McCain’s absurd claim in tonight’s debate that ACORN is “destroying the fabric of democracy” reflects other hate-filled cries from conservatives about the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people:

– Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): “One organization in particular has developed a reputation for lawlessness in the electoral process.”

– Ken Blackwell (R-OH): “Election Day this year may bring the kind of chaos you expect from a category-five hurricane – with radical groups sending the nation into a protracted legal battle even worse than the mess back in 2000.”

– Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “[B]ecause the violations of federal voting laws by ACORN employees appear to be so widespread, ACORN and its affiliates should be investigated as a criminal enterprise.”

As Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College who investigated allegations of widespread voter fraud but found no evidence to support such claims, told Salon:

The fact is that ACORN has been smeared by [conservatives]. Some of their employees do seem to fake registrations, sure, but when Macy’s has some of their employees stealing from them, we would not call them a quasi-criminal organization — we still call them a department store. ACORN is trying to help underprivileged people vote.

The small number of staffers who have knowingly submitted fraudulent registration forms are violating ACORN’s mission. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. The same principle applies here.

Unfortunately, widespread voter suppression — unlike the myths of voter fraud and registration fraud — does exist. McCain has not raised any alarm about this troubling reality.

During an interview on CNBC today, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), asserted that “you can’t cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people, if just under 50 percent aren’t paying taxes.” However, minutes later, he claimed that McCain would cut taxes for “everybody.” Watch it:

By Holtz-Eakin’s own standard, a cut for “everybody” should be impossible. But by claiming 50 percent of Americans “aren’t paying taxes,” Holtz-Eakin is simply furthering the McCain campaign’s false story of low-income Americans not paying taxes.

While the bottom one-third of Americans do not pay federal income taxes, as Brian Levine noted earlier “they do pay federal payroll and excise taxes, as well as state and local taxes.” Simply having no federal income tax liability does not give someone a tax-free existence.

Furthermore, McCain does not cut taxes for “everybody.” In fact, over 100 million middle class households do not benefit from his tax plan. Meanwhile, this weekend McCain unveiled a new tax proposal – temporarily cutting the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 7.5 percent – that gives two-thirds of its benefit to millionaires and gives “on average, nothing” to people making less than $50,000 a year.

Holtz-Eakin’s two statements only make sense if he thinks “everybody” actually means “the wealthiest Americans.”

Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a Senior Policy Adviser at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The McCain campaign held a conference call today to attack the idea of providing tax credits to Americans that don’t pay any federal income tax. During the call, McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that providing these tax credits is simply “sending checks to individuals, many of whom may not even be working, and certainly have no tax liability.”

These low-income Americans, once preposterously referred to as “lucky duckies” by the Wall Street Journal, have long been a favorite target of the far-right. In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich called providing tax credits to Americans with no income-tax liability “welfare.” The McCain campaign has apparently decided to reprise this disingenuous attack.

The federal income tax isn’t the only tax that Americans pay. While the poor may not pay income taxes, they do pay federal payroll and excise taxes, as well as state and local taxes. The majority of Americans actually pay more payroll taxes than federal income taxes. Low-income Americans must pay payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. And payroll taxes are regressive – the highest earning twenty percent of Americans pay a lower average rate than the lowest earning twenty percent.

Refundable tax credits aren’t “welfare” – they are smart policy. According to a recent Urban Institute analysis, refundable tax credits “provide a much more even and widespread motivation for socially valued behavior” than other forms of tax incentives. John McCain apparently used to agree – his own health care plan includes refundable credits. But the McCain campaign won’t let consistency get in the way of bashing an easy target – in this case, “lucky duckies.”

As part of his new economic outline – The Pension and Family Security Plan – Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has proposed cutting the tax rate on long term capital gains and dividends to 7.5 percent in 2009 and 2010. The current tax rate for these capital gains is 15 percent.

Today, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) released an analysis showing who would benefit from this cut. Like the rest of McCain’s tax cuts, this one overwhelmingly aids the wealthy, with two-thirds of the benefit going to those making over $1 million:

In 2009, under a plan that lowers taxes on both gains and dividends, those making $1 million or more would get two-thirds of the benefit, and an average tax cut of more than $72,000. Those making less than $50,000 would get, on average, nothing.

As the TPC pointed out, “75% of the benefit of low taxes on capital gains and dividends already go to those making $600,000 or more. Half goes to those making $2.8 million or more.”

In fact, as the Wonk Room noted when McCain first toyed with including this provision in his economic plan, under the current 15 percent rate, 93.9 percent of the benefits go to the top 5 percent of taxpayers, and 84.8 percent to the top 1 percent. The other 80 percent of taxpayers see only 1.7 percent of the benefits of today’s rate.

The McCain campaign claims that the cut will “strengthen incentives to save, invest, and restore the liquidity of markets.” But given the current economic situation – one in which “people do not have an awful lot of capital gains” – this measure will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

Furthermore, The Street noted that McCain’s cut “might have unintended consequences,” like encouraging investors “to make one-time sales to capture lower capital gains and increased tax write-offs,” which “would facilitate capital flight.”

Cross-posted at Think Progress.

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