On the campaign trail, Sen. Barack Obama bashes President Bush for “reckless” economic policies that are “mortgaging our childrens future on a mountain of debt.” But the Democratic presidential candidate has adopted a key component of Bushs fiscal policy: A novel bookkeeping method that guarantees that the $9.5 trillion national debt will get much bigger.
Link:washingtonpost.com.
Obama made headlines June 13 when he called for a Social Security payroll tax on incomes above $250,000 a year. Currently, the tax is levied only on the first $102,000 of each worker’s income. That covers the entire salary of most Americans.
Obama would not apply the Social Security tax to annual incomes between $102,000 and [...]
Still, on Tuesday, he criticized his rival for proposing a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. The attack was complicated by McCain’s earlier statement that he would consider the same thing.
On Thursday, the Arizona senator flew to Iowa, a likely battleground state in the fall, where he expressed sympathy with victims of severe flooding [...]
Democrat Barack Obama told voters Saturday he would push an aggressive economic agenda as president: cutting taxes for the middle class, raising taxes on the wealthy, pouring money into “green energy” and requiring employers to set up retirement saving plans for their workers.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, a key battleground in the fall campaign, Obama said he [...]
The payroll tax is now applied to all income up to $102,000 a year, which covers the entire amount for most Americans. Under Obama’s plan, the tax would not apply to incomes between that amount and $250,000. But all annual income above the quarter-million-dollar amount would be taxed under his plan.
Link:Breitbart.com
An analysis of both campaigns proposals by the Washington-based, nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that for people with incomes between $66,354 and $111,645, Obama’s proposals would cut their taxes by more than $1000, compared to around $300 under McCain’s plan. But for Americans with incomes above $603,402, Obama would raise their taxes dramatically, by more [...]
Barack Obama on Monday described John McCain’s proposed tax cuts as “outrageous” and said they would amount to $5,700bn over the next decade – more than double the cost of George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
Link:FT.com
