Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Breathtaking Lies from McCain About His Own Tax Proposal

Lies from McCain are nothing new, but I was stunned last night to hear McCain tell a boldfaced lie in the debate about the essential feature of his own tax plan:

I've got some news, Sen. Obama, the news is bad. So let's not raise anybody's taxes, my friends, and make it be very clear to you I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy.
This isn't anywhere close to true, even if you look at it while upside down, backwards, squinting, and high on crystal meth--unless maybe McCain is trying to tell us that he is actually opposed to his own tax proposals.

The Tax Policy Center's tables show that under McCain's proposals, taxpayers earning over $1 million would get tax cuts averaging $335,792 in 2012. That's using the proposals McCain lays out in his stump speech, and comparing his proposal to current law.

Even if you ignore what McCain says his proposals are and instead use what his adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin says should be McCain's plan, AND you take the "tax cuts extended baseline," the McCain plan would entail tax cuts averaging $58,632 for those making over $1 million, according to this TPC table.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=806978

just wanted to see comments from economists regarding this...

Unknown said...

I trust the polls more with over 600 economists, 80% of which say Obama is the better man to fix the economy. That combined with the 200 U.S. Diplomats and 61 Nobel Prize Laureates...yeah. I think Obama has it better.

whatscleggcookin said...

This is somewhat off topic, but I couldn't find your email address.

In this WSJ op ed piece:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122342618776613613.html

the author claims this:
His plan would also raise capital income taxes, taxing capital gains and dividends at 20%, compared to a 15% rate under Sen. John McCain's plan. A five percentage-point difference might strike you as small, but it is not. I have calculated that a five percentage-point difference in overall capital income taxation over the long haul is equal to a difference in the nation's capital stock of about 18%. This means a 6% difference in GDP and a 6% difference in the average wage rate. This means that real GDP and the average wage would fall, gradually but persistently declining about 6% after 25 years. That's not quite a Great Depression, but a significant step towards one.

Is this accurate? how can one possibly prove with any certainty that this is true?

Richard H. Serlin said...

I know; this was just another example of the sad state of the media too. Right after the debate I immediately looked at the commentaries and fact checks on TV and in the newspapers thinking this should be right on top given how outrageously false it is, and on a key issue, but I checked several and couldn't find anything. The fact checks lead with things that were far less important and far less inaccurate.

Two of the biggest and most shameful problems with the media -- they are shockingly bad at distinguishing between 1 and 10 and often calling them "equivalent" so as to look "evenhanded", and their priorities are far from being based on what has the greatest impact on the country and world.