Rhetoric intensifies over Obama's tax plan

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Democrat Barack Obama turned out enormous crowds at his two stops in battleground Missouri yesterday in what campaign aides said was a strategy of using his ability to command huge crowds as a way to build excitement heading into the final two weeks of the presidential campaign.

An estimated 100,000 people showed up in St. Louis yesterday morning to hear Obama speak at the Gateway Arch - the largest crowd ever to hear Obama in the United States. Last night, a crowd estimated at more than 75,000 thronged the Liberty Memorial near downtown Kansas City for an Obama rally.

Republican John McCain also campaigned in two hotly contested states - North Carolina and Virginia - where the crowds were smaller, but the rhetoric was heated.

McCain used words like

welfare

and

socialism

to describe Obama's plans to raise taxes on businesses and Americans earning more than $250,000 and redistribute that in the form of cuts and credits to working families.

"Since you can't reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit," McCain told a crowd estimated at 7,000 people, in Concord, N.C., criticizing Obama's plan. "And the Treasury will cover those checks by taxing other people."

In a morning radio address, McCain concluded that Obama's plan would turn the IRS into "a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington."

Obama adopted new rhetoric, saying McCain's plans to continue President Bush's tax cuts amounted to corporate welfare and reflected his rival's values.

"It comes down to values," Obama said. "In America, do we simply value wealth, or do we value the work that creates it?"

Obama said McCain "is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare.' The only 'welfare' in this campaign is John McCain's plan to give another $200 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations in America - including $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies that ran up record profits under George Bush."

With just 17 days to go before the election, both nominees are pulling out all the stops.

"This is the home stretch and our primary goal is to capture the excitement and energy that's surrounded this race," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. To turn out large crowds, the campaign is choosing outdoor venues with virtually unlimited capacity.

Good weather - like yesterday's in Missouri - helps.

McCain continued to make references to Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, a Toledo, Ohio, man who had recently asked Obama about his tax policies. Obama told Wurzelbacher he wanted to "spread the wealth" around, which McCain has seized on to make his argument about socialism.

McCain has attempted to make Wurzelbacher a working-class poster boy for his campaign despite revelations after Wednesday's presidential debate that Wurzelbacher isn't a licensed plumber and owes back taxes.

Wurzelbacher, who told Obama that he was preparing to buy a company that makes between $250,000 and $280,000 and asked whether the candidate's plan would tax him, also would benefit under Obama's plan, according to some analysts. "At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives," McCain said in his weekly radio address.

"They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

Meanwhile, in a separate venue, a top McCain adviser said yesterday that the campaign's new message would resonate in "real Virginia," as opposed to the Northern Virginia suburbs, where "Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia."

Nancy Pfotenhauer, a resident of the Washington suburbs, added on MSNBC that she meant "real Virginia" to be the "part of the state that is more Southern in nature, if you will."