Obama's Tax Proposals
There is an interesting Wall Street Journal piece by two of Obama's people available on the web, giving their account of his tax proposals. The central claim is that Obama would raise taxes somewhat on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, lower taxes somewhat on everyone else, and that the net effect would be a reduction, not an increase, in tax revenues. That is not the impression one gets from the campaign oratory or news stories. The interesting question is whether it is true.
That, I think, depends on two different questions. One is how complete the description in the article is. The article refers to "reforming" corporate taxes but does not go into details. Taxing rich and soulless corporations sounds unobjectionable, but corporations have no consumption of their own to reduce, so corporation taxes ultimately fall on stockholders, employees, customers, and suppliers--human beings all. The more detailed account of Obama's plans that I got by following links from the article proposes to "Broaden the corporate tax base and eliminate special preferences," which might imply an increase in the total.
The second question is whether Obama is actually going to reduce total federal spending, as the article claims. I hope it is true, but I have my doubts. It is easy enough to campaign against waste, earmarks, and the like, as many politicians have done in the past, but hard to do much about them. And the Obama campaign has proposed some pretty expensive new programs, in particular something that sounds like a near universal service version of a domestic peace corps, with college age students paid generously to do good under government auspices. That could cost a lot of money.
On the other hand ... . Despite Republican oratorical support for low spending and balanced budgets, the Bush administration has done a strikingly bad job in both respects. Perhaps Obama really does plan to satisfy his more enthusiastic supporters with lots of symbolic fluff but only moderate amounts of money. A democratic administration that succeeded in doing the things Republican administrations claim and don't do would be in a very strong position in the next election.
Which leads to an obvious question. Can any reader point me at a competent and critical analysis of Obama's tax and budget plans?