McCain touts tax cuts for their own sake, but he also claims that they will solve the ills Americans actually do care about: jobs, the economy, and health care. So it’s worth examining how the McCain tax plan would address the real problems facing Americans.

McCain argues that “keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs.” But these tax cuts are a continuation and an expansion of President Bush’s economic policy. And the record shows that this tax-cut based economic policy has had a lousy record with growing poverty and historically low wage and job growth even at the strongest point in the economic cycle. I waited in vain for McCain to tell us why the same economic policies are likely to produce a different result this time.

The tax-cuts to improve health care mantra also sounds familiar – President Bush called for a similar plan in his nomination speech back in 2000. President Bush even reiterated the call in his most recent State of the Union address. l There’s a good reason why it hasn’t been enacted. The plan favored by both Bush and McCain would raise taxes on businesses who provide health coverage to their employees, providing a powerful incentive to get rid of employer-based coverage. At the same time, as DMI noted in our analysis of the President’s plan, the tax break for buying insurance on the open market will “act as an incentive for well-off and healthy people to leave traditional employer-sponsored plans and go off on their own. With a lower risk of illness, these healthy people may get cheaper coverage in the marketplace, but they leave behind a weakened insurance pool, raising the cost of coverage for older, sicker, and lower-income Americans.”

While ineffectual tax policy is certainly the centerpiece of McCain’s domestic agenda, there is more there. McCain makes vague promises to cut wasteful spending. He advocates trade, vouchers, and, famously, more drilling for oil. Finally, the Senator offers the conciliatory policy he may have intended to demonstrate that he’s open to ideas from across the aisle: “for workers in industries that have been hard-hit, we’ll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one, while they receive re-training that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.” That might sound good to many Americans fearful of losing their jobs or already trying to make ends meet on pay that will never match up to their old position. But there are also reasons to be cautious about wage-loss insurance, as this policy is known.

Implemented effectively, wage-loss insurance could indeed cushion the blow of displacement for workers’ with years of work at high-wage jobs. But there are potential risks: by encouraging displaced workers to accept low-paid jobs, wage-loss insurance threatens to put downward pressure on the wages of all workers and, according to some studies, may actually increase unemployment. There is also concern that an expensive wage insurance program would reduce funding and focus on more urgent reforms of the unemployment system. There are simply too many unknowns about the McCain plan.

This election may well turn out to be about personality and image: who comes from a small town, gives the best speech, or can tell the best story about relating to ordinary Americans. But with genuine, pressing problems facing the nation and the world, it should be about the policies candidates will implement once elected. On this score, it's up to Senator McCain to explain how a continuation of the Bush economic agenda will produce different results. I didn't hear that in the convention speech.