By request from the comments section, a partial listing of McCain’s soul-selling votes from the last Congress:

1) Not only did McCain not vote for the “Hatch Amendment” to the campaign finance bill — wich would have required unions and corporations to obtain permission from dues-paying members or shareholders before spending money on political activities — he brought up a motion to kill it.

2) McCain then motionted to kill another amendment from Hatch, this time one that would have required unions to disclose how much of dues-payers’ money they spend on political activities, and on what political activities they spend it on.

3) McCain voted against a plan to accelerate the elimination of the “marriage penalty,” so that it would have been eliminated by the end of 2002.

4) McCain voted against a proposed amendment to the tax bill that would have cut the capital gains tax from 20% to 15%.

5) McCain voted against the final version of the Bush tax cut.

6) McCain voted against a “sense of the Senate” amendment to the Patients’ Rights bill that would have said the Senate desires to eliminate federal restrictions on employers who wish to set up market-friendly medical savings accounts in lieu of health insurance.

7) McCain voted against a freedom of contract amendment to the Patients’ Rights bill that would have allowed patients to waive the right to sue HMOs in exchange for lower premiums and copayments.
McCain threatened to vote against, or even fillibuster the Homeland Security bill. But not because he objected to the gargantuan new agency on principle. Rather, because he objected to the White House’s insistence that it be able to hire and fire employees of the new agency without following union protocol. The White House felt that in matters of national security, it ought to be able to fire incompetent employeees with no questions asked. McCain apparently disagreed.

9) McCain supports the costly but inneffective proposed new “CAFE” standards on new automobiles.

10) The Incumbency Protection Act. Er…I mean…”campaign finance reform.”

11) McCain has come to embrace Teddy Roosevelt as a political role model. TR was hardly a limited government cheerleader.

I’m sure there are more. These were the result of a quick Google search.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 at 9:02 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.