When Will The MSM Ask McCain, "What Are The Main Differences In Tax Policy Between You and Bush?"

[Median Democrat]

The MSM heavily focuses on playing up the difference between Obama and McCain. However, we never hear about the differences if any between Obama and McCain versus Bush. This is the real important point that is never discussed. Instead, we hear about Obama and McCain in a vacume. Thus, McCain can actually say something off the wall such as Obama is like Bush, because there is nothing discussing the differences between the candidates and Bush.

In other words, the MSM never calls McCain on the basic lie that his economic proposals are a "change" from Bush. Indeed, McCain's plans expand upon these very same policies that McCain once opposed. McCain says, "I am not President Bush." The answer is, "No, you are worse." McCain's policies are even more extreme and radical than those of Bush, yet the MSM completely fails to compare these plans with those currently in place.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/09/mccain_taxes/

/snip

But according to a respected, independent group of tax-policy experts, McCain’s plan would balloon the deficit and provide a windfall to the wealthy while affording only nominal relief to middle-class taxpayers. McCain has moved toward the Republican base on a handful of issues this campaign season, but his tax plan might actually shift the erstwhile deficit hawk to the right of the current president.

A 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office found a full third of Bush's controversial 2001 and 2003 tax cuts went to the top 1 percent of earners. McCain's tax cuts would be more massive than Bush's, and appear to skew even more to the wealthy. President Bush touted his breaks as providing a boost for the economy, but some tax-policy experts credit Bush's tax policy with shifting the tax burden to the middle class, ballooning budget deficits, and contributing to a widening disparity in personal wealth.

In addition to permanently extending Bush's tax cuts, the major features of McCain's plan include slashing the corporate tax, reducing the estate tax, giving companies a deduction on new equipment and increasing the child tax credit. McCain also wants to extend relief from the gas tax this summer and the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which has been hitting upper-middle-class families with higher tax rates in recent years.

McCain's most sweeping proposal is allowing taxpayers to figure their taxes under an optional alternative system. McCain's campaign hasn't fleshed out the details, but said it will offer a large standard deduction and an increased personal exemption.

To get a sense of McCain's ambition, his tax cuts would cost the federal budget as much as $4 trillion from 2009 through the end of 2018, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That's eight times the size of the Pentagon's base budget this year. Bush's cuts would cost only $1.6 trillion if extended to cover the same ten-year period.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the national co-chair of McCain's campaign, summed up the candidate's current thinking succinctly during a June interview on ABC's "This Week." Host George Stephanopoulos asked Graham how McCain's tax and healthcare policy compared to Bush's.

Stephanopoulos: "John McCain is calling for an extension or maybe even an enhancement of the Bush policies?"

Graham: "Yeah, absolutely."

/snip

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411702_CandidateTaxPlans_summary.pdf

[Median Democrat]

1. Bump - In Light of Today's "Tightening"

I would hope that we really push the MSM to force McCain to explain the differences between his tax policies and those of Bush. Given the precarious state of the economy, isn't it time to rethink those policies, rather than to expand them?