Tuesday, October 14, 2008

McCain unveils new economic stimulus proposal: Tax cut for millionaires.


Thinkprogress:

On Monday, Barack Obama announced “a new economic rescue plan Monday geared toward middle-class voters.” McCain didn’t announce anything, which “caused some head scratching.”

And now, on Tuesday, McCain is unveiling his new proposals, going back to the well of tax cuts for the rich. McCain will announce plans to “cut the capital gains tax on stock profits in half, from 15 percent now on stocks held a year or longer to 7.5 percent — a $10 billion proposal.” The Wonk Room’s James Kvaal noted the impact of cutting capital gains:

Households earning less than $50,000 a year collected a mere 2.5 percent of capital gains in 2005, according to the Tax Policy Center. Families earning more than $1 million a year collected 59 percent of capital gains. Moreover, most middle-class families with capital gains hold their investments in retirement accounts shielded against capital gains taxes.

For a candidate already promising $175 billion tax cut for corporations, including $4 billion for oil companies, handing out a new tax cut for millionaires and calling it a “Pension And Family Security” plan is oddly appropriate.

Update: Greg Sargent notes that McCain advisers are contradicting each other on the question of whether McCain had planned to introduce new economic proposals today.

Update Ambinder: "lower capital gains...... they're not exactly essential to getting the economy going in a year in which people do not have an awful lot of capital gains, although the McCain program calls this measure an incentive to do just that."

Update: Yglesias notes that cutting the capital gains rate is a "lousy stimulus."

Campaign spokesman Bill Burton made the following statement this morning, in response to John McCain's latest economoic proposals:

John McCain's latest gambit is a day late and 101 million middle-class families short. McCain's plan would spend $300 billion to bailout the same irresponsible Wall Street banks that got us into this mess without doing anything to help jumpstart job growth for America's middle class.


His plan continues to provide no tax relief at all to 101 million hardworking families, including 97 percent of senior citizens, and it does nothing to cut taxes for small businesses or give them access to credit. Senator McCain also shows how little he understands the economy by offering lower capital gains rates in a year in which people don’t have an awful lot of capital gains. His trickle-down, ideological recipes won’t strengthen our economy and grow our middle-class, but Barack Obama’s pro-jobs, pro-family economic policies will.

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