The choice in this election is clear -- a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for the people. A vote for John McCain is a vote for special rights for corporations. In John McCain's twisted worldview, he would support government by the corporation for the corporation. Meanwhile, back in the real world, our country was set up to be a government by the people and for the people. And here are the graphic consequences of antitax extremism:
Back in the late 1800's, the same Supreme Court that gave us Plessy vs. Ferguson also created the idea of corporate personhood. Ever since that time, the government has given more and more special rights to corporations so that they could steal from us with impunity. And ever since then, there are plenty who would steal our jobs, our wages, our health insurance, and our rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.
Ever since Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex, our defense spending has skyrocketed, dwarfing the spending on other things. The combination of corporate welfare programs and the furtherance of the Military Industrial Complex was continued by Ronald Reagan and then by George Bush, who created the largest corporate welfare program in US history with his trillion dollar tax cut for the rich in 2001. Overnight, our country turned from a nation of record surpluses to a nation of record deficits. In addition, the right-wing entitlement mentality has taken over the government, creating a legion of tax cheats who will not pay their fair share of taxes and accounting for most of the budget deficit that we face today.
Now, John McCain wants to propose a record round of tax cuts; he would double the size of the Bush tax cuts of 2001. This, after he opposed the tax cuts in 2001. At one time, John McCain was a man of principle, not afraid to speak his mind whether he was right or wrong. But now, he has sacrificed his principles on the altar of ambition and is willing to say or propose anything to get elected. Ronald Reagan began the Republican mentality of robbing from the middle class to give special rights to corporations. John McCain would bring these plans to full fruition. Whereas Barack Obama would create a $1,000 refundable tax credit to the middle class and thus pump money into the economy, John McCain would double the size of Bush's tax cuts and increase the deficit by $2 trillion over a period of ten years.
John McCain used to say that the Bush tax cuts would only benefit the rich. But now, he would create a corporate welfare plan that is even more regressive than Bush's plan. The bottom 60% of the taxpayers get 4% of the benefit while the bottom 80% only get 9%. The top 1% of the income earners would get 58% of the benefits. That would make the John McCain 25 Year Rebuilding Plan the biggest corporate welfare scheme in US history. What it would do is create a legalized theft system where unscrupulous CEO's could rob the company of the money, make off with millions of dollars worth of perks and benefits, and get rewarded for their work. In other words, John McCain would be creating a system that would reward wealth instead of work.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Barack Obama would follow the same sort of policies that most American presidents have followed besides Reagan and Bush II. When you are in the red, you either have to raise money or cut expenses. Bush's own father raised taxes because he recognized that there was no other way to bring the deficit under control. Clinton did as well; not only that, Vice President Al Gore put together a plan that made government a lot more efficient to operate. Barack Obama would raise taxes for the people who could afford to pay it while leveling the playing field by giving some back to the middle class. He would raise taxes for people making $250,000 or more while cutting taxes for the middle class.
While John McCain is touting his 25 Year Rebuilding Plan, Barack Obama would create a society which would reward work and ideas. He would ensure that only 2% of individual tax filers who report small business income would fall into the top two marginal rates. He would exempt small businesses and start-ups from the Capital Gains tax. He would also eliminate taxes on seniors making $50,000 or less per year; that would create a boost of $1,400 to 7 million seniors. That would mean a lot for seniors on fixed incomes who have to choose between paying the rent and paying the pharmacist. He would also reward work in another way, by creating a $4,000 college tax credit for the middle class as well.
Another aspect of the John McCain 25 Year Rebuilding Plan involves the creation of tax havens. This corporate welfare program on McCain's part would allow corporations to obtain negative tax rates, allowing them to reduce taxes on other income. Not only is that a corporate welfare program involving hundreds of billions of dollars, it would reward people who became corporations in order to avoid paying taxes. And John McCain would permanently repeal the Estate Tax while Barack Obama would set it at 45% with a $7 million exemption. This, after John McCain opposed the repeal of the Estate Tax on several occasions before.
John McCain says that he wants to make it simpler to file taxes for people. But the fact of the matter is that the John McCain 25 Year Rebuilding Plan does not account for how he would pay for that. By contrast, the Democratic Congress restored Pay as you Go as one of its first acts, and Barack Obama would implement that as part of his new administration.
Other corporate welfare plans proposed by John McCain involve health insurance. Instead of creating a two-tired system that would drive down the cost of health insurance through competition, the John McCain 25 Year Rebuilding Plan would allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. What that would do is that it would penalize states that tried to protect consumers with rate and premium caps while rewarding states with weak insurance laws. That would create wild price swings and make doing business much less predictable. That means that many small businesses would simply not offer insurance or drop their current plans because they could not predict what they are going to pay. This would also force millions of old and unhealthy workers to buy their own insurance at prohibitive costs or not buy it at all. John McCain would provide tax credits to people to purchase health insurance; however, that would only pay for half of what people pay for health insurance.
John McCain, of course, loves to talk about how he is really a maverick and reformer. But the fact of the matter is that his proposal to eliminate all earmarks would only save $18.3 billion at best. His claim that he can save $100 billion worth of earmarks has been called by his own allies in the media as "largely fantasy." And John McCain operates under a cloud of secrecy; he refuses to say what projects he would cut, how he would prioritize them, or what kind of process would be used. That is a corruption scandal of the size of Abramoff waiting to happen; John McCain's people could tell one group of people that they would not get any money because they were cutting waste out of the government. Then, they could turn around and give all the earmarks to the people with all the connections. It would be Jack Abramoff all over again. And his own Republican allies in the Wall Street Journal note that in the John McCain 25 Year Rebuilding Plan, his plan to eliminate earmarks would not nearly offset the lost revenue from his tax cuts and corporate welfare programs.
