The Trail

TAKING ON MCCAIN

Hyde Park Project Launched

With Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) so busy beating up on each other, it has fallen to other Democrats to do opposition research on the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). That somebody would be the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which unveiled on Friday the first installment of its Hyde Park Project.

The center's president, John D. Podesta, said his think tank has been working for months to "both defend progressive ideas and also provide an informed critique of where conservatives are going in the wrong direction" during this presidential year.

A quartet of CAP fellows -- Robert Gordon, Peter Harbage, James Kvaal and Jeanne Lambrew -- analyzed in detail on Friday McCain's tax and health-care proposals. The bottom line: They didn't like them.

McCain's tax plan, Gordon and Kvaal said, would cost more than $2 trillion over the next decade, delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers and 4 percent of benefits to the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers.

Lambrew and Harbage questioned whether McCain's health-care agenda would increase Americans' access to insurance, arguing that it resembles President Bush's approach and would undermine individuals' ability to obtain high-quality coverage.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior policy adviser, said it is unfair to judge McCain's health-care plan by Bush's record because McCain is offering a refundable tax credit, which is more progressive. Gordon and Kvaal have a point on tax cuts, Holtz-Eakin said, though he added that voters should wait until the senator fleshes out his tax proposal before passing judgment.

"It will make deficits expand up front, no question," Holtz-Eakin said, adding that helping corporations ultimately helps workers because it ensures an employer remains internationally competitive. "That place has to be economically viable; otherwise, they have a problem."

-- Juliet Eilperin

A $4.4 MILLION OVERAGE