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What Is McCain's Economic Agenda?
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Candidate
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Mar 18, 2008 08:49pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| News Date | Tuesday, March 18, 2008 02:45:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Given his predilection to follow the George W. Bush agenda, some critics have labeled him "McSame," attempting a guilt-by-association strategy. There's a lot to be said for that strategy. His voting record reveals him to share Bush’s deregulatory zeal, but I don't think it's that simple.
Perhaps one shouldn't expect candidates' numbers to add up. Tally up Clinton and Obama's expenditures on health care and tax cuts and you will find that they both spend more than they raise. But McCain's numbers are out of whack by orders of magnitude beyond those of either Democratic candidate.
Here's the gist of it: Despite his earlier opposition, he now wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Price tag: more than $2 trillion over 10 years. He wants to repeal the alternative minimum tax. Price tag: "up to $2 trillion" according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). He wants to keep the war going ad infinitum, at a cost of between $100 billion and $150 billion per year, according to CBO estimates.
Then there is his health-care plan, which ends the employer tax exemption for the cost of covering employees, and uses the proceeds to subsidize the purchase of health coverage in the private market. The costly part has to do with the poor, the old, and the sick. As health economist Jon Gruber noted, "his plan will require huge subsidies he's not talking about."
Oh, and did I mention he wants to cut the corporate tax rate too, from 35 percent to 25 percent, and allow businesses to fully write off capital investments as soon as they make them?
Bob Greenstein, the director of the CBPP, is not prone to hyperbole. But he called McCain's program "one of the most fiscally irresponsible plans we've seen by a presidential candidate in a long time." According to Len Burman of the Brookings Institution's Tax Policy Center, McCain's tax cuts would shrink federal revenues by 25 percent over 10 years, at which point they would account for about 15 percent of GDP, compared to 19 percent last year. |
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