drill drill drill so we can all STILL be enslaved to EXXON/MOBIL… or iss it to give the biggest tax cuts to the wealthiest? OR wait, DEREGULATE
obama’s plan is on his website. Sorry it’s not an easily-digested soundbite for you to relay here, you actually have to READ it and THINK…
http://www.barackobama.com
Posted by: eric | September 23, 2008, 11:28 am 11:28 am
Abby,
This is a real crisis and not something to be used to spout an arm chair quarterback “here is what I would do in this situation”. There is a committee working on the problem and it would be irresponsible for either candidate to be putting forth what they thing should be done in detail. Today, Obama outlined what he is expecting to see addressed in the bill that is submitted for a vote. That is all anyone outside the committee working on the problem should do, whether they are running for president, a seat in congress, or anything else. This is a tough enough situation without people trying to grand stand to show they can shoot from the hip. A leader who shoots from the hip has run this country into the ground.
Posted by: Mack | September 23, 2008, 11:32 am 11:32 am
Abby: So it is OK with you if McCain sells us out again BECAUSE HE HAS A PLAN and you think Obama does not. Nice, Nice… It is people like you who helped put us in this mess we are in today….thanks but no thanks…
Posted by: beck | September 23, 2008, 11:45 am 11:45 am
Ok, I am stupid.
Posted by: Abby | September 23, 2008, 11:45 am 11:45 am
Obama – a part of the problem; not the solution!
Posted by: dl | September 23, 2008, 11:49 am 11:49 am
dl-stop your spewing, and try to discuss the topic.
Ab, naybe not stupid, just v.young.
you’re used to right here, right now.
This is not the only time we will have to be patient during the next few days and weeks as the House awaits the big decision by JM as to whether or not he will vote for the new bill set forth by congress.
If you would like to see a detailed , written out plan on the economy, ins., and many other issues, then simply go to the forementioned obama website.
Posted by: pamela | September 23, 2008, 12:03 pm 12:03 pm
And finally, if someone tells you McCain is a third term Bush and that BO is “Mr. liberal” please pass on this info:
“Obama often says that McCain voted 90% of the time with Bush. What he doesn’t say is that Obama himself voted 88% of the time with Bush and even voted for the Cheney energy plan. Hillary didn’t and neither did McCain.
What they don’t tell you is that McCain voted 97% of the time with the Democrats and that he has the worst conservative voting record of any Republican. He voted liberal 20% of the time.
(A little tip when you hear Obama lying about McCain’s voting record: most votes in the Senate are unanimous consent.)” http://www.redhotandbluepolitics.com
Posted by: Democrat No More | September 23, 2008, 12:12 pm 12:12 pm
McCain has not answered a direct question in over 40 days
Palin never
Obama/Biden taking th leadership risk everyday answering the tough questions
ignorance is a choice
Posted by: votor | September 23, 2008, 12:19 pm 12:19 pm
democrat no more,
How is Obama stating that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time lying? How could he have voted liberal 20% of the time when he voted with Bush 90% of the time? I went to the link where you copied the information from, but they do not tell how they got their numbers. Something doesn’t add up.
Posted by: Mack | September 23, 2008, 12:30 pm 12:30 pm
Someone explain please — McCain’s comments were specifically on the insurance/reinsurance sector in Bermuda. How does a commitment to oppose measures which would hurt the success of that sector equate to protecting taxbreaks for US businesses with offshore operations?
Posted by: Ask | September 23, 2008, 12:44 pm 12:44 pm
John McCain has said on many occasions that he’s in favor of getting rid of regulations. His top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, is a champion of deregulation. John McCain is a “foot soldier” in the Reagan Revolution that brought us, immediately, the Savings and Loan fiasco, and then later the Enron fiasco, the airline bankruptcies, and now this mess.
I’d trust John McCain about as far as he can throw Sarah Palin.
Posted by: David | September 23, 2008, 12:47 pm 12:47 pm
Democrat No More,
I took a look at your website. This must be the new Republican math that god fearing right wing fanatics are teaching. 90% with Bush + 20% liberal + 97% with Democrats = 100% voting record. Remember, it is God’s Task to teach this new math.
Posted by: EdTheLight | September 23, 2008, 12:52 pm 12:52 pm
From a yank in canada….let the process play out and hope that common sense will prevail. The thing we need most of all is a steady hand and some sense of direction. The present situation has all the hallmarks of an out of control panic and a blame game!McCain’s performance on 60 minutes showed his erratic style and Obama came across as controlled and clear thinking. My vote is in the mail.
Posted by: H D Kerr | September 23, 2008, 1:07 pm 1:07 pm
I’ve had it with the Republican Fear and Smear machine taking Patriotism as their own personal brand! All of this goes back to Lee Attwater, and it is all a plot to wage war on the Democrats, and it is all a BIG SCAM!!! They actually succeed in making God and Country their own!
This in spite of the fact that all they care about is that they have their money, their guns, their religion, and screw everyone else! They are greedy and self-serving! Under their watch our infrastructure is crumbling because THEY don’t want to let go of THEIR miserly money to maintain or fix anything! Starve those government programs! Give the money back to the wealthy in tax cuts, and suck the life out of the middle class!
But it’s entirely OK if the middle class goes off to fight in a war that a dim bulb like George Bush & the Neocons want to fight! A war that the Republican leadership couldn’t even fight in an intelligent way! The whole Bush administration has been like a rerun of Dumb and Dumber! Now they have NATIONALIZED Wall Street! This is the party who has made a mantra of getting government out of business! It’s OK if government is in your bedroom, or your personal life, or your religion, as long as it isn’t in your business.
Well I got new for the Republicans. YOU ARE A BUNCH OF SCREW-UPS! There is no reason on God’s green earth that you people should be anywhere near government after ’08, so we Democrats are going to take it totally out of your hands! And you can take your fear mongering and race hatred and dirty smear tactics and head down the road! WE’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER – you and that four hundred million dollar sack of wind and s**t, Rush Limbaugh!
It is at least as patriotic for the wealthy people who have had a tax break at the expense of everyone else for the last 8 years to lose it, as it is for the middle class to fight your dirty, mismanaged war in Iraq! So get used to it! Democrats have guns too. They may not be assault rifles, but they throw lead! Send Rush Limbaugh to my house, shooting off his mouth, and after I make a hole in him, you will be able to bury him in shoe box! I’ mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. All of you Democrats join me! If the Republicans want to treat elections like war then we’ll give it to them!
REVENGE OF THE COMMON MAN!!! – OBAMA/BIDEN ’08
Posted by: Donna Hughes | September 23, 2008, 1:44 pm 1:44 pm
MARCH 27, 2008!
If John McCain wants to know when Barack Obama will offer a policy regarding the credit crisis, and the role of common sense regulation in maintaining a vibrant economy, he should read Obama’s speech from March 27 of this year.
From Obama’s speech:
” . . the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market’s invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle – but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.
I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we’ve lost that sense of shared prosperity.
This loss has not happened by accident. It’s because of decisions made in boardrooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.
Nor is this trend new. The concentrations of economic power – and the failures of our political system to protect the American economy from its worst excesses – have been a staple of our past, most famously in the 1920s, when with success we ended up plunging the country into the Great Depression. That is when government stepped in to create a series of regulatory structures – from the FDIC to the Glass-Steagall Act – to serve as a corrective to protect the American people and American business.
The policies of the Bush Administration threw the economy further out of balance. Tax cuts without end for the wealthiest Americans. A trillion dollar war in Iraq that didn’t need to be fought, paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting – coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement – allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long term consequences. The American economy was bound to suffer a painful correction, and policymakers found themselves with fewer resources to deal with the consequences.
Today, those consequences are clear. I see them in every corner of our great country, as families face foreclosure and rising costs. I seem them in towns across America, where a credit crisis threatens the ability of students to get loans, and states can’t finance infrastructure projects. I see them here in Manhattan, where one of our biggest investment banks had to be bailed out, and the Fed opened its discount window to a host of new institutions with unprecedented implications we have yet to appreciate. When all is said and done, losses will be in the many hundreds of billions. What was bad for Main Street was bad for Wall Street. Pain trickled up.
That is why the principle that I spoke about at NASDAQ is even more urgently true today: in our 21st century economy, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. The decisions made in New York’s high-rises have consequences for Americans across the country. And whether those Americans can make their house payments; whether they keep their jobs; or spend confidently without falling into debt – that has consequences for the entire market. The future cannot be shaped by the best-connected lobbyists with the best record of raising money for campaigns. This thinking is wrong for the financial sector and it’s wrong for our country.
. . .
After months of inaction, the President spoke here in New York and warned against doing too much. His main proposal – extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans – is completely divorced from the reality that people are facing around the country. John McCain recently announced his own plan, and it amounts to little more than watching this crisis happen. While this is consistent with Senator McCain’s determination to run for George Bush’s third term, it won’t help families who are suffering, and it won’t help lift our economy out of recession. . . .”
Posted by: John | September 23, 2008, 2:27 pm 2:27 pm
The time has come to outlaw the republican party. From the ashes a new and responsible conservative party, or parties can arise. They have destroyed our very notion of governess in this country. They have run up a 11 trillion dollar debt and now want to tell us that we should not tax the top 2% who have cause this dire situation. To put another republican, especially an out of touch bumbling out man, in charge of this country is suicide. Before you label me a liberal, go to Ron Paul’s site and see what a real conservative is saying.
Posted by: Independent realist | September 23, 2008, 2:32 pm 2:32 pm
Thats old man, not out man, although after november he will be the “out man”
Posted by: Independent realist | September 23, 2008, 2:35 pm 2:35 pm
Abby, that your stupid, was apparent with your first post.
Posted by: Barney Phiffe | September 23, 2008, 2:35 pm 2:35 pm
Obama needs many miracles to be president of this great nation.
McCain/Palin does not need any miracles.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=74783
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60559
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=74635
Posted by: Judge | September 23, 2008, 3:24 pm 3:24 pm
NYT Today:
One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
They said they did not recall Mr. Davis doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee composed of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the coming midterm congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s his firm, Davis & Manafort, was kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who was widely expected by 2006 to run again for the White House.
Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafort for the duration of the campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to share in its profits.
Posted by: Mr. Coffee | September 23, 2008, 3:57 pm 3:57 pm
oh my goodness….i love how the majority of people only pay attention to politics and how they work when it’s e;ection time, and then go on and on and onnnnnn about how so-and-so voted 90% for whatever when so-and-so voted 95%…
*scandalous how these candidates have their OWN opinions too!*
Posted by: Sarahlynn | September 23, 2008, 6:34 pm 6:34 pm
Hi,
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:
“Impeach Senator Barack Obama”
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/obamaimpeachment?e ………
I really think this is an important cause, and I’d like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It’s free and takes less than a minute of your time.
Thanks!
————————-
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/obamaimpeachment?e
Posted by: WillNotBeFooledByObamaNATION | September 23, 2008, 7:30 pm 7:30 pm
How can the Democrats run the government when they do not know how business functions? Joe Biden blames John McCain for companies registered in Bermuda. Joe, wake up and smell the coffee. There are all kinds of companies registered in Bermuda. There are insurance companies, oil companies, shipping companies, airline companies, internet companies and on and on down the list of the business world.
In 2006, 14,267 international companies registered in Bermuda, many U.S.-owned. They are an important source of foreign exchange for the island, and spent an estimated $1.004 billion in Bermuda in 2006. The growing importance of international business shows in its increased share of GDP, up from 13.9% in 2004 to 21.9% in 2005 at $1.062 billion. Additionally, it is now the island’s largest employer, with 4,489 jobs in 2006.
Joe Biden has little knowledge as to what is really happening in the world of business. Joe Biden and Obama have much to learn before they sling their distortions and lies about anyone. Joe Biden and Obama talk to the American voters like the voters are children. Americans are mature intellects that know crap from the candidates when we hear it.
I hear the Democrats talk about Roosevelt pulling America out of the depression of 1929. However, I hear no words about President Johnson. President Johnson expanded the Viet Nam War to kill innocent Americans and Vietnamese for the profits of the Democratic war machine. Obama knows sending troops into Pakistan will expand the Middle East conflict. No one can win in Pakistan because you cannot fight a conventional war there. That means more money for the Democratic war machine and less money for American projects.
One more credit to Joe Biden from his own words: There will be NO CLEAN COAL PLANTS in America. Joe Biden proves repeatedly that he and Obama are out of touch with the real world. Obama/Biden inflated promises will make a CHANGE that Americans will not like. All Americans will pay higher taxes, America will go into a deep depression and even a President Roosevelt will not be able to save America. Only the strategy of a President Ronald Reagan can save America from the crisis all Americans now face. One more President the Democrats do not want anyone to remember.
Posted by: Judge | September 23, 2008, 9:40 pm 9:40 pm
In response to this week’s economic crisis on CNBC,
McCain pointed to his experience as
“chair of the Commerce Committee which oversights every part of our economy.”
UH
WRONG
THE COMMITTEE THAT OVERSEES THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS THAT WENT DOWN IS THE SENATE BANKING HOUSING AND URBAN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE.
EITHER HE’S SO DUMB HE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT HIS COMMITTEE DOES, OR HE THINKS WE’RE SO DUMB THAT WE WON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
REPUBLICANS GAVE US BUSH…
DO YOU REALY THINK WE’LL TRUST YOUR JUDGEMENT AGAIN?
http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Information.Jurisdiction
Posted by: GIGI - KEEP YOUR BUSH #3 TO URSELVES | September 23, 2008, 10:41 pm 10:41 pm
OH LOOK IS “JUDGE” THE QUEEN OF CUT AND PASTE.
WAIT… NEVERMIND JUDGE! BY ALL MEANS KEEP POSTING THAT!!! AWESOME.
THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OBAMA’S HEART!
MY APOLOGIES, I THOUGHT YOU WERE A REPUBLICAN.
Posted by: GIGI | September 23, 2008, 10:43 pm 10:43 pm
Biden is trying to get thrown off the ticket then hillary would come on board but will people still vote for Obama even after he picked a retart that goes against 50% of what Obama says until Obama breaks it down for him????
Posted by: reddog0216 | September 24, 2008, 4:17 am 4:17 am