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Obama Outmaneuvers McCain on Taxes
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ShareOctober 28, 2008 9:26 PM
ABC News' Teddy Davis, Rigel Anderson, and Arnab Datta Report: With one week to go until Election Day, the McCain campaign finds itself in an uncomfortable position on taxes.
According to the latest polling by ABC News, Obama currently maintains a ten-point lead over McCain on an issue which Republicans typically own.
The last Democratic candidate for president to have that kind of lead was Bill Clinton in 1992.
As George Stephanopoulos noted on the Tuesday edition of “World News with Charles Gibson,” “When Democrats win on taxes, they tend to win elections.”
So how did Obama get the upper hand?
For starters, he went beyond the targeted tax cut approach of Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry and hammered home the message that his plan would cut taxes for “95 percent of Americans.”
The key to this promise is his sweeping proposal to offer a rebate for payroll taxes of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples which starts to phase out for couples at $150,000 or for non-joint filers at $75,000 per year.
Second, he promised individuals making less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000 that they will not see their taxes go up.
Third, when McCain and RNC began pounding Obama for backing a budget blueprint which envisioned higher taxes on Americans making as little as $42,000 per year, the Obama campaign circulated reports by FactCheck.org saying: “No taxes were increased, and the vote that the McCain campaign refers to could not by itself have resulted increase on anybody.”
And finally, Obama had the good fortune of running against a GOP opponent who could be portrayed as favoring a new broad-based tax on the middle class.
Non-partisan experts say that the refundable heath-care tax credit proposed by McCain would (at least initially) result in a lower tax bill for most Americans.
Obama understood, however, that voters are more attuned to what they stand to lose than what they stand to gain. With that in mind, Obama ran a series of ads which eviscerated McCain for wanting to end the income tax deduction for employer-provided health care.
All four of these points have helped Obama gain the upper hand in the debate over taxes.
He even looks good relative to McCain on the issue of the deficit: according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, over a ten-year period, McCain’s tax policies would lead to $1.6 trillion more in debt than Obama.
(Obama’s tax policies would add $3.5 trillion to the debt; McCain’s tax policies would add $5.1 trillion to the debt over ten years).
While Obama appears to have outmaneuvered McCain on taxes, some of the Illinois Democrat's own backers are wondering if he will face a situation similar to Bill Clinton in 1992. The newly elected Democratic president found it difficult to keep his promise to cut middle class taxes, boost public investment, and cut the deficit at the same time.
Harvard Prof. John White, an Obama supporter who wrote Perot’s ’92 balanced budget plan and later endorsed Clinton, thinks the Democratic nominee is going to have trouble cutting taxes and increasing public investment once the government is done bailing out the banking and auto industries.
“He is going to be told that the deficit is too high,” White told ABC News. “I think he is in a real box.”
October 28, 2008 in McCain, John, Obama, Barack | Permalink | User Comments (133)
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Dems, let's get off these posts and go VOTE!
If we don't vote in landslide numbers the slimey righties will throw our ballots in the trash, scare poor people away from the polls and STEAL this election.
VOTE! Don't take it for granted. Don't believe the hype. We CAN get our country back. This is not over. VOTE!
Posted by: VegasForTheVote | Oct 28, 2008 10:31:02 PM
Obama/Biden '08/'12 for a diverse unified America. I'm a military wife and sppove this message.
Posted by: Didi | Oct 28, 2008 10:31:57 PM
Obama/Biden '08/'12 for a diverse unified America. I'm a military wife and sppove this message.
Posted by: Didi | Oct 28, 2008 10:31:59 PM
I am a republican, not a former one, who will be voting for Obama. McCain and Palin have not been convincing about fixing the economy. I do not even trust their support cast to be as good as those working for Bush. I will vote for Obama because I really put the country first. Obama/Biden will be be better on the economy.
Posted by: Jack P | Oct 28, 2008 10:33:16 PM
Obama has outmaneuvered McCain on every possible issue. He's even called McCain risky on Iraq! OUCH! The Big Bad John Wayne fighter pilot, errrrrr fighter crasher has been minimized and reduced to Bozo the Clown.
McCain has shot all of his bullets early in this campaign and he's now down to the last squirt in his little political water gun. HOW PATHETIC.
LESSON: Never underestimate an opponent and when in doubt in Las Vegas, ALWAYS BET ON BLACK! Hee Hee
POTUS OBAMA - Making History on your A**
Posted by: Malcom Z | Oct 28, 2008 10:35:21 PM
How do you outmaneuver a tax plan that's better than yours? Obama's plan stinks. Anyone making less than 100k a year is going to see their income taxes go through the roof.
Posted by: Campbell | Oct 28, 2008 10:38:58 PM
I'll see your increase in personal tax exemptions (McCain) and raise you a middle-class tax cut (Obama.) Dollars to donuts neither will be reality...
"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.......(Oscar Ameriger)
Posted by: curiousindep | Oct 28, 2008 10:41:56 PM
Update America:
Why can’t Obama spread the wealth? The United States is essentially BROKE and there is no wealth to spread around to anyone. Spreading the wealth is an Obama LIE.
Clearly, eradicating either disease or “terror” by throwing money at it doesn’t work. The U.S. health care spending, which topped out at $2.1 trillion in 2006, should be ample proof of that.
Yet, it’s the same principle at work, both within the conventional health care paradigm and the interventionist foreign relations agenda: Take a pill; drop a bomb -- you’ll feel better and you’ll be safer for it. Keep taking those foreign chemicals for the rest of your life; set up a permanent presence in foreign lands and tell them how to run things – why are you complaining? We’re fixing you!
Folks, both of these systems are set up in such a way that nothing really gets better, nothing is really resolved; the “disease” is never conquered, only complicated.
More dollars need to be printed and inflation will rise to decrease the value of the dollar. The money Obama promises you will be worth about 45 cents on the dollar on the foreign market. Maybe Obama plans to print more money and then the dollar will be worth 10 cents on the foreign market. Obama will be spreading worthless money and you will be lucky to by a loaf of bread with the spread the wealth program.
Posted by: Update America | Oct 28, 2008 10:46:13 PM
So what's new on the McCain conspiracy board?
Obama the socialist? Obama the terrorist? Obama the Manchurian Muslim? Obama the extraterrestrial? Obama the radical Christian?
Posted by: Paul | Oct 28, 2008 10:52:46 PM
Obama kicks puppies, and makes his daughters eat vegetables. And he snores.
I'm John McCain and I approve this ad.
Posted by: Paul | Oct 28, 2008 10:54:06 PM
McNixon LIES in every other breath. Easily the most dishonest candidate since Nixon.
Posted by: iii | Oct 28, 2008 10:55:35 PM
To all you turncoats:
If McCain was running w/ Joe P. would you still be voting for McCain? It's only because he's running with a woman that you people are in a frenzy. She can't even govern her own home.Why then would I trust her to help govern a country. It seems to me that if anyone is cunning it's McCain. Why did he choose someone he only met a few times? Was it because he's after the women votes? Or is it because of the off-shore drilling prospects in Alaska?
Posted by: fedup | Oct 28, 2008 10:57:30 PM
McCain Funded Work Of Palestinian His Campaign Hopes To Tie To Obama
October 28, 2008 04:34 PM
"In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank."
Those filthy people.
Posted by: pefros | Oct 28, 2008 11:03:23 PM
What do you expect from someone who is well versed in Chicago style crooked politics?
Obama will turn this country into a welfare State! He's going to kill innovation, because companies will no longer invest in r&d. They'll be setting up off shore operations and all their profits will stay abroad. The rich will figure out a way to get their money out of the country, so you will find a mass flight of capital.
There will be fewer jobs, and the US will be in a deep recession for years to come. A Democratic controlled liberal Legislatve & Executive Branch indeed guarantees this.
Posted by: BJ | Oct 28, 2008 11:04:23 PM
Everyone has plans, and when they start to implement them, they find out changes have to be made. You need the most trustworthy person to set the direction and tone, create the best cast of intelligent and unintimidated supporting players, react to the times and events, and never stop when one extremist or another starts shouting. If you think McCain has any of these capabilities, or can somehow manage the USA better than he has managed his priorities, his campaign, or either party by living life as an angry maverick, it's clear you should vote for him. When it's all over, ask yourself what's good, what's bad, and what you can do to help.
Posted by: Doug | Oct 28, 2008 11:05:02 PM
Update America:
Hershey, Pennsylvania:
More Afro-Americans voting for McCain because Obama is of POOR character. As one man said, “I celebrate Martin Luther King Day every year. Martin Luther King said it is not the color of a man’s skin, it is the character of the man”.
There is no need to say anything more about Obama. The character of a man is more important than the color of his skin. Obama’s shields his true character, restricts his true self from view of the voting public.
Posted by: Update America | Oct 28, 2008 11:05:19 PM
I am a former democrat too who has seen the light and it isn't Barrack Obama. He is the most cunning, smooth talking candidate I have ever had my displeasure to watch. I am amazed at the number of people who idolize him and would immortalize him if they could. Unfortunately, America will have a really sad awakening if he is elected. Too many people are drinking the Obama kool-ade.I don't really understand how so many people have fallen under his spell and have been taken in. Mark my word, he will out into the Supreme Court judges who are radicals and far-left thinkers. If he wins, his tax ideas will move us from a recession into a depression like we have never seen before. Please, wake up America.
Posted by: Fran | Oct 28, 2008 10:18:03 PM
***********************************
LOL! One week to go, and it has come down to begging! You gonna need a new strategy honey! You ain't gonna change anybody's mind this way ... Scaring tactics ain't gonna work!!
Posted by: ENOUGH! | Oct 28, 2008 11:05:49 PM
Emma:
If you are sick of corruption and sexism ruining women's chances why are you voting for McCain/Palin? Seriously.
Any woman who works should vote against McCain because he voted against them. Check out notadino’s post. Also, please take a look at this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/23/mccain-opposes-equal-pay-_n_98342.html
McCain voted against equal pay for women (Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act). The Act was based on a case involving Lilly Ledbetter who was a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Gadsden, Alabama who sued for pay discrimination just before retiring after a 19-year career there. By the time she retired, Ledbetter made $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor and claimed earlier decisions by supervisors kept her from making more.
McCain voted against the Ledbetter Act and the Senate Republicans killed the Act.
Posted by: Rachel | Oct 28, 2008 11:06:39 PM
fedup: "...Why then would I trust her to help govern a country."
You know, when a campaign's own staffers start calling the running mate a "wack job," I have to think that campaign is completely out of compelling selling points.
Posted by: Paul | Oct 28, 2008 11:07:22 PM
McCain Funded Work Of Palestinian His Campaign Hopes To Tie To Obama
October 28, 2008 04:34 PM
"In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank."
Oops, withdraw that smear ....
Posted by: pefros | Oct 28, 2008 11:07:37 PM
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