WSJ op-ed: The Obama Tax Plan by Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee

[DeepModem Mom]

The Obama Tax Plan
By JASON FURMAN and AUSTAN GOOLSBEE
August 14, 2008; Page A13


(Martin Kozlowski)

Even as Barack Obama proposes fiscally responsible tax reform to strengthen our economy and restore the balance that has been lost in recent years, we hear the familiar protests and distortions from the guardians of the broken status quo.

Many of these very same critics made many of these same overheated predictions in previous elections. They said President Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction plan would wreck the economy. Eight years and 23 million new jobs later, the economy proved them wrong. Now they are making the same claims about Sen. Obama's tax plan, which has even lower taxes than prevailed in the 1990s -- including lower taxes on middle-class families, lower taxes for capital gains, and lower taxes for dividends.

Overall, Sen. Obama's middle-class tax cuts are larger than his partial rollbacks for families earning over $250,000, making the proposal as a whole a net tax cut and reducing revenues to less than 18.2% of GDP -- the level of taxes that prevailed under President Reagan.

Both candidates for president have proposed tax plans. But they are starkly different in their approaches and their economic impact. Sen. Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit.

In contrast, John McCain offers what would essentially be a third Bush term, with his economic speeches outlining $3.4 trillion of tax cuts over 10 years beyond what President Bush has already proposed and geared even more to high-income earners. The McCain plan would lead to deficits the likes of which we have never seen in this country. It would take money from the middle class and from future generations so that the wealthy can live better today....

(Messrs. Furman and Goolsbee are, respectively, economic policy director and senior economic adviser at Obama for America.)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121867201724238901.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

[vaberella]

1. WSJ tends to be a talking mouth piece for the Repubs, but I like this article.

FT is definitely a loud supporter of Obama. The article is on point and targets some of the issues, which I agree with and I'm a studying economist. His plan is radical but taking into consideration the time, the movement of the market, his plan has great potential.

Second thing I'm noticing and I plan to write on that the impending likelihood of Obama becoming President seems to have inadvertently boost the American eonomy, it's not solely dependent on Bernanke and Paulson playing puppetmaster.

I'll do more reading and eventually write on it.

Great post. K&R'd

:kick:

[zbdent]

2. maybe someone slipped some drugs into the author's drinking water

and he accidentally had an honest moment ...

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Actually, the authors of this op-ed are two of Obama's economic advisers.

And, truth be told, I see political articles in the WSJ news pages almost every day that are not so bad, and many that are Dem positive. The writers of their editorials, however, are waaaay to the Right.