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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
Same message, new messenger
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Jan. 10, 2000 | WASHINGTON --
McCain sounds like President Clinton when he attacks Bush's tax cut plan. "It's fiscally irresponsible to promise a huge tax cut that is based on a surplus that we may not have," he told Bush in Friday night's South Carolina debate. "My tax plan is about the same as yours for middle-income and lower-income Americans. It places a top priority on saving Social Security. It offers a needed tax break for middle-income people. And it begins paying down the national debt." But the oddity goes beyond the fact that McCain is sounding Clintonian in calling for a smaller tax cut, targeted to the middle class and less generous to the rich. Another surprise is that normally, in a GOP presidential primary, it's the front-runner who offers the more modest tax cut proposal, while the challenger tries to shake things up with the root-and-branch tax cutting plan. Steve Forbes tried that against Bob Dole in 1996; and Pat Buchanan bludgeoned then-President George Bush with the tax issue in 1992.
Not this time. George W. Bush has been on record for more than a month with a five-year, $483 billion tax cut plan -- a proposal which is actually very similar to the one congressional Republicans failed to enact last year. Not only will Bush's tax cut be bigger than McCain's, it will also be more heavily weighted toward reductions for high-income earners. Last week McCain played up the merits of his soon-to-be-released plan by attacking Bush for giving tax breaks to wealthy people who don't need them, while failing to shore up Social Security or pay down the debt. "Sixty percent of (Bush's) tax cut goes to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans," McCain said. "That's not the kind of tax relief that I think America needs." When the Bush campaign heard those words, they thought they saw blood in the water -- McCain's. Not only because the Arizona senator seemed to be ceding Bush the tax-cutting mantle, but just as importantly because McCain's criticisms sounded very similar to those that Democrats routinely hurl at Republican tax cut plans -- not usually a winning strategy in a Republican primary. McCain apparently sensed that vulnerability and conspicuously avoided that "tax cuts for the wealthy" line of criticism when he took Bush on in South Carolina. Bush and McCain actually agree on a host of changes, like eliminating the so-called marriage penalty and scaling back the inheritance tax. But the key difference is in how each candidate deals with marginal income tax rates. Most significantly, McCain's plan would not lower the 39.6 percent tax bracket now applied to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans -- the centerpiece of Clinton's 1993 budget bill -- while Bush's would. Rather than decreasing the highest marginal tax rates, McCain's increases the amount of money you can make and still be in the lowest, 15 percent tax bracket. In other words, McCain lowers taxes for middle-income taxpayers. McCain is clearly banking on the idea that, in prosperous times, the appetite for tax cuts is simply not as strong as it once was. McCain staffers say that they intend to fight not on the size of their tax cut but rather on how "responsible" it is -- code for how much of the surplus it will leave for shoring up programs like Social Security and paying down the national debt. Not that McCain has completely sworn off the anti-tax elixir. His campaign is now running ads in New Hampshire calling for a permanent ban on Internet taxes -- something that Bush, like most governors, opposes. McCain is no newcomer to the idea of banning online taxation. But pushing the issue aggressively should allow him to open up a second front in the tax debate, one in which he can beat Bush hands down and nullify whatever advantage Bush gets for his broader plan.
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