Sen. John McCain says President Barack Obama wasted the first two years of his presidency pushing his healthcare reform law when he should have been concentrating most of his effort on the nation’s economic crisis.
“I think he devoted most of his intention to health care reform when probably it would have served him and the country better if they had worked on other issues, because the economy was failing while we were focusing all our attention on the Obamacare,” the Arizona Republican said Wednesday on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
“And also I think that the president thought that, and still believes that, if you expand government, hire more government workers, you will have an economic recovery,” McCain added.
Now, the senator suggested, the president is trying to hide from the problem by initiating “a class-warfare game” again over taxes by insisting that Republicans go along with his proposal to allow the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire for upper-income earners making $250,000 or more, but preserve them for middle-class Americans.
“We are in this whole class-warfare game,” McCain said. “I guess that the president is — in my view — trying to do everything to divert Americans’ attention from a very bad economy and bad, recently bad economic news.”
McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said he remains opposed to any changes in the current rates because “it would be a huge blow to small businesses in America.”
That’s the same objection, he reminded Van Susteren, that Obama gave in 2009 to raising taxes during an economic downturn.
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