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OBLIGATORY CAUCUS POST

January 04, 2008

I haven't posted much about the Presidential candidates positions on taxes, which are, except for Huckabee's support of the absurd "Fair Tax" and Ron Paul's quasi-tax protester outlook, pretty bland and generic. The Democrats want higher taxes on high incomes and targeted tax credits for "the middle class," while the Republicans don't want to raise taxes and want to do something about the alternative minimum tax and tax reform, somehow, someday. Tax just doesn't seem to be much on the radar, unless you think Huckabee's Iowa win was a vote for a 30% sales tax, rather than a solidarity vote by evangelicals. I don't.

But some tax bloggers are talking caucuses this morning. Howard Gleckman at Tax Vox:

But look closely at Obama's economic policy platform and what you see is pretty standard Democratic stuff. There is no dramatic plan to reform the tax system or move the nation's trade or retirement security policies in a fundamentally different direction. His health reform plan would restructure the system we have today, but in ways not very different from what most Democrats have been talking about for a decade or more.

...

Take his tax plank, for example. Obama vows to roll back the President Bush's 2001 tax cuts and use some of the money to create a new "making work pay tax credit" of $500 for singles and $1000 for couples. He'd enact an above-the-line credit for homeowners who don't itemize, and a credit for seniors earning less than $50,000. His enthusiasm for tossing out tax credits to various constituencies hardly represents change. It is, in fact, a throwback to the (Bill) Clinton Administration, which made such targeted tax breaks into an art form.

Better Bitter Blogger Daniel Shaviro has this bitter view:

Good news from Iowa

At least, that's how I see it. On the Democratic side, I just hope Obama (if elected) doesn't actually believe that he can work "together" with Republican revanchists. But perhaps this is to a degree just astute packaging. And I am hoping he will be elected.

...

Huckabee is actually a likable person in some ways. I have old friends whom I would tremble to see as president, and whom I wouldn't even recommend as, say, a spouse or parent, but who are enjoyable in the right context due to their having some nice qualities. Whatever one thinks of Christianism in politics or his hostility towards gays, rejection of evolution, etcetera. I have enjoyed his deft skewering of the Republican leadership's arrogant elitism.

For my look at the caucuses from the inside, go here.

Tags: 2008 elections.

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