Wrong on the Economy: Mccain lies about Obama's tax plan

One of the most common-supply-side talking points is that tax cuts always lead to higher tax revenues. It's not really true (revenues crashed after the 2001 Bush tax cuts) but even if it were, it's misleading: Tax revenues tend to rise over time as a natural result of inflation, rising population, and economic growth. Taken at its face value, the supply-side logic would imply that tax hikes always cause revenue to fall, which is ridiculous on its face, and which explains why supply-siders never mention this silly corrollary to their claim.

Until now! John McCain is a recent convert to supply-side economics and still working on getting the talking points down. Speaking yesterday in South Carolina, the straight talker proclaimed himself a believer in the notion that cutting taxes increases revenue for the government by spurring economic growth. Dont listen to this siren song about cutting taxes, Mr. McCain told supporters gathered here under a tent in a driving rain. Every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues."

What? Every time? Okay, how about we go back and look at the last time taxes were raised -- 1993. It's true that conservatives predicted revenue would fall as a result of the tax hike. (Typical quote: "Higher taxes will shrink the tax base and reduce tax revenues" -- Newt Gingrich.) But it didn't exactly work out that way...this claim is so obviously false it could have been refuted after maybe thirty seconds of research. Didn't the author (Michael Cooper) realize that tax hikes don't always, or even usually, lead to reduced revenue? Does he remember the 1990s? Is he aware that the federal government raised taxes and started collecting dramatically higher revenues during World War II? (Taxes were raised and revenues quintipled.)
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/01/18/mccain-lies-his-h...
But the free-market party of Reagan is dead (thanks to the financial crisis) and the resentment party of Nixon (in the form of the ugly attacks unleashed by McCain and Sarah Palin) may find that its best days are behind it. Where is the party of McCain? The man who survived five and a half years as a Vietnam POW and a thousand political battles is being crushed by a dying elephant.

Sure, the market would likely be melting down McCain's campaign no matter what he did. But he'd have a better chance if he canned the character attacks on Barack Obama. Aside from being offensive and desperate, they don't work with undecided voters. And they're confusing to McCain's own stoked-up partisans, as he found in Minnesota last week, when he told a woman who said she was scared by Obama, because he was "Arab," that she was wrong and his opponent was actually a "decent family man." McCain's own crowd then booed him.

But most voters this year aren't much interested in William Ayers or other distractions. Times are bad and the greedheads are to blame. "They know only the rules of a generation of self seekers," Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his 1933 Inaugural Address, referring to the GOP thinking of the 1920s. "They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish."

Restoration. It's a powerful vision, and one that McCain understood in 2002 when he tried to force the money contributors from their high seats in the Capitol as part of McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform. In those days, McCain built a powerful independent brand in American politics. He recognized that the conservative movement was going off the rails. He voted against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy because they offended his "conscience," and talked with Tom Daschle about sitting with the Democrats in the Senate and with John Kerry about going on the 2004 Democratic ticket.

McCain could not, by himself, wrest control of the Republican Party built by Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, who once loathed McCain but looked plenty happy in St. Paul, Minn. Those gents and the House Republicans who almost drove the economy off the cliff last month got into politics because of their hatred of regulation and taxation, the twin bogeymen of the GOP for three decades. But guess what? In the span of three weeks, those words have taken on a positive connotation (at least as applied to Wall Street). When the tectonic plates of American politics shifted, only one candidate was ready.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/163457

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[EinsteinPlanck]

no no no! you confused obama with bush! I understand. Lots of old conservatives get altimers disease, so you forget whats right.

[EFISHANT]

Hillbillies everywhere are terrified and spreading lies about OBama!

Nobody has kissed more ass in the last year than McSHAME! The guy has sold his soul to appeal to the far right wing nuts in his party!

He voted against tax cuts - now he supports them! The list goes on and on!

The guy has embarrassed himself. It's a pity that a true war heroe has sunk this low!

[ryderc69]

no conservatives took townhalls created teaparty to talk bad and say its a tax hick now the teaparty trys to cliam dems are behind ows when corperations and lobiests are behind all false flag protests

[syedsameeruddin]

ya Mc Kain is a jack ass full of lies to gain votes and to gain his own financial merit from the american people. please vote obama as he has good economic policies. and its really hard for him to get back the american economy on foot after what all the devil bush administration has done to the american economy and people. so i sujest in voting for obama administration.. Than the ass packed with money for Mc kain the "devil lucifier"

[Corsina]

ROFL - Altimers Disease? Is that something you get when you have too many toons in World of Warcraft?

[quornholio]

I don't care if McCain may have lied on this or that little thing. He's not President -- Barack HUSSEIN Obamanation is. And Obama is a dirty filthy TRAITOR!

[AreThereNoMoreNames]

Then how the hell is he going to deal with the deficit he created, which is nearly three times larger than the one Bush created? He can't spend more and tax less, especially when China is threatening to stop loaning us more money.

[snoopboy424]

hey yo he going to take them out you ass next fricken year

[AreThereNoMoreNames]

Great. That tax break isn't going through, so only CEOs and the rich are getting tax breaks. Everyone else is going to be paying more.

He's not pulling out of Iraq, now, is he. In fact, he's getting more involved in the middle east.

He mentions the billions of dollars we've spent in Iraq, yet in his first two months he's spent somewhere around $12.8 trillion. That amount approaches the total GDP for the U.S., and works out to everyone being nearly $45,000 in debt.

[inmyculo]

thanks for destoying this lie