McCain offers a bold, pro-market agenda for America (including the Flat Tax!)

The Manchester Union Leader ^ | May 27, 2008 | Deroy Murdock

[2ndDivisionVet]

WHILE AMERICANS focus on the interminable Clinton-Obama celebrity death match, Sen. John McCain is using clear-headed, compellingly crafted speeches to propose surprisingly bold, free-market ideas. With one huge exception, the Arizona Republican advocates more limited, open government as his Democratic rivals promise tax hikes and an even-busier state. Voters should welcome this stark contrast.

On spending, John McCain would rule with a tight fist.

"There will be no more subsidies for special pleaders -- no more corporate welfare -- no more throwing around billions of dollars of the people's money on pet projects, while the people themselves are struggling to afford their homes, groceries, and gas," McCain said April 15 in Pittsburgh. "I will veto every bill with earmarks, until the Congress stops sending bills with earmarks," McCain continued. "I will seek a constitutionally valid line-item veto to end the practice once and for all." More impressive, McCain said, "We will institute a one-year pause in discretionary spending increases with the necessary exemption of military spending and veterans' benefits."

Such prudence would be a welcome relief from the Bush/GOP Congress years that did for fiscal responsibility what the Playboy Mansion has done for sexual restraint.

McCain's budget discipline would make it easier to cut taxes. He wants to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent. He would slice corporate taxes from 35 to 25 percent. He also would scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependents' exemption from $3,500 to $7,000, "and sign into law a reform agenda to permit the first-year expensing of new equipment and technology."

Most significantly, he would let Americans choose to file taxes under today's rules or volunteer for a simpler, flatter rate, perhaps at 25 or 15 percent.

Regarding health care, McCain warned in Tampa, Fla., on April 29 that his opponents "urge universal coverage, with all the tax increases, new mandates, and government regulation that come along with that idea. But in the end, this will accomplish one thing only. We will replace the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of the current system with the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of a government monopoly."

Instead, McCain believes that "the key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves." He would expand Health Savings Accounts, and more dramatically, offer a tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to help Americans purchase their own coverage, even across state lines. McCain added, "It would be yours and your family's health-care plan, and yours to keep."

McCain also calls for reining in the misguided, multi-trillion-dollar Medicare drug plan.

"People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet don't need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers," McCain observed. "This reform alone will save billions of dollars that could be returned to taxpayers or put to better use."

There is a cautionary note among these encouraging signs: John McCain has beer-bonged the Kool-Aid on global warming.

"We need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring," McCain said May 12 at a Portland, Ore., wind-power research facility.

He desires "a cap-and-trade system to change the dynamic of our energy economy." His specific goal is to reduce CO2 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Former Virginia state climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels estimated in the May 16 Washington Times that this would lower per-capita emissions "to 19th Century levels."

Before relegating America's mid-21st Century economy to the norms of the Grover Cleveland era, McCain should heed the expanding caucus of experts who believe so-called "global warming" is exaggerated, if it even exists.

On May 19, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released a petition signed by 31,072 Americans scientists, including 9,021 Ph.D.s. They reject the idea that CO2 is boiling Earth. So much for climate science being "settled."

One hopes McCain will listen on this issue. Just as he recently has warmed to tax cuts, perhaps he will cool on "global warming."

Nonetheless, McCain will remain a mixed bag. Sometimes he will annoy the Right. Other times, he boldly will go where no GOP standard bearer has gone since Ronald Reagan. As a wise man said, "John McCain is not perfect. Just perfect enough."

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Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at Deroy.Murdock@gmail.com.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the post. I have cast my last vote for one person because the another person is worse.

Provide me a man worth voting for, or continue on without my vote.

[Man50D]

Most significantly, he would let Americans choose to file taxes under today's rules or volunteer for a simpler, flatter rate, perhaps at 25 or 15 percent.

A flat tax on income is another scam by McCain. He doesn't want people to know a flat tax on income has been tried in the U.S. and was an abysmal failure. The first tax ranged from 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000. People paid only the 1% rate since so few earned more than $500,000 when the income tax was enacted in 1913. At the time less than 5% of the population was covered under the income tax. Today more than 80% of Americans are covered by the income tax. McCain's farce of a flat tax will only evolve back into another multi tiered, incomprehensible, oppressive tax code we have today only it will happen faster thanks to the thousands of lobbyists that didn't exist in 1913.

McCain's dog and pony show is mere tinkering with a tax code that is beyond repair. It needs to be replaced with a consumption tax via The Fair Tax Act of 2007. McCain will eventually have to change his position on a flat tax on income as the Fair Tacx grassroots momentum continues to grow. Fair Tax ping!

[maine-iac7]

John, when hell freezes over, my vote will still be clutched in my hands so tight you’ll have to take a chain saw to get it out

Right - clinton and obama will be so much better.....

no shortage of ignorance

[DoughtyOne]

Is your calling me names just another McCain attempt to get my vote?

Tell you what, I'd rather be ignorant and hold my vote back from McCain, than be the brightest guy around and not know why to.

[maine-iac7]

We can believe he'll go after the pork-barrelers - he has NEVER put in for ONE pork barrel pot.

I wonder if there's anyone else in DC with THAT record. If he stops them cold, a lot more bills will pass quicker as they won't be stuffed with pork that has nothing to do with the bill.... That could also get rid of some dimRats, in their home states, who have been buying their votes for decades with pork...

[maine-iac7]

All anybody has to do is see what McCain has done already during his entire duration as a U.S. Senator

He says he'll kill the pork barrels - and 'during his entire duration as a U.S. Senator" = he has NEVER put in a pork barrel grab. Not once. So his words are not empty. How many other senators can you name with that record?

[maine-iac7]

If Bob Barr is on the ticket, then he is a good vote.

A vote for Barr is the same as a vote fo clinton or obama - did anyone not learn anything from the Ross Perot debachle that made bubba president - with only 47% of the vote?

[Turbopilot]

Here’s a comment: I waste enough time doing my taxes already. I have no interest in doing them twice. If this is the best McCain can come up with, we’re in trouble.

[johnthebaptistmoore]

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who would truly make a fine VP choice for McCain, but I would truly prefer it if Coburn was running for POTUS instead.

[maine-iac7]

I also think John Thune would be an excellent pick

http://thune.senate.gov/public/

http://www.johnthune.com/index.php?content=comm04

[Kellis91789]

I don’t like this:

“double the dependents’ exemption from $3,500 to $7,000”

That is just more shifting of tax burdens away from lower incomes and onto higher incomes. Anything that exempts any part of income — with the possible exception of SS income — is a bad idea. It enlarges the pool of voters that pay virtually nothing in taxes because their income all got “exempted” away. That is not my idea of a “Flat Tax”.

To me, a “Flat Tax” is one that has no exemptions, no deductions, and no social engineering favoritism to anybody. Do that, and you can have a single Flat Income Tax rate of 10%. Leave SS and Medicare to fund themselves from the 7.65% existing mandatory contribution scheme.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

On the fiscal side McCain is head and shoulders above the Democrats. So, he has national defense and fiscal restraint going for him where the others have nothing.

[fabian]

scam? Come on, you are discrediting yourself. The lower flat tax will be an improvement and a big cut in taxes for alot of people. Not as good as the fairtax, but at least give him credit for movement in the right direction.

[foxfield]

So now you have to do your taxes twice to see wich way costs less. Great.

Make that three times. Under the present scheme you have to check to see if you come under that Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Tinker, tinker, tinker.

[Man50D]

The lower flat tax will be an improvement and a big cut in taxes for alot of people.

As I explained in my previous post a flat tax on income has been a failure since it has morphed into the income tax code we know and hate today. The same will eventually happen with McCain's scam. You are ignoring history. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

This ignores another obvious point. The Fair is also a flat tax but on consumption instead of income.

[phil_will1]

“Most significantly, he would let Americans choose to file taxes under today’s rules or volunteer for a simpler, flatter rate, perhaps at 25 or 15 percent.”

I’m not sure which flat tax option he favors, but none of them, to my knowledge, are revenue neutral. How does he plan to get a tax reform proposal through congress which is not revenue neutral?

[cowboyway]

Most significantly, he would let Americans choose to file taxes under today's rules or volunteer for a simpler, flatter rate, perhaps at 25 or 15 percent.

Oh no!! 10,000 more pages of federal code...............

[cowboyway]

John, when hell freezes over, my vote will still be clutched in my hands so tight you’ll have to take a chain saw to get it out.

Mine either. Hell, I quit the republican party. Got a letter from the RNC recently asking for more money. The first line in the letter asked me if I had given up.

Talk about audacity. Those spineless bastards asking me if I'd given up when they've been rolling over on every issue for the last two years and then nominate the head RINO for their presidential candidate.

I'm an independent now and will vote for a real conservative if one runs and if not I'm writing in my choice.

[DoughtyOne]

I’ve gone the Independent route too. I wanted to send a message. If their registered voter numbers went down, I hoped it would knock some sense into them. No such luck.

They’ll go down with the lefty ship, rather than listen to us.

It’s pretty clear they aren’t going to honor our founding principles any longer. Why vote for that?

You take care.

[Joya]

Thanks, 2ndDV.

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