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
More definition of "Wall St." needed.
What does McCain want "regulated" by the government re: "Wall St."?
Many, many segments of "Wall St." have been regulated by the government for over close to a century.....thank God. We don't need criminal oil speculators like George Soros and his ilk freely controlling and manipulating "Wall St."
Leni
It was in one of his debates. If you search the debate threads, you’ll see it. Quite a few of us choked when he said it.
I believe he was. Did you read the article?
"And under my reforms, all aspects of a CEO's pay, including any severance arrangements, must be approved by shareholders"
I can't understand why conservatives would support even one more increment of the already stifling regulations on private business.
Corporations are not private businesses, they are public businesses. No one forced these companies to incorporate and sell their stock on the open market. Once they do that, however, they are subject to regulation by the entity which recognizes their corporate status, i.e., the government.
If these companies can't live under the regulations placed upon them by virtue of the corporate status, then they can always reorganize as some non-corporate entity.
Not all, google, MSFT, Proctor and Gamble, GE, Sherwin-Williams on and on and on. they will not want low rent CEO’s. Many will move. The taxation ramifications are mind boggling. Typical McCain stupid idea.
These are excerps from a speech for today. So we will have the quotes later.
Leni
First, it isn’t a charge if he said it. Second, there’s no way I’m going back in those debate threads to look for it! Those things are massive. Have fun!
Leni
In most corporations the majority of voting stock resides in the hands of the Boards and the CEO. Thus, they can vote for anything they want.
I firmly believe that there should be NO regulation or oversight of non-Government corporations by the Government.
Saying that, I do believe there is a dearth of morality within the upper echelons of most corporate structures as the people there are mostly elitists that look down on everybody else, including all their employees, and believe they can raid the company coffers with impunity.
Couple this with the “quick-buck” mentality of the entire country and this allows for the people at the top to just say that it is all for the stockholders (the majority of stock owned by a few at the top).
While the stockholders have a right to see a good increase in their share prices we must also realize that employees are the ones getting the job done and want to have a decent life too. They are our neighbors and friends.
No. This is NOT a Socialist or Communist rant. I am just saying that some morality injected into the entire system would go a long way toward bettering our system, but the extraction of morality, starting in our public schools and extending throughout the education system, is doing great damage to the US and leads to Socialism or Communism. Teaching morality at home does help but should be reinforced in our educational system.
My two cents.
If these companies can't live under the regulations placed upon them by virtue of the corporate status, then they can always reorganize as some non-corporate entity.
That's true. But as long as they are under the jurisdiction of the United States, and as long as they sell stock in the United States to American Citizens, they have to abide by certain regulations. Corporations exist at the good pleasure of the sovereign power under which they are incorporated.
If CEO compensation packages are so important to a corporation that they are willing to disband their companies and move to a foreign country, then I don't want them here in the first place.
they have to abide by certain regulations
Obviously. That says nothing about the wisdom of these regulation. In my opinion we are regulating corporations to death.
It is actually small businesses that are regulated to death. Large corporations die because of mismanagement. Large corporations by and large favor a lot of regulations because it inhibits the ability of the smaller companies to compete.
There will be a tremendous run on clothes pins in early November, particularly in the "red" states. Wal-Mart and other retailers, please take notice.
I wasn’t attacking you Leni, only pointing out that it is a PR concerning a speech to be given today.
“In most corporations the majority of voting stock resides in the hands of the Boards and the CEO. Thus, they can vote for anything they want.”
I would not say that they typically own a majority, at least not in public corporations, though they do generally own a lot, and that often is enough to get things done that most stockholders would not support. They should be disqualified from voting their stock when they are voting on their own salary. That is a clear conflict of interest, which is the thing that is causing all this to begin with.
“I firmly believe that there should be NO regulation or oversight of non-Government corporations by the Government.”
I agree with the no regulation idea, in general. However, when it comes to corporate governance, you’ve got to remember that the statutes already regulate this, and always have regulated this. Corporations are a creature of statute. There would not even be such a thing as a corporation but for the fact that government passed laws permitting their creation. There are already laws on the books specifying how a corporation is to be governed. When it comes to public corporations, they are even more intrusive, the idea being that when you buy stock on a stock exchange, you ought to be able to count on certain things without having to order and read copies of their organizational documents. There is a certain standardization in how public companies are governed. Unfortunately, it does not generally extend to how management’s salary is determined. There is currently a shareholder movement growing across the nation that requires corporate structures to have shareholder approval of executive compensation, and for good reason.
Let’s face it, you can’t very easily justify the salaries that some of these guys get paid based on their performance. We’ve got companies on the verge of bankruptcy where the management is getting paid a bundle. Companies that haven’t made a profit in years, and yet the CEO gets paid hundreds of millions of dollars for driving the company into the ground.
The only way to explain that situation is that the shareholders don’t have enough control. Sprint is a good example. If the shareholders truly had control, they’d boot everyone in management out in a second. They certainly would not be paying them what they are getting paid. These financial institutions that are in trouble are another example.
YOU were the one making the charge without sourcing the actual statement which would show he actually said it.
"Second, there's no way I'm going back in those debate threads to look for it! Those things are massive. Have fun!"
Is this SNL? YOU were the one who brought up the "fact" he said what you said he said in some debate or other......not I. But you refuse to source it. You want ME to have all the fun of researching YOUR charge. I respectfully decline your generous offer.
Usually, on this board, freepers have the source, the facts, the direct quote, the context and a link if possible at the ready BEFORE they post generalized or nebulous charges. We demand it when some lib does it against one of our conservative icons.....and for me, at least, these standards should work both ways.
Leni
Leni
Very true. But I don’t know how you help the situation by slapping on yet another regulation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.