Statement by AFL-CIO Exec. Vice President Arlene Holt Baker on John McCain's Speech in New Orleans

June 03, 2008 -- John McCain has some nerve going to New Orleans, site of the Bush Administration’s do-nothing approach to Hurricane Katrina, to announce that he’s a “different kind of Republican.”

From health care and jobs to the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. McCain’s record shows he’s in lockstep with President Bush and the Administration’s corporate allies.

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A small and subdued collection of John McCain supporters during his New Orleans speech: Photo by dsb nola (CC)

Actions speak louder than words. McCain supports Bush tax giveaways for corporations, Big Oil and the wealthy while opposing an increase in the minimum wage and an extension of unemployment benefits. His health care plan would saddle working families with an additional tax while doing nothing to address the deep flaws in the system or provide coverage to the 47 million Americans who have no insurance. He even opposed the development of a commission to examine the Bush Administration’s failures in response to Katrina, which makes it all the more offensive that he chose New Orleans as the backdrop to try to reinvent himself.

In the more than 25 years he’s been in Washington, McCain has shown himself time and time again to be a dyed-in-the-wool, right-wing Republican who’s beholden to special interests and corporate lobbyists, and dangerously out of touch with working families’ priorities. America’s working families call on Sen. McCain to shelve the empty rhetoric and, instead, reject the failed policies that led to a devastating calamity like the Katrina aftermath, a disastrous economy and a seemingly endless war.

Holt Baker directed the AFL-CIO Gulf Coast Recovery Program prior to being elected to one of the AFL-CIO’s top three offices last year.

“McCain Revealed,” is an AFL-CIO national campaign to expose Sen. John McCain's economic record and plans to continue the failed Bush economic agenda, and to generate public pressure on him to support policies that advance working families’ interests. To learn more, go to www.mccainrevealed.org.

Source: AFL-CIO