McCain: Dem Tax Increase is "Change"

We knuckle-dragging bitter-end conservative Republicans have been worried about John McCain. And for good reason. He opposed just about every sensible economic policy that President Bush put forward. He opposed the recession-fighting tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Just what planet was he on?

Yes, of course. Beltway, Third Rock from the Sun.

But now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee for president he’s coming home to the logical, epistemological, and moral reality of being a Republican candidate for president.

The reality of being a Republican candidate is that, if Republicans aren’t for tax cuts, then what’s the point of the Republican Party?

So John McCain in his economic policy speech Monday started out by riffing on “change.”

[M]any in Congress think Americans are under-taxed. They speak as if letting you keep your own earnings were an act of charity, and now they have decided you’ve had enough. By allowing many of the current low tax rates to expire, they would impose — overnight — the single largest tax increase since the Second World War. Among supporters of a tax increase are Senators Obama and Clinton. Both promise big "change." And a trillion dollars in new taxes over the next decade would certainly fit that description.

So he’s going to lower the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, extend the Bush tax cuts, eliminate the AMT, and he’s signing onto the alternate flat tax concept that’s been floating around.

What we need is a simpler, a flatter, and a fair tax code. As president, I will propose an alternative tax system. When this reform is enacted, all who wish to file under the current system could still do so. And everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction.

So that’s all right.

But the real long-term job is making a start on dimantling the liberal patronage state. You know what I mean (2008 numbers):

• Pensions: $911.6 billion
  
  
• Health Care: $925.0 billion
  
  
• Education: $848.2 billion
  
  
• Defense: $730.8 billion
  
  
• Welfare: $445.2 billion

Compassion or no compassion, there’s a lot of pure patronage in there and not a lot of money helping people.

But don’t expect John McCain to do much about that.