Posted on 04/16/2008 7:11:31 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
A day after unveiling an economic agenda built heavily around cutting taxes, Republican John McCain is to bring the debate over how to revive a wilting economy to South Milwaukee today.
"I intend to act quickly and decisively," McCain said Tuesday in Pittsburgh. "We need reforms that promote growth and opportunity. We need rules that assure fairness and punish wrongdoing in the market. We need tax policies that respect the wage-earners and job-creators who make this economy run, and help them to succeed in a global economy."
McCain is to host two roundtable discussions at Bucyrus International this morning with a group composed largely of business executives, part of an effort to promote the economic ideas of a candidate far better known for his foreign policy views.
The plan that McCain outlined Tuesday mixes an array of tax cuts with pledges to scale back domestic spending and offer some relief from the most urgent economic pressures facing many Americans: gas prices, college loans and home mortgages.
Among the highlights: lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% (the biggest tax cut in the plan); elimination of the alternative minimum tax; doubling the personal exemption for dependents from $3,500 to $7,000; making wealthier Americans pay higher premiums for Medicare prescription drugs; and giving drivers a summer-long holiday from federal gas taxes.
McCain's blueprint drew immediate fire from Democrats, who said it would drive up the deficit, favor the wealthy and reprise the priorities of the two-term Bush presidency.
In an interview Tuesday with the Journal Sentinel, McCain backer and former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina said McCain's plan featured several elements that President Bush never proposed, including the corporate tax cut and a proposal to create a system of training and education programs for displaced workers based on the community college system.
Fiorina said McCain's agenda showed that "he believes there is a role for government" but also that "it should be harder to take money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans."
She said McCain was vowing to "take on concentrations of power that are not accountable...whether those are government concentrations of power or corporate concentrations of power."
McCain's speech included shots at underperforming and reckless executives who reap extravagant payouts.
Asked what the plan offers for the manufacturing sector and its workers, which figure so heavily in Wisconsin's economy, Fiorina cited worker retraining, a proposal to accelerate companies' deductions for investment in equipment and technology, and corporate tax cuts.
"We have the second-highest business tax rate in the world. That's driven jobs overseas, driven companies to invest overseas," she said.
One liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, said in its analysis that the McCain plan underestimated the cost of its tax cuts and offered projected spending cuts that were vague and gimmicky. McCain has stepped back from a vow to balance the budget in a first term.
In a separate response that the Democratic National Committee arranged, Harvard University professor Jeffrey Liebman said the McCain plan was a pronounced effort "to continue and extend failed Bush policies," which he described as tax cuts that aren't paid for, tax cuts that skew to the wealthy, and "open-ended military engagements financed through budget deficits."
Such debates aside, the McCain plan offers some obvious contrasts with the plans of his Democratic rivals, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Democrats want to let the Bush tax cuts for upper-income Americans lapse; McCain wants to extend them. The Democrats do not support McCain's cut in corporate taxes. And there is a vast rhetorical gulf on trade.
Obama and Clinton are blaming economic problems on trade pacts that McCain voted for and that, in some cases, Clinton's husband signed when he was president. McCain has said the trade pacts have been a net positive.
"Overall, the free-trade agreements have been very successful, and I can prove that with economic data on job creation," McCain said in an interview Monday with the Journal Sentinel. But he added, "It has left people behind, and we must give those people and others opportunities."
The event today at Bucyrus International is closed to the public but open to the press and invited participants.
Among those who are to be at the table with McCain are Fiorina, a well-known executive who chairs the national Republican Victory '08 group; General Mills CEO Kendall Powell; A.O. Smith Chairman and CEO Paul Jones; Serigraph Chairman John Torinus; University of Wisconsin-Madison business school Dean Mike Knetter; Jim Haney of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce; and Wisconsin Energy CEO and Chairman Gale Kappa.
In his speech Tuesday, McCain blamed both parties for a spending frenzy in Washington, saying that "we need to make a clean break from the worst excesses of both political parties."
He is vowing to go after spending earmarks and calling for a one-year "pause" in the overall growth of discretionary spending, a pause that would exempt spending on defense and veterans.
Has he submitted the legislation for the tax removal on the gas or is this just more silly headlines.
We need all of this
IN WRITING!!!
The problem with McCain is, even when he supports some conservative issue, he
DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHY IT’S BETTER
than the alternative.
And when he does put it in writing, will you be happy? Answer truthfully please.
Good stuff. Keep it up McCain, and you’ve got me in your corner.
This Keating Five guy cut his political teeth in the United Senate. He can play “Let’s Make a Deal” with Hillary or Barry any day of the week.
I suspect we’ll see the tax repeal ....oh who am I kidding, just a pipe dream.
The joke of it all is that the federal tax is only 18 cents per gallon, so even if he lifted the entire tax it won't mean a damn thing to consumers. There is nothing sleezier or more devious than a career politician, except for maybe a lawyer.
Silly headlines.
Many individual States have introduced a “vacation” from the State taxes on a gallon of gasoline and summer after summer, it never passes.
I don’t see this going anywhere on a Federal level. I can’t find that an actual Bill has been introduced as of yet.
Wisconsin pays the highest taxes on a gallon of gasoline at 32.1 cents per. Our Governor won’t give up that kind of cash, that’s for sure!
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp
McCain is trying to pull a fast one on the American public with this proposal by banking on people’s ignorance of history. he is essentially proposing a tow tiered flat tax. It’s a farce. We had a two tiered flat tax system in this country and it was an abysmal failure. It’s known as the income tax. When it was enacted in 1913 the tax ranged from only 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000. Hardly anyone had to file a tax return because the tax did not apply to the the majority of workers. In 1939, 26 years after the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, only 5% of the population, counting both taxpayers and their dependents, was required to file returns. Today, more than 80% of the population is under the income tax. Another flat tax will only morph into another oppressive multi tiered income tax but will do so much quicker thanks to the thousands of lobbyists that didn’t exist in 1913.
Tinkering with a tax an oppressive 67,000+ page tax code that is beyond repair is not the answer. The income tax needs to be replaced with a national sales tax by enacting The Fair Tax. Fair Tax ping!
I’m afraid that if Carly Fiorina is on his team, it’s a loosing team...
He's on video saying it multiple times. Why is one better than the other?
The problem with McCain is, even when he supports some conservative issue, he DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHY IT’S BETTER than the alternative.
So what? He doesn't need to understand it. He just needs to do it.
Ping to Post #9 link.
Funny, I never thought of Carly Fiorina as a loose woman...
Happy(er), yes.
I’d also like him to articulate to the electorate why these things WORK, and why the dhimmirats’ alternatives do not work.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand the “why” of it.
He needs to articulate (sell) it to the electorate. For that, you need to understand it.
Sure. We had all better just vote Obama, then. Or stay home. Right?
So does McCain still plan to push to pass the McCain Lieberman bill that will strangle fossil fuel production with limits that can only be surpassed by “purchasing” permits? If so, who gets to pay for those “permits”? Should I be happy with one summer of less gas taxes and elect a man who plans to increase the cost of gas and home heating for the consumer in the future?
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