Matthew Yglesias comments today on something that really deserves far more attention than it is getting (actually, it has gotten almost no attention…): John McCain’s plan to tax our benefits. As Yglesias points out,
at the moment compensation you receive from your employer in the form of money is subject to income tax, but compensation you receive from your employer in the form of employer contributions to health insurance premiums is not taxed. McCain proposes to change this and start subjecting those benefits to taxation.
McCain’s plan “would tax workers’ health benefits, which are largely tax-free today,” thus increasing the amount of tax people need to pay, which is a tax increase in any common sense understanding of the term.
It’s not just that McCain wants to tax workers’ health benefits, which is, no matter what the McCain campaign says, a tax on middle-income people at a time that he wants to cut taxes for the rich. He’s also making healthcare less affordable for working people at a time when too many people in the United States are uninsured or underinsured.
John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, proves how little he knows about the economy every time he opens his mouth on the economy. Consider the add embedded in this post in light of this story from The New York Times:
About 62,000 jobs disappeared in June, the government reported Friday, the sixth consecutive month that payrolls have declined, as businesses rushed to lay off workers amid the worst economic climate in a generation.
And as job losses mount, even those still on payrolls have felt the pain: employers are putting hours for their full-time employees and shrinking salaries, just as workers face record-high prices for gasoline and food.
The unemployment rate stayed steady in June at 5.5 percent, the highest level in four years. The elevated figure dispelled speculation among some economists that last month’s half-percentage point jump, the biggest monthly spike in 22 years, was a statistical anomaly.
Indeed, employers have been steadily shedding jobs for the last three months. Businesses cut 52,000 more workers in May and April than the government first thought, the Labor Department said, casting aside initial estimates that suggested some deceleration.
In the last 12 months, the economy had seen a net gain of only 15,000 jobs, the lowest net increase since November 2003.
In the last 50 years, the economy has entered a recession every time jobs have dropped for six consecutive months.
And most Americans who are still employed earned less money in June than they did a year ago. Wages, which have been steadily shrinking in recent months, took a sharp hit last month, growing at the slowest pace since September 2005.
Among rank-and-file workers, who make up the majority of the nation’s work force, weekly paychecks have grown 2.8 percent in the last 12 months. That was down from 3.2 percent in May and well below the rate of inflation.
Average hourly earnings grew 3.4 percent, the slowest pace since the start of 2006.
McCain’s response to the report — boilerplate Republican nonsense — is equally as illuminating:
“At a time when our small businesses need support from Washington, we cannot raise taxes, increase regulation and isolate ourselves from foreign markets,” Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, said in a statement. He called for tax relief, job creation, and investment in innovation.
So, workers are hurting so we’ll … help … business…..? And while he speaks of small business, we all know that the businesses most likely to benefit will not be so small.
Charles Black, Republican John McCain’s chief campaign strategist, offered a glimpse into the mind of the GOP’s mind earlier this week when he let slip, during a Fortune magazine profile of his boss, that “one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy.”
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.
This may carry a kernel of truth, but it still comes across as creepy fearmongering. Which brings me to Juan Cole. Writing on his Informed Comment blog, he slaps the campaign down, linking it to seven years of President Bush and Co. playing to our fears and calling for a different direction:
We don’t need any more of this politics of fear that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Bush gave to us. That McCain has such people around him is yet another indication that he is too close to Bush and Bushism to be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Ah, that John McCain. He’s such an environmentalist. I mean, only someone committed to protecting the environment, to safeguarding our oceans and beaches, would support an end to a federal ban on oil drilling off the coast, right?
In fact, a straight-talking, maverick Republican would be willing to buck his party, even the president, to take such a stand, right?
It couldn’t be that McCain has engaged
in an obvious attempt to pander to voters’ disgust with high gas prices as well as to grease his way with the more conservative Republican base that believes any oil well is a good oil well
McCain and Bush tout drilling as a cure for high gas prices and dependence on foreign oil. And if it actually were, perhaps even ocean-loving Jerseyans could be seduced into allowing oil rigs offshore. But drilling offers neither short-term nor long-term relief.
But then, this is not about oil prices or the environment. As with his dopey gas-tax holiday idea, this is about votes. The straight-talking McCain and his campaign apparently believe that voters will ignore these facts, as outlined by the Ledger.
End the drilling ban today and it would take at least 10 years for oil to begin flowing. There would be zero effect on gasoline pump prices today and for years in the future.
Moreover, when the oil did begin flowing, there would not be enough of it to meet America’s needs. Federal estimates are that off-coast oil deposits total about 16 billion barrels — an amount equal to only about two years’ worth of estimated national consumption in 2018.
Of course, voters saw through his gas-tax holiday and are likely to see this policy announcement for the empty the pandering it is.
This piece by John Dickerson can only be considered a critique of the McCain campaign if one buys into the Straight-Talk myth the press created about the Arizona Republican eight years ago. Forget McCain’s flip-flops — the reality is that McCain only bucks his party when doing so will have few consequence and that, when it has counted, he almost always has been the loyal Bushie. Read Free Ride by David Brock and paul Waldmann for a detailed analysis of the McCain Mystique.
Hank Kalet 