Posted on 06/10/2008 5:17:40 AM PDT by BloodOrFreedom
Republican White House candidate John McCain will promise on Tuesday to lower corporate tax rates if he wins the U.S. presidency and ease the tax burden on middle-class workers to help revive the faltering economy.
The Arizona senator, who has wrapped up his party's presidential nomination, also would propose a simpler, alternative tax system and insist that chief executives' pay and severance packages have shareholder approval.
"No matter which of us wins in November, there will be change in Washington. The question is what kind of change?" McCain will tell a conference for small businesses, referring to his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
"Will we enact the single largest tax increase since the Second World War as my opponent proposes, or will we keep taxes low for families and employers?" he will say, according to excerpts released before his speech.
McCain will pledge to act quickly to lower corporate taxes from "the second highest in the world to one on par with our trading partners to keep businesses and jobs in this country."
He will propose a law to allow companies to expense new equipment and technology in their first year.
He supports keeping capital gains taxes low, doubling a tax exemption for children, and phasing out the "alternative minimum tax" which he said would save some 25 million middle-class families up to $2,000 in a year.
On Monday Obama drew a sharp contrast with McCain, his opponent in the November election, accusing him of wanting to widen President George W. Bush's tax cuts and plunge the United States deeper into debt.
He charged that McCain's support for extending Bush's tax cuts would allow $2 trillion in corporate tax breaks.
U.S. taxes were too complicated overhaul, McCain will say in his speech, in which he will argue for an alternative system.
"As president, I will propose an alternative tax system. When this reform is enacted, all who wish to file under the current system could still do so," he will say.
"Everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction."
McCain criticizes Obama for wanting to increase dividend and capital gains taxes and aiming to raise the minimum wage and link it to an index.
But he also takes aim at top corporate executives with big salaries and excessive severance packages.
"Americans are right to be offended when the extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEOs ... bear no relation to the success of the company or the wishes of shareholders," he will say, adding that some of those chief executives helped bring on the country's housing crisis and market troubles.
"If I am elected president, I intend to see that wrongdoing of this kind is called to account by federal prosecutors. And under my reforms, all aspects of a CEO's pay, including any severance arrangements, must be approved by shareholders," he will say. (Editing by Chris Wilson
That will send all big US companies packing. Dubai is the current favorite “home” country.
The corporation is a creation of the government, and is not mentioned in the Constitution.
The corporation has no right to exist at all, and may be regulated by a simple majority vote in the legistlature. The government can allow or prohibit just about anything.
Great election choices this hear - RINO and radical leftist.
They already left us a long time ago my Friend...
Where do you think the leftists invest?
I have no problem with your comment with one exception. Asking the government to get involved in this in the slightest is absolutely wrong and unconstitutional. This is a slippery slope we do not want to be on.
Populism is VERY dangerous and in the end, takes away freedom. Caution my friend.
No matter which one wins, there will be more change in Washington, DC than in our pockets.
When you are a shareholder, you do have the right to be offended by what the CEO is earning. Especially when your stock starts to dive while your CEO and board of directors is raiding the company.
All this regulation would do is to provide the owners of the company with a right to approve or disapprove of the compensation package of the CEO.
Actually I am puzzled as to why there is so much opposition to this idea.
100% agree with you.
Sure would save a lot of money.
Because it's a drop in the bucket to our problems and it will only serve as a minuscule pacifier to a few and run the pay-offs further underground.
The government is already involved, though. Corporations are creatures of state law. It’s the state laws which specify how they are to be governed. A better argument is that it should not be done at the federal level. The problem we’ve got is that certain states have developed a strategy of attracting corporations to their states by offering management an opportunity to have greater control over the governance of the corporation than the shareholders have.
That kind of competition between states is a bad thing. Capitalism is based on owner control. Management control over matters affecting management’s own interest is a big problem in this country. Take for instance Yahoo. Jerry Yang really screwed over his shareholders, and they have very little recourse. Even Icahn doesn’t have enough power to give Yang the boot.
You think being a crooked politician is easy?
It takes years of learning to be able to say something , and have it mean all things to all people.
The certainty of this election is that McCain is a leftist moron, and Obama is a marxist socialist (communist?) stooge.
I'll go for the commy to hasten the revolution.
If I read the article correctly, any "regulation" would be done by shareholders. I swear that some freepers can't read and then get swept up in the emotion of their misreading and the posted comments take off from there.
McCain knows perfectly well that neither he nor the Congress alone or in tandem can dictate salaries or force shareholders to set salaries and benefits for employees.....in any private corporation or business.
He's employing the traditional political strategery that all candidates do...i.e., in this case, riding a wave of popular revulsion at thieving, conniving CEOs of today. It's a campaign tactic and a bully pulpit sort of thing.
If McCain has stated ANYWHERE that Congress should pass legislation, direct or indirect, that mandates what the income of CEOs or janitors should be, please point them out to me, or forever hold your peace.
No, I'm not a McCaniac. I was one of the original FRedheads on this board.....and still am.
P.S....never, ever trust Reuters.
Leni
Ah, McCain also said the ‘regulate’ word during the debates when he said he would regulate Wall Street.
McCain using the German Socialist model of the 1930’s to Nationalize private business interests in America.
Screw John McCain.
Perhaps McCain / Feingold? Afterall the SCOTUS upheld it, so it must be constitutional.
If it is the practice of corporate big-whigs to make payoffs underground, then it is the duty of the SEC to make whatever regulations are necessary to prevent such robbery. Your response is a non-sequitur. Why should the shareholders not have a say in the compensation of the CEO?
Oops my bad. very misleading headline.
If elected and he actally keeps his word this would be a good thing.
However, his Cap and Trade crap coupled with his amnesty BS would cause a large increase in taxes and family expenses.
So IMHO those are two issues he needs to rethink.
I guess this is the wooing we heard about yesterday towards Conservatives.
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