Sunday, October 26, 2008

GOP Describes Alleged Perils of a Democratic Win

David Frum argues that Republican money should be focused on the Senate races as the McCain candidacy is a lost cause:

the Senate will have to play the same role after this defeat. That's especially true because of two unique dangers posed by the impending Democratic victory. First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation's financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends -- to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government's position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power -- and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible. Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up -- and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.


Steve Benen suggests Frum has an “overactive imagination”. Steve also notes that McCain has another divided government message that assumes the Democrats get to 60 in the Senate and makes this economic prediction:

McCain said having Democrats in control of the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the Senate under Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, would give Democrats unfettered power. The Democrats are expected to increase their majorities in both houses of Congress on election day. "Senator Obama's tax increase would put even more people out of work," McCain said. "We've seen this before in other countries. It doesn't work. The answer to a strong economy is not higher taxes.


McCain keeps telling middle class voters that Obama plans to raise their taxes, which of course, is a lie. It’s interesting to note that McCain failed to identify those other countries that raised taxes only to see a rise in the unemployment rate. Why don’t we talk about the United States the last time we had a Democratic White House and Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. We did have a tax increase in 1993 and Republicans back then predicted a recession. But it seems the Clinton years witnessed strong economic growth with large increases in employment.

4 comments:

Martin Langeland said...

A possible contrast is the current bush Administration tax cut which resulted in 8 years of weak to very weak economy for 95% of the population leading to the current mess.
--ml

Anonymous said...

My wife and I saw the "divided government" ad this morning.

She looked at me and asked "Who's Nancy Pelosi?"

I don't think the ad will work.

Anonymous said...

Does Obama's tax plan call for any additional taxes on the $250K+ earners separate from merely expiration of the Bush tax cuts ?

If so, wouldn't those tax increases only go into effect for 2010 ? Furthermore, since most of the taxable income in excess of $250K is investment-related income rather than salary, wouldn't the impact of any Obama tax increase really be in mid-2010, which should be after this recession has ended ?

Anonymous said...

To answer your first question, at this point my understanding is that it doesn't, although I do believe that he does want to go after corporations to get them to pay more. As of today, about 50% of all large corps do not pay any tax at all.

Second question, I'm not convinced that most income over $250,000 is mostly investment related. Many self-employed individuals, corp CEOs, and some commission rleated jobs have salaries in excess of 1/4 million. Lastly, this tax adjustment is not designed to aid with any recession. Its designed to get the US, the largest debtor nation in the world, back on track. It will help to pay off our ludicrous debt, help create new jobs and target new infrastructure programs. More importantly, it relaxes the tax burden on the middle-class and creates a fairer tax burden across the board.