I know this subject is just a little complicated; the explanation doesn't fit on a bumper-sticker, but I'd still love to see the Obama campaign use this as a cudgel. Tell the tens of millions of Americans who have no health insurance that McCain will continue to leave them behind, and tell the tens of millions of Americans who rely on employer-based coverage that McCain wants to tax their benefits.

McCain's latest ad is one big lie about tax increases. But under the circumstances, the McCain gang is leading with their chin. Obama is proposing a bigger middle-class tax cut than McCain, and McCain is proposing a tax increase on tens of millions of Americans who rely on employer-based healthcare.

The people who continue to back this man need to understand just how radical his proposals truly are. McCain isn't just as bad as Bush, he's much, much worse!

Well, far be it for me to criticize an esteemed publication like The Carpetbagger Report. But are we to believe that McCain's plan would raise taxes by $360 billion per year? And nobody else noticed?

Spare me.

The information originally came out of the Wall Street Journal if you'd bother to read Wrongiswrong again.

Talk about damning the information based on where it was found. Typical, bigoted wingnut reaction. No counter argument, just instant dismissal because the reichwing didn't say it first.

Maybe you've heard of that leftist rag, The Wall Street Journal....

Tony,

Your point is well-taken, but your rabid response is unbecoming of the DR on a Friday night.

Sen. McCain's plan will count the health care you get from your employer as if it were taxable cash income. Even after accounting for Sen. McCain's proposed health-care tax credits, this plan would eventually leave tens of millions of middle-class families paying higher taxes. In addition, as the Congressional Budget Office has shown, this kind of plan would push people into higher tax brackets and increase the taxes people pay as their compensation rises, raising marginal tax rates by even more than if we let the entire Bush tax-cut plan expire tomorrow.

Wow, I guess that's too hard for RIR to comprehend. McCain wants to tax healthcare benefits provided by employers to their workers as INCOME. This can push some into higher tax brackets because on paper their incomes would rise, hence they pay more tax. The CBO says that this would raise marginal tax rates even higher than allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. But such a plan falls disproportionately on the lesser paid workers because this additional paper income comprises a greater percentage of their compensation than it would higher paid workers, thus affecting their tax rates more greatly than those higher paid workers.

But since RIR doesn't know about it, and he didn't find out about it from an officially approved rightwing propagandist, it MUST BE false. Reichwing denial 101.

My guess is he won't be reading it tonight Jeff, and I find it lazy in the extreme to damn the messenger without even addressing the topic, nor noticing its original source spelled out in plain English. Its lazy if liberals do it too and it detracts from actually discussing either the merits or drawbacks of the topic, deflecting to the inane.

Make a knee-jerk response, expect one right back at you with a boot full of facts following right back at your behind.

mccain is a liar
and this proves his lies once again.

And for clarification sake, I used the term "bigoted" to mean someone unwilling to even entertain other ideas than the ones they already have. I was NOT using it as a racial or bias term in any sense whatsoever other than on the topic itself.

I find it lazy in the extreme to damn the messenger without even addressing the topic,

Agreed, Tony.

Sadly, it happens far too often in these parts, on both sides of the aisle.

I used the term "bigoted" to mean someone unwilling to even entertain other ideas than the ones they already have. I was NOT using it as a racial or bias term in any sense whatsoever other than on the topic itself.

Understood.

Tony,

With a couple of qualifiers, here is how I predict this election shaking out:

McCain nets more crossover and independent votes than Obama.

Obama smokes McCain in turning out the base.

Overall, I foresee Obama winning by an identical margin that Bush defeated Kerry by both in terms of popular vote and electoral votes.

Here are my qualifiers:

1. This is a gut-prediction. I am paying little attention to current poll numbers as they don't mean much given how much time still remains.

2. My prediction is predicated on things progressing similarly to how things have progressed thus far. What I mean is no x-factors. A monumental event, such as 'getting' Bin Laden or the surfacing of a 'Whitey tape' could certainly throw a monkey-wrench into this.

I agree with your second point, but not your first. Obama will win the independents by a substantial margin because those are the people who won't buy into the smearing of Barack and who will also notice the similarity between McCain and Bush on their imperialistic foreign policy. The bulk of Americans are fed up with foreign entanglements which we start ourselves. I see Georgia as just another in a long line of proxy skirmishes. I'm getting ready to post a thread by Pat Buchanan on this very topic. See you there.

Obama will win the independents by a substantial margin because those are the people who won't buy into the smearing of Barack and who will also notice the similarity between McCain and Bush on their imperialistic foreign policy.

I understand your point regarding McCain's similar tack in regards to foreign policy with Bush. That said, I view this one more broadly. I DO think that in this more narrow regard, Obama will net positive in regards to more singularly-issued indies and moderates on both sides. Let's chunk it up though. McCain is more of a moderate than Obama. He's taken far more liberal stances than Obama has taken conservative stances. At the end of the day, I feel McCain has more draw at the middle, but he fights 2 uphill battles:

1. He is proving incapable of motivating the conservative base to vote for him.

2. The pendulum - 20 of the last 28 years we've had a Republican occupying the White House. If all options were equal, no chance a Republican would win this election.

And McCain isn't viewed as a strong Republican by the base.

Jeff, I see it day after day, not so much here, but throughout other discussions. Many dyed-in-the-wool Republicans are voting for Obama because they feel that the Bush/Cheney/now McCain Axis needs to be purged from the Party. Real Republicans don't countenance lawbreaking and Constitutional abdication in the name of Party. They don't believe that lying, cheating and stealing are virtues of a strong party organization. They don't feel elections should be decided by smears and personal attacks unbecoming of civilized society. And most of all they don't believe our civil liberties should be sacrificed for the appearance of security.

People know Gitmo is wrong. They know we torture people and violate all the laws we claim are so precious. We know that those elected to serve us have done just that: they've carved up this nation into faction against faction, fiction versus the truth and served us up for international scorn and ridicule due to our abject hypocrisies. This is not the nation we promised to our children and these are not the people with whom we can trust their words, deeds or actions to be just.

It is worse than the norm. No one is perfect and all have major faults, but this is still different. The people know it, feel it and reflect it. There is a reason Bush's popularity hovers around the freezing temperature. McCain doesn't offer promise, he offers continuation of the same just under new management. Yet he hasn't shown the competence of being able to handle a campaign, much less a White House with disparate staff. I think Americans see a once good man now flailing at the wind trying to recapture something he never really truly was, if you believe what he projects today.

He is yet another child of privilege who thinks he's owed the Oval Office merely because finally its his turn in line. I truly think a strong majority of Americans feel differently and understand that we have the opportunity to set a new course and do what we've always done better than most everyone else on this planet: strike out and create a better tomorrow upon the promises of today out of the resilience and perseverance of our people working toward common goals, together.

I would note that one thing were seeing here is the basic fatuousness of the conservative monomania about low taxes. What Holtz-Eakin is really trying to get at here is that Holtz-Eakin thinks McCain's proposal is a good proposal that will treat people more fairly. This is debatable and goes to the issue of whether or not it makes sense to reduce the overall scope of public subsidy for health insurance at a time of rising health care costs in order to clear budgetary space for high-income tax cuts. But pretty clearly what's proposed here is a tax increase. Which in a sane world, conservatives would be prepared to admit. But since they've spent the past 30 years trying to convince people that any hint of tax increase for any purpose is the purest evil they're now stuck in a rhetorical trap of their own devising.

It is not income, one cannot sell the benefits of healthcare and no money crossed to the worker.

It is not income, one cannot sell the benefits of healthcare and no money crossed to the worker.

Tell that to McCain, Moneywar. That isn't how he views it in his economic proposals.

It didn't originally come from the Wall Street Journal, it came from an editorial posted on the WSJ online page. There's a difference, eh? One of them is something I read every day; the other--no.

Here's an idea: post the actual McCain plan. Here's another: quote one of the several McCain advisors who "acknowledge". You know--like a journalist does.

Love the "Reichwing". Obama's not even in the White House yet, and you're already so touchy. The douchebaggery from the Obamites is already hysterical. What a bunch of pussies.

It's irrelevant, because he won't be president. But McCain's health care plan would give a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, and $5,000 per family, for health care coverage. Taxpayers would use that money to buy their own plans, or pay doctors out of pocket. Is that mentioned in the carpetbagger report?

Yes it is "douchebag". Why don't you read it and find out for yourself?

Excuse me, that would take away from your propagandizing though, wouldn't it?

And did you notice the CBO commenting on the results if McCain's plan became law and concluded, "It would raise taxes higher than if the Bush tax cuts were immediately expired, except the money would come from the working class, not the wealthier classes benefiting from the Bush plan."

Back to you....

In addition, as the Congressional Budget Office has shown, this kind of plan would push people into higher tax brackets and increase the taxes people pay as their compensation rises, raising marginal tax rates by even more than if we let the entire Bush tax-cut plan expire tomorrow.

Not only higher income taxes, but higher FICA taxes on compensation.

But McCain's health care plan would give a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, and $5,000 per family, for health care coverage

And with family coverage running $12000 per year, just how much of that $5000 credit gonna pay for?

"But McCain's health care plan would give a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, and $5,000 per family"

Which means a family of four making $45,000 a year would get nothing.

It is not income, one cannot sell the benefits of healthcare and no money crossed to the worker.

Posted by moneywar

If my employer loans me money and does not charge me interest on the loan, that foregone interest is compensation to me. Even though no money went to me.

If my employer gives me a car to drive and I use it personally, it is compensation to me even though no money crosses to me.

The income tax code is full of items of "compensation" that does not include money.

with family coverage running $12000 per year, just how much of that $5000 credit gonna pay for?

Just a wild guess here, but 41.6% of it?

the facts are once McCain's plan becomes widely known, the lid will be blown off his "no taxes" pledge since this one clearly targets the middle class already reeling from Bush's largess to the wealthy.

It never ceases to amaze me that the wealthy candidate with 8 homes and a net worth in the tens, if not one hundred + million dollars can claim to be for the little guy and understand his plight. John McCain knows less about being a working class stiff than Paris Hilton on a bender.

It never ceases to amaze me that the wealthy candidate with 8 homes and a net worth in the tens, if not one hundred + million dollars can claim to be for the little guy and understand his plight.

Well, we haven't had a poor candidate in decades, so I guess 'understanding the little guy' really can't be an issue. I understand that Michelle is not the one running, but someone who laments how hard it is to raise a family on $500k/year is a bit out of touch, too. But as I said, they are all -- not just John.

Well, we haven't had a poor candidate in decades, so I guess 'understanding the little guy' really can't be an issue. I understand that Michelle is not the one running, but someone who laments how hard it is to raise a family on $500k/year is a bit out of touch, too. But as I said, they are all -- not just John.

Just how long have the Obama's been making that type of money, Goatman?

Now, contrast that with McCain and how long he's lived the privileged life. Can you see a comparison there worth th mentioning? I certainly can't.

The Obama's continue to be what the GOP likes to call the "middle class". So you have a problem with that definition now that Obama is claiming it?

Tony,

When comparing the bios of the 2 major candidates, I think it goes without saying that Obama is better able to relate with the little guy than is McCain.

Then why is the black son of a single mother who rose by his merits the "presumptuous elitist"?

When comparing the bios of the 2 major candidates, I think it goes without saying that Obama is better able to relate with the little guy than is McCain.

Then would you like to explain why McCain is spending millions trying to paint Obama as the elitist and as being out of touch with Middle America?

Isn't this the definition of being dishonest in trying to gain office under the cover of lies? Is this the type of President we want our children to look up to as a role model?

Now, contrast that with McCain and how long he's lived the privileged life. Can you see a comparison there worth th mentioning?

Sorry -- I've never been one to buy into the "but he's done it longer" argument. Also, someone with a wife who has a problem living on $500k/yr has to have at least a little bit of that rubbed off on himself. Or did it rub off of him onto her?

Goatman-
Given that the McCains routinely run up credit card bills in the hundreds of thousands per month, maybe you've got a tough row to hoe on this subject.

Hey, I haven't seen the Michelle Obama quote in question. Anyone got it?

Then would you like to explain why McCain is spending millions trying to paint Obama as the elitist and as being out of touch with Middle America?

Pertaining to your question, McCain is zeroing in on Obama's 'clining to guns and religion' comment that bit Obama in the ass in Pennsylvania.

Obama is positioned to walk a tight-rope. On the one hand he has to pander to Christians, as he's an actively-practicing Christian himself. On the other hand he has to pander to the virulent, anti-religious base of the Democratic party.

He's in a contradictory position here and as McCain doesn't face the same tightrope, he can focus on Obama's anti-religious pandering as elitism.

Tony,

My last post was a tad jumbled...

More specifically - I perceive the elitist tag to be associated with the anti-religious, and more specifically, the anti-Christian tag.

That is what Team-McCain is trying to exploit with accusations of elitism.

Given that the McCains routinely run up credit card bills in the hundreds of thousands per month,

I knew Cindy did. Did not know about John. I don't get it: Are you saying that in an election only one candidate can be called the 'rich' one? Ok, binary bob -- whatever you say.

"But McCain's health care plan would give a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, and $5,000 per family"

Which means a family of four making $45,000 a year would get nothing.

Posted by Danforth
* * * * *

Wow. That's gotta be the non-sequitur of the day.

No, I believe this was:

Well, far be it for me to criticize an esteemed publication like The Carpetbagger Report. But are we to believe that McCain's plan would raise taxes by $360 billion per year? And nobody else noticed?

Spare me.

Posted by rightisright

Fair enough. McCain's plan is to remove part of the health care deduction, and replace it with a tax CREDIT. If anything, it will COST the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years.

But most Obama voters don't understand the difference between deductions and credits, because they don't pay taxes.

This is a funny campaign. Every time our boy-wonder-next-president opens his mouth on energy policy or health care, it's obvious he's hellbent on higher prices for energy and health care. He'll get them.

But most Obama voters don't understand the difference between deductions and credits, because they don't pay taxes.

Your a boob, RIR if you actually believe the tripe you're swilling. Thanks for denigrating good Americans because they don't view this nation through the selfish, myopic lens that you do.

Obama believes that America can no longer afford to charge the things it needs to pay for today.

Long ago, it was the GOP who preached fiscal responsibility. My how things have changed.

"You're..." excuse me....

Obama believes that America can no longer afford to charge the things it needs to pay for today.

I am supremely confident that they'll be poorer in four years. Government has to take from the private economy to give back to the private economy. It's a shell game. Wealth distribution always favors the politically connected.

Obama believes that America can no longer afford to charge the things it needs to pay for today.

Posted by tonyroma
* * * *

Obama doesn't believe anything, except that he should be president. And if you believe that tripe YOU just posted, then taxes will be heading higher on the middle class from an Obama administration, too.

Which is fine. We're all in the same boat, eh? And we get the leadership we deserve. There aren't enough rich people in America to pay for all the programs Obama's promised us. So tell me: how much more in taxes are you willing to pay, to cover Obama's promises? $5,000 a year? $10,000?

Ante up. Because where the rubber meets the road, you and the rest of Obama's minions are more selfish than I am. It's never occurred to me that my life would be better if only someone would raise taxes on . . . that guy over there. You're the selfish, myopic one, and you're just replacing one shyster with another. Good job, Tony! You're a tool.

Your a boob, RIR if you actually believe the tripe you're swilling. Thanks for denigrating good Americans because they don't view this nation through the selfish, myopic lens that you do.
* * * *

I actually do believe that if you were to go to an Obama rally and take a poll: "how much are you willing to have your taxes go up, to pay for Obama's programs without having to borrow the money?"--you would have a whole new definition of selfish and myopic. When the people stop getting a thrill move up their leg, and are asked to start cutting big checks to Uncle Sam, you'll see.

But it won't happen. Obama's a liar. If he lies to his friends and family, why should YOU be any different? He's a soundbite politician in an age that celebrates style over substance. Thus, your attraction to him.

"you and the rest of Obama's minions are more selfish than I am."

Horseshit. You free-lunch leeches want wars AND tax cuts, an imperial military AND tax cuts. Good roads and public services AND tax cuts. Nothing but a bunch of selfish welfare queens.

Nothing but a bunch of selfish welfare queens.

Considering the source, I find that tirade laughable. It boils down to an argument over who gets the welfare: the corporations or the voters.

Public money being spent on the public isn't welfare, dummy. But if you don't want to contribute, you build your own personal roads and bridges, leech.

No it isn't welfare. But it doesn't stop there. It's gone to such an extreme that the federal government is close to financial breakdown.

No it isn't welfare. But it doesn't stop there. It's gone to such an extreme that the federal government is close to financial breakdown.

Because of shifting money from taxpayers to already wealthy corporations who shirk most of their tax paying responsibilities due to Republican governance.

Tell the entire story Ray, not just the part about the poor people seeking help from their government who places the tax burden inordinately upon the working classes, regardless of the meaningless statistics you like to spew as gospel.

"That's gotta be the non-sequitur of the day."

Why?

McCain's plan won't help Joe Sixpack. Shouldn't people know that?

I read through this and at first, I was rather annoyed but I started running the numbers and it seems like most people would be better off with this new system. Am I off base here?

Lets say that Joe Sixpack has family coverage through work which costs $833/month ($10,000/year). Under McCain's plan, this $10k/year would be taxable. Assuming a 15% tax rate, that accounts to paying an extra $1,500 year in income taxes and around $1000/year in social security/medicare (this is rough, as I don't know the rates) for a total of around an extra $2500/year in taxes.

According to the article, McCain's plan would allow for a *credit* of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. Because the family credit is $5,000, wouldn't most people be better off?

What am I missing here?

I don't necessarily agree with it but I think this is the next logical step, after HSA/HDHPs, to allow for actual market forces to reduce costs in health care.

"Because the family credit is $5,000, wouldn't most people be better off? What am I missing here?"

Tax credits are only useful if you otherwise would owe income taxes. For a family of four making $50,000, that's less than a thousand bucks. The $5,000 "credit" becomes meaningless; that family will only get $1000 worth of credit.

Is the Earned Income Tax Credit the exception when it comes to credits, where people can get more back than they pay in taxes?

Katie,

No. The Child Credit (in some circumstances) and the new First Time Home Buyers credit are both refundable.

Tax credits are only useful if you otherwise would owe income taxes.

Tax credit are also only useful if you can afford to pay for what is being credited.

How many families earning $50,000 is going to spend 1/4 of their pre tax income on health insurance?

CORRECTION: McCain wants to make the $5,000 a refundable credit. I characterized it incorrectly.

"Lets give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice."

Unintended Consequence: Any plan costing less than $5,000 annually will now cost $5,000 annually.