McCain vs. Obama on tax cuts

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that the presidential candidates dualed over tax cuts at their respective rallies today;

“At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” the Republican presidential nominee said in a radio address. “Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut. It’s just another government giveaway.”

At an afternoon McCain rally in Woodbridge, Va., a woman yelled out about Obama, “He’s a socialist!”

From St. Louis, Sen. Obama replied that both candidates want to cut taxes. But he said he would cut taxes for working Americans where Sen. McCain would favor corporations and wealthy taxpayers.

“John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare,'” he said.

Earlier this week, I wrote about an exchange on Fox News between Sheppard Smith and Obama’s economic advisor;

When Smith called Goulsby on the “tax cut for 95% of Americans” lie and mentioned that 45% of Americans don’t pay income taxes, Goulsby got defensive and spit out that all working Americans pay payroll taxes (the latest camoflage word for Social Security taxes).

Smith called it a “redistribution of wealth” and Goulsby got defensive again. The rebate wasn’t coming from other tax payers, it was a refund of payroll taxes.

So Smith asked Goulsby if Obama was going to cut payroll taxes and Goulsby answered that a cut in social security taxes would adversely affect the “Social Security Trust Fund” (whatever that is), but that Obama would refund ($500?) to low income workers. So that if their tax balance on April 15th is $0, they’d get a ($500?) check from the IRS, which is supposedly a rebate on their Social Security taxes.

So, it’s not a tax cut, by any standard…it’s giving one group of citizens money that another group of citizens earned. Redistribution of wealth. Confederate Yankee writes that some of what Obama counts as his tax cut is just not ending some of the Bush tax cuts. Henry Louis Gonzalez at Babalu Blog writes;

Obama says he’s only going to raise taxes on people who make $250,000 or more. But he also says he’ll roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top 5 percent. Notice that to be in the top 5% you need an Adjusted Gross Income of $153,542. Now a taxpayer that has an AGI of $150k is doing quite well, but is this person rich? Well that depends. That money goes a lot further in Wyoming than Manhattan.

Obama claims that McCain has redefined tax cuts…but if the definition of tax cuts has changed it’s coming from the Obama camp. A tax cut is keeping more of your own money, not getting someone else’s money.

Obama wants to spend another $185 billion on road projects and extending unemployment benefits instead of giving tax cuts to the people who’ll ultimately create jobs. His bottom-up strategy for the economy is what extended the Depression.

When Franklin Roosevelt became president, unemployment was 25%, on Sept. 1, 1939, the day World War II began, unemployment was at 19%. Six years of the National Recovery Act barely put a dent in unemployment. And that’s what those same tired Democrat policies will do in this century.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Economy, John McCain/Sarah Palin, Politics