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
You're not alone. Many others are making the same considerations and asking the same question
Maybe because he's not truly conservative. He is very much in league with Obama on many policies, and his voting record proves his lack of ability to lead and be a respectable and decent human being
This would be a huge change, good luck with a Rat congress. Most people don't realize how businesses can lose money in a year and still pay big tax bills, especially the smaller businesses that are sub chapter S corps.
That very well may be. However, I submit this for consideration:
How much falsehood do you have to add to the truth to make it false. And how much truth to you have to add to a lie to make it true (not a lie anymore).
My point, if you couldn't figure it out, is that McCain may be the lesser of the two evils in the McCain vs. Obama battle, but evil is still evil, no matter to what degree it is. And good is not good until no evil exists within it.
“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.”
I agree. My post may have rambled a bit but that was part of my point. These people are out of control but if Government steps in any more that they already have throughout the years then we become Socialist really fast.
That is why I stressed morality. I know that the “robber barrons” of old acted like tyrants too but we somehow need to tame this out of control situation. Maybe we should let the free market allow the companies to fall under their own mismanagement and then the free market will let the people who see the right way replace them with their own, better run companies.
That's what I thought you might say.
Geez. Can we stop with the all-or-nothing for one second and tell McCain what needs to be done? No one had a problem telling W what to do.
Hey, if you missed it in the debate and the ensuing thread, don’t ask me to do your dirty work. You’re the one challenging so if you care enough, go find out for yourself.
I would love to see that quote. No one has ever regulated Wall Street, it has a life of it's own.
We’re getting socialist. As pro-socialist policies go, requiring public corporations to have shareholders pass on executive compensation is pretty benign. I’m much more worried about national healthcare and national casualty insurance. Also efforts to regulate oil.
They do now. Any shareholder can stand up at the annual meeting when the moderator says, is there any new business, and bring up an article for vote, which can include corporate exec pay.
Likewise shareholders can get pay issues on the agenda before the annual meeting (this is why you see stuff on your proxy where it's stated “the board does NOT RECOMMEND voting for this article”)
Charlton Heston did this at an annual meeting for one of the big media companies, played cop-killer rap from a boom box, and raised a stink about morals et al.
Since exec pay is already subject to shareholder approval, what does McCain really want? How would this legislation actually read?
They often times do not though. I am not in favor of the government interfering with the market but you gotta admit that too many boards are padding their own pockets or not watching over their shareholders’ rights and interests. Think the shareholders would agree to fund so many failed a-holes or pay out huge packages? I don’t see how voting on issues would allow companies to function properly though....
You nailed it...
Freepers don’t read the article, just the MSM headline...
Why not just denounce them s “evil corporations” like his “friends” on the Left. What a schmuck.
Have you ever heard the old saying...the better you are the more you get screwed? These guys need to make as much as quickly as possible before they get the axe. Things move quick on the market and Ceo jobs go just as fast. Unless you are an owner as well as a Ceo, you are still an employee. How many people will risk their entire life's income and career on running one company without getting a potential lifetime of pay?
No one will take these jobs if the money is not enormous, be it legal or otherwise.
Anyone who thinks top management is responsible for a company’s profits has never worked as a salesman in the field.
Salesmen are regularly ‘rewarded’ when they have good years and make lots of money under their contracts by having their contracts renegotiated to lower their commissions, quotas are raised to reduce commissions or reducing their territory.
The object of course is to push more money upstream to management—who basically ‘stand behind’ the engines (sales force) that drive sales and profits by complaining about quotas.
Anyone who thinks a CEO is worht hundreds of millions a year for his contribution to profits is simply allowing the idea of free enterprise to become confused with greed.
Stockholders should regulate a reasonable rate of compensation for top management and let the rest of the profits go back to the stockholders as dividends or to the people who make the company go—the field sales forces.
Suidical mentality
MISLEADING HEADLINE ALERT!!!! Read the article. He is not proposing that CEO pay be regulated by the government, only that it receive shareholder approval rather than approval by just the board of directors. This is a meaningless change that is worth it if it buys us lower corporate taxes.
Conservatives who post here know socialism when they see it
we are as the saying goes SO SCREWED in this election and
the aftermath of it..so we prepare for the worst - no debt, slowly pulling out of markets to avoid cap gains taxes-
looking to states which still let citizens keep guns and
property..my suggestion to those conservatives who can is to move to a state where we can have influence (ala hippies invasion and takeover of Vermont) our only hope now lies in making the states we live in a buffer to the NEW WORLD Socialist types in Federal Government..exciting times indeed.
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