Tax Pandering
TAX PANDERING....From the Washington Post today:
Sen. John McCain yesterday offered sweeping rhetoric about the economic plight of working-class Americans, promising immediate assistance even as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at spurring corporate growth.Now that's a shocking development, isn't it? A Republican presidential candidate prating endlessly about helping the regular guy and then offering up a tax plan that even Donald Trump would be embarrassed to ask for directly. The only thing missing was the usual sad song about some mythical Midwest striver who had to sell the family farm to pay his "death taxes."....Much of what he detailed was a corporate special pleader's dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.
....And McCain's proposed "middle-class tax cut" — a full repeal of the alternative minimum tax — stretched the definition of middle class. Of the 4 million taxpayers paying the AMT, 93 percent earn between $200,000 and $1 million.
But at least someone is noticing the two-face act this time around — though that's mostly because McCain is turning out to be unusually clumsy at this kind of stuff. In an odd way, this almost speaks well for him. The pandering he's doing is so plain and so odious that I suspect he's having a hard time making it sound like he really believes this stuff. George Bush never had that difficulty.