Posted on 05/01/2008 3:34:51 AM PDT by decimon
WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain is making promises that would cost billions of taxpayer dollars, yet he is vague about how he would pay for them.
McCain is handing around a campaign grab bag of goodies. There are little treats like a summer gas-tax holiday and new mortgages for struggling homeowners, and there are big plums like tax breaks for corporations and families with children.
The expected GOP presidential nominee has nothing on the Democrats. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama would spend billions of dollars themselves on things like paid family leave, universal health insurance and preschool for kids.
The difference? Unlike the Democrats, McCain has made a career of trying to cut spending. He rails against spending in nearly every speech. McCain gets laughs by singling out silly sounding projects like a federal DNA study of bears in Montana: "I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue."
And he gets attention when he says it was spending, not the war in Iraq, that cost Republicans their control of Congress in 2006.
"The reason why we lost that election, my dear friends, was because we let spending get out of control," he said recently. "We came to power in 1994 to change government, and government changed us."
Now McCain is promising ambitious cuts in spending to pay for his ideas. The cuts would not pay for all his promises, but McCain says they needn't.
"I strongly disagree with the view that just because you reduce the tax burden, just because you let people save and invest more of their money, that therefore there's less money that goes into government," he told reporters last week in Alabama.
McCain said he is not exactly a supply-sider — someone who subscribes to the idea that some tax cuts can pay for themselves by encouraging economic growth. But he certainly leans that way.
"I believe there's more money, because of the increase in economic activity and growth," he said.
Regardless of who wins the November election, it is vital to find a way to pay for new spending or tax cuts, because the next president will face a budget deficit of more than $400 billion. And the deficit will keep mounting as baby boomer retirements swell Social Security and Medicare.
McCain has pledged to balance the federal budget, although he has backed off an earlier promise to do so in his first term and now says he would do it within eight years.
McCain's tax cuts would be double the size of President Bush's:
_First, he wants to extend Bush's tax cuts, which cost an estimated $228 billion annually and are set to expire after next year, according to congressional analysts.
_On top of that, he seeks new tax cuts of about $225 billion a year, according to his own estimate. He would slash the corporate tax rate, eliminate the alternative minimum tax and double the tax exemption for dependent children.
_And the cost of his tax breaks could rise even higher. McCain has proposed two business tax breaks, a credit for research and first-year expensing of equipment; his campaign says they essentially would cost nothing, but the Treasury Department has estimated they could cost more than $140 billion annually.
Those are just the tax cuts. McCain also proposed a new mortgage refinancing program for struggling homeowners that could cost the government $3 billion to $10 billion. He proposed to suspend federal gas taxes for the summer months at a cost of $8 billion to $10 billion.
And McCain has several proposals whose costs are unknown, such as his pledge to give all veterans a plastic card to get medical treatment anywhere they choose, a new student loan program and tax write-offs for companies that provide Internet service to rural areas.
How would he pay for it? New user fees could pay for the gas-tax holiday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said.
Ironically, McCain said those kinds of fees were essentially tax increases when former rival Mitt Romney imposed them on businesses as governor of Massachusetts. Yet McCain has said he doesn't want to raise taxes.
McCain also has sketched out ideas for covering the costs of his $225 billion in new tax cuts, saying he would cut spending, eliminate corporate tax loopholes and spark economic growth by that amount of money.
Yet for all the numbers he has provided, McCain has been reluctant to say exactly which programs he would cut.
He criticizes "earmarks," pet projects tucked into spending bills, like the bear study. He said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending, despite the suspicion of federal investigators that the problem may have been design-related, not spending-related.
Even the earmarks he rails against include things he supports, such as aid to Israel. Last month, after McCain promised to eliminate all earmarks as part of his economic plan, his campaign said he remains committed to aid for Israel.
Thus, the reality of cutting spending may be very different from rhetoric, as McCain has found time and again.
On a swing through Alabama's rural Black Belt last week, McCain rode a ferry boat from tiny Gee's Bend, a town once cut off from ferry service to keep black residents from crossing the Alabama River to push for civil rights.
McCain rode across the river with several elderly black women, quilt makers from Gee's Bend, who sang gospel hymns and held his hands. McCain even took a turn driving the ferry just before it docked.
The ferry came into existence with $3 million in earmarks — the kind of spending McCain says he would stop.
McCain insisted he is not trying to have it both ways. The ferry spending was worthy and would have been eligible for other federal dollars, he told reporters.
"America is supposed to help people in rural settings, people like the quilters who are direct descendants of slaves," McCain said. "It's 'give people a hand up.' That's the essence of government."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Libby Quaid covers the presidential campaign for The Associated Press.
“There are little treats like a summer gas-tax holiday”
Tax cuts are called increased spending by the left.
“New user fees could pay for the gas-tax holiday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said.”
Then what’s the point?
If Juan McCain were any more Teddy Kennedy than he is right now, we'd have to drag the local lakes and rivers nightly for the waterlogged corpses of his luckless dinner dates.
Here, I'll be crystal clear about to pay for them: if I had a dollar for every time a RAT made promises that cost billions of dollars and the AP and the rest of the MSM did not get their panties in a wad about it as they are with McCain's promises, I could pay for them out of my own pocket.
I'm not defending McCain. I still can't even see myself voting for him. I'm just so fed up with this double standard and hypocrisy.
Then what’s the point?
Don't you understand government economics? Here, watch this...I place this pea under this shell and move it around with these other two shells. If you know under which shell is the pea then you understand government economics. ;-)
These are tax cuts, not spending programs.
From the article: “The difference? Unlike the Democrats, McCain has made a career of trying to cut spending.”
That is a good point. If the Dems don’t promise spending cuts then they can’t be derided for not proposing spending cuts.
And McCain makes a good point in saying the Pubs didn’t deliver what people elected them to do - cut spending. For all I know he may be as guilty as any but the point is valid, nonetheless.
From the article:
"Those are just the tax cuts. McCain also proposed a new mortgage refinancing program for struggling homeowners that could cost the government $3 billion to $10 billion. He proposed to suspend federal gas taxes for the summer months at a cost of $8 billion to $10 billion.
"And McCain has several proposals whose costs are unknown, such as his pledge to give all veterans a plastic card to get medical treatment anywhere they choose, a new student loan program and tax write-offs for companies that provide Internet service to rural areas."
The article covers McCain's spending promises as well as his proposed tax cuts.
“Don’t you understand government economics? Here, watch this...I place this pea under this shell and move it around with these other two shells”
You forgot “by the way, you have to pay for the pea... and the shell... and my time to move them around... and the right to watch them, AND pick up all the costs to replant the field that the pea came from, including gasoline, insurance, registrations, fees, licenses and processing.”
Good One!!!
The shell game also allows McCain to please the peeved-at-the-pump crowd, who naively think they’re getting a tax break, while the government doesn’t actually give up any money. Mr. Doubl.., uh, I mean Straight Talk can pander with the best of ‘em.
Here in 2008 it appears that he has taken massive doses of something that has really scrambled his egg.
Tell me again how this rube is any different than those other two stooges.
The Ship of State (and the world) is going to Hell in a hand basket, and we've got the three stooges trying to become captain.
Man the life rafts!
LLS
So who is writing his words, lord McCain has already said, even after years and years on that ‘Commerce Committee’ he knows nothing about economy? Maybe he plans on doing to the economy what was done to HP???? Would he make his BADDDD CEO salary capping retroactive????
LLS
McCainomics=more big Government and more giveaways.
As Gomer Pyle would say: Surprise,surprise,surprise!
Nice to know we have three Libs running for President. Pick one.
China will laugh all of the way to the Hong Kong banks, knowing they will be lending us this money for 30 years.
McCain has no particular agenda. As of now I plan to pull the lever for McCain for the same reason I did for Bush. Because the alternative will be that much worse.
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