The Obama Campaign Today – Monday, June 9

On tap for today:

Today in Raleigh, North Carolina, Obama launches his “Change that Works for You” Tour with a speech on the economy at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds. Doors open at 11:00 AM EDT. Watch for prepared remarks later on this morning.

After the speech, the campaign will host a conference call with our top economic advisors to discuss the tour and take questions.

In the kickoff speech, Obama will lay out the first part his economic vision for America—his plan to provide opportunity to working families who are struggling and restore fairness and balance to our economy. He’ll also lay out the very clear choice in this election. It’s a choice between John McCain’s plan to continue four more years of costly Bush economic policies that have widened inequality and left our children with a mountain of debt and Barack Obama’s plan to provide relief to struggling homeowners, affordable health care and college for all, and a tax code that rewards work instead of wealth.

States Obama will visit on the two-week tour that starts in North Carolina and will include Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and other additional stops that will be announced soon.

McCain on the economy: four more years of failed Bush policies

John McCain has said he didn’t understand the economy as well as he should and now, his top policy advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin says it’s President Bush who doesn’t understand the economy. It is this common misunderstanding that has apparently led McCain to vote with President Bush 95 percent of the time last year and led him to say we’ve seen “great progress” in our economy these past seven years.

McCain calls himself a fiscal conservative and on the campaign trail he’s passionate critic of government spending, and yet he has no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for big corporations and a permanent occupation of Iraq—policies that have left our children with more debt than any Administration in history.

McCain once said that he couldn’t vote for George Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy in good conscience because they were too skewed to the wealthiest Americans. Later, he said it was irresponsible to cut taxes during a time of war because we simply couldn’t afford them. Well nothing’s changed about the war, but something’s certainly changed about John McCain, because these same Bush tax cuts are now his central economic policy.

Now McCain is calling for a new round of tax giveaways that are twice as expensive as the original Bush plan and nearly twice as regressive. His policy will spend almost $2 trillion on tax breaks for corporations, including $1.2 billion for Exxon alone, a company that just recorded the highest profits in history. Meanwhile, he hasn’t proposed closing one single corporate loophole.

John McCain takes great pride in saying that he’s a fiscal conservative, and he’s already signaled that he will try to define Barack Obama with the same old tax-and-spend label that his side has been throwing around for decades. But the fact is, if McCain’s policies were implemented, they would add $5.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That isn’t fiscal conservatism, that’s what George Bush has done over the last eight years. Working families can’t afford that, and neither can future generations.

Barack Obama will offer real relief to working people

Instead of a tax code that rewards wealth and not work, he’ll provide an income tax cut of up to $1,000 for working families, and eliminate income taxes altogether for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year. Instead of more inaction on health care, he’ll finally bring this country together, stand up to the drug companies and insurance companies, and make health care affordable and accessible for every single American.

Instead of putting a secure retirement at risk, he’ll protect Social Security, protect pensions instead of CEO bonuses, and help all Americans save more so they can have a retirement that is dignified and secure.

Instead of gimmicks like a gas tax holiday, which rewards the oil companies while doing nothing to lower gas prices in the long-term, Obama will raise fuel efficiency standards, invest in alternative energy, and create millions of green jobs that will free this country from our addiction to oil.

Instead of a blank check to fight an endless war in Iraq, Obama will end this war, restore our military, finish the fight with al Qaeda, and invest some of those dollars to put millions of Americans to work rebuilding our roads and bridges, laying down new rail lines and new broadband, and making sure that all of America can compete and win in the 21st Century.