WITH Joe the Plumber aboard, Republican Sen. John McCain is finishing his presidential campaign by accusing Sen. Barack Obama of engaging in the socialist policy of redistributing wealth. Worst of all, Obama has the audacity to put forth a plan that, McCain complains, “;gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes.”;

McCain fails to mention that such a system has existed for more than three decades. It is called the earned income tax credit, signed into law by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975. It was expanded by another Republican, GOP deity Ronald Reagan, who called it “;the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job-creation measure to come out of Congress.”;

The tax credit also enjoyed the support of the former McCain, who opposed efforts in 1999 to “;tamper with a much-needed tax credit for working Americans.”; Says the new McCain: “;That's not a tax cut, that's welfare.”;

The tax credits go to more than 20 million low-income working families, who have 6.2 percent of their wages taken out as payroll taxes such as Social Security and Medicare but don't make enough to be assessed income taxes. It is aimed at lifting a family with a full-time, minimum-wage worker to the poverty line and has resulted in increases in employment and reductions in welfare.

Seventeen of the 42 states with income taxes offer income tax credits based on a percentage of the federal credits to poor working families, ranging from 5 percent to 50 percent. Unlike McCain, for whom she has been campaigning on the mainland, Gov. Linda Lingle always has stood rigidly against such a plot to help those families, and the Democratic Legislature has lacked the resolve to push for it.

Some legislators two years ago proposed a state income tax credit at a rate 20 percent of the federal formula, which would have made Hawaii one of the 10 most compassionate states toward the working poor, according to the Center on Budget Priorities, but it never reached the governor's desk. As a result, Hawaii remains among the most merciless states in taxing the working poor.

McCain seems in his stump speeches to oppose the progressive income tax system, which, of course, was initiated by McCain's idol, President Teddy Roosevelt, and continues to this day. “;Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie,”; he hyperventilated in Florida last week.

What McCain means is that he now supports President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy—which he opposed in 2001 as “;a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us.”; Voters are left to decide what McCain's tax pie would look like.