Campaign 2008 Issue No. 2. The Economy

The second priority this election season, and the most pressing, is the economy. We have two candidates that are diametrically opposed to one another.

Unfortunately, neither one of them can lay claim to being good at the economy. So our hope must be that they’ll choose some very good advisors in the matter of the economy.So far, both have made mistakes in dealing with the credit market breakdown.

McCain suspended his campaign for a couple of days and returned to Washington when this crisis erupted. It would have been much better if he had actually publicly accomplished something. If it was a grandstand political ploy, the Democrats political grandstand got the better of it because they came out en masse to berate him for coming back and saying that he’d only clog up the works. We didn’t find out until a couple of days later that he actually did help John Boehner and the House members with this problem.

However, he compounded his problem by voting for the final bailout package because it had so much pork in it. In fact, even if it only had one pork item in it, he’d not have been successful. The only thing that saved him is that Barack Hussein Obama also showed up in Washington and then started grandstanding at the White House meeting.

McCain should have voted against the bailout, then gone out and told the world that he voted against it because it had pork. A bonus would have been if he could have identified the ones that added the pork, but that seems to be a matter of national security to find out who added the pork.

Now the talk has turned to taxes to help the economy. We know the Democrats plan. Tax and spend our way out of the problem. It never works. Obama has a spending program for every item that is talked about. Yet he’s sticking to his claim that he’ll cut taxes for 95% of the people and only add taxes on those making over $250,000 per year. This is class warfare and if he’s elected, along with a Democrat House and Senate, he’ll get what he wants, although the 95% will not see a tax cut.

Obama will pull a Clinton. If you remember, Clinton ran on a middle class tax cut in 1992. One month after his election, he went on national television and told the world that he’d never worked so hard in his life, but he just couldn’t honor the middle class tax cut.

Our taxes are going to be increased when the Bush tax cuts expire. If Obama wins and the Democrats win Congress, they’ll likely end the Bush tax cuts quickly, raising our taxes sooner (and possibly even retroactively to January 1) and plunge us deeper into a recession. Raising taxes in a bad economy is never good. Raising taxes in a good economy slows the growth.

The Democrats claim to be the champions of the working man, yet when Obama was called on his tax plan as he walked from door to door in Ohio, he met Joe the Plumber. When answering Joe’s question about taxes, he said that he wanted to spread the wealth as Joe made more money. In other words, punish Joe’s hard work by taking some of his earnings and giving it to others that didn’t work as hard, if at all. Obama and Biden then set out to berate Joe the Plumber.

That news prompted McCain and Palin to call Obama out on his socialist views. Even after this, Obama has been trying to explain why McCain calls him a socialist and can’t get that correct.

In Michigan, we know first hand , and recently, that increasing taxes in a bad economy does not work. We have been in a one state recession here for five years. After taxes were increased unemployment jumped from 7.5% to 8.9%.McCain has the right idea. Lower taxes, cut spending. At the very least, leave the taxes where they are and cut spending. But lower taxes would help even more. It would cut the deficit, raise revenue and put the economy back into the growth mode again.McCain has the right idea. Obama will only prolong the pain.

I welcome your comments.

Brett