John McCain shocked conservatives last week with his $300 billion dollar plan to help homeowners, but outrage from the right made that disappear quickly. Now with the campaign falling apart, he is going back to the tried and definitely untrue conservative path of cutting more taxes for the rich via capital gains tax cuts. Will it be enough to appease his RNC overlords (who just redirected campaign funds to the Senate slate) and the GOP faithful?
From ThinkProgress:
Now that is the Republican I know! Cutting taxes for those that already have tons of money and nothing for those that don't is the only thing they know on the right. Of course when it comes to talking to the public about it, his spokeswoman hasn't a clue about how much it'll cost the rest of us. The confusion for Nancy has to be hard to handle, since her man continues to flip and flop about nearly every issue including economics.On Monday, Barack Obama announced “a new economic rescue plan Monday geared toward middle-class voters.” McCain didn’t announce anything, which “caused some head scratching.”
And now, on Tuesday, McCain is unveiling his new proposals, going back to the well of tax cuts for the rich. McCain will announce plans to “cut the capital gains tax on stock profits in half, from 15 percent now on stocks held a year or longer to 7.5 percent — a $10 billion proposal.” The Wonk Room’s James Kvaal noted the impact of cutting capital gains:
Households earning less than $50,000 a year collected a mere 2.5 percent of capital gains in 2005, according to the Tax Policy Center. Families earning more than $1 million a year collected 59 percent of capital gains. Moreover, most middle-class families with capital gains hold their investments in retirement accounts shielded against capital gains taxes.
For a candidate already promising $175 billion tax cut for corporations, including $4 billion for oil companies, handing out a new tax cut for millionaires and calling it a “Pension And Family Security” plan is oddly appropriate.
|