The Democrats’ fuzzy math: The $5.7 Trillion Myth by Stephen Moore
The Bear on Jul 14 2008 at 8:28 am | Filed under: Economy, Election 08’
This week John McCain officially released the details of his economic recovery tax plan. The howls of protest from the left were both loud and predictable. The Obama campaign ripped into the McCain plan with the mantra of “tax cuts for the rich,” while leftwing special interest groups claimed that McCain would blow a supersized hole in the budget deficit.
Yes, that bogeyman issue of the budget deficit is back again. That’s the issue that’s never an issue except when Republicans want to cut taxes, in which case deficits are suddenly one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Never mind that on Nancy Pelosi’s watch the budget deficit has more than doubled–to $400 billion–in 18 months. That inconvenient truth hasn’t stopped a barrage of attacks from the media and union-funded groups directed at McCain’s “$5.7 trillion tax cut plan.”
McCain wants to retain the Bush investment tax cuts; repeal the alternative minimum tax; cut the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent, and offer Americans an alternative flat tax (an idea he borrowed from me, by the way). Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich calls the McCain tax cut “the most financially irresponsible plan I’ve seen in years.” And even the newspaper I write for, the Wall Street Journal, joined in the charge of media skepticism with a headline that read: “McCain Tax Cuts Would Bloat Deficit or Take Huge Spending Curbs.”
I’ll get to the specifics of why these criticisms are misleading, but let’s start with a quick
comparison of Senators Obama’s and McCain’s records on fiscal responsibility.
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