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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Three Questions for McCain
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| Parent(s) |
Candidate
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| Contributor | Penguin |
| Last Edited | Penguin Jun 18, 2008 02:14am |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 08:10:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | A week before Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary — in April, back when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were still the big story — John McCain traveled to Pittsburgh to remind everyone how different his economic agenda would be from theirs.
In a speech that day, he said he would abolish the dreaded alternative minimum tax. He said he would also allow companies to write off spending on new equipment more quickly than they now could, effectively reducing their taxes. Most ambitiously, he vowed to set up a simpler income tax system, one that anyone could voluntarily use instead of the current tangle. In the months since then, Mr. McCain has repeated these vows.
Fast forward to last week, when a Washington research group called the Tax Policy Center set out to estimate the budgetary effects of Mr. McCain’s and Mr. Obama’s plans, after having talked with the campaigns about the details. Almost immediately, the center’s report became the yardstick that journalists and bloggers used.
To anyone who has been following the campaign closely, however, there were some strange things in the report’s summary. The alternative minimum tax? Mr. McCain apparently no longer wants to abolish it. The write-off for corporate equipment? It exists for a few years, but then it disappears. The simple new tax system? Gone. |
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