Mccain Dem Tax Increase Is Change - Road to the Middle Class

WE KNUCKLE-DRAGGING bitter-end conservative Republicans have been worried about John McCain. And for good reason. He opposed just about every sensible economic policy that President Bush put forward. He opposed the recession-fighting tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Just what planet was he on?

Yes, of course. Beltway, Third Rock from the Sun.

But now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee for president he’s coming home to the logical, epistemological, and moral reality of being a Republican candidate for president.

The reality of being a Republican candidate is that, if Republicans aren’t for tax cuts, then what’s the point of the Republican Party?

So John McCain in his economic policy speech Monday started out by riffing on “change.”

[M]any in Congress think Americans are under-taxed. They speak as if letting you keep your own earnings were an act of charity, and now they have decided you’ve had enough. By allowing many of the current low tax rates to expire, they would impose — overnight — the single largest tax increase since the Second World War. Among supporters of a tax increase are Senators Obama and Clinton. Both promise big "change." And a trillion dollars in new taxes over the next decade would certainly fit that description.

So he’s going to lower the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, extend the Bush tax cuts, eliminate the AMT, and he’s signing onto the alternate flat tax concept that’s been floating around.

What we need is a simpler, a flatter, and a fair tax code. 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. And everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction.

So that’s all right.

But the real long-term job is making a start on dimantling the liberal patronage state. You know what I mean (2008 numbers):

Pensions: $911.6 billion
Health Care: $925.0 billion
Education: $848.2 billion
Defense: $730.8 billion
Welfare: $445.2 billion

Compassion or no compassion, there’s a lot of pure patronage in there and not a lot of money helping people.

But don’t expect John McCain to do much about that.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0