McCain's economic plan: older than McCain himself

The McCain campaign, depending on which McCain campaign person you ask may or may not be poised to announce his economic plan today, and if the details that have been leaked are true, there’s little ‘new’ stuff in it.

McCain campaign manager Denis Holtz-Eakin said McCain's proposal is “targeted at people who have been hurt by the recent financial crisis — seniors, savers, workers, people who are trying to get to college.”

Really? McCain wants to help people in the middle-class, I’m skeptical, but I’m listening… what are the proposals?

“…a 50 per cent reduction in the capital gains tax on stock profits, from the current 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent, for a period of two years, at an estimated cost of $10 billion; an acceleration in the tax write-off for stock losses, allowing Americans to deduct $15,000 in losses a year for the tax years 2008 and 2009.”

A 50% reduction in… in capital gains… really? That’s McCain’s big economic plan, reducing capital gains… this plan isn't new… in fact it’s almost as old as McCain.

And I don’t mean to nitpick but what capital gains are McCain speaking of? Before you can get capital gains don’t you have to have, you know, capital? And with the markets down 30% and more over the past year, the only people to recoup capital gains taxes would be those that have been holding large blocks of stock for years and... ohhh now I get it.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the republican playbook: cynically manipulate a crisis to push through the most radical of measures.

According to the Wonk Room’s James Kvaal, the impact of cutting capital gains would look like this; “Households earning less than $50,000 a year collected a mere 2.5 percent of capital gains in 2005, according to the Tax Policy Center. Families earning more than $1 million a year collected 59 percent of capital gains. Moreover, most middle-class families with capital gains hold their investments in retirement accounts shielded against capital gains taxes.”

For someone that’s already promising massive tax cuts for corporations and a staggering $4 billion in tax cuts for for oil companies, handing out a new tax cut for millionaires and calling it a “Pension And Family Security” with the beard of helping people that are “hurting the most” is insulting to everyone with a brain.

And how will McCain pay for these tax cuts? One would think a presidential candidate would be able to tell the voters how he would pay for something this massive (as Obama did yesterday with his economic plan), but the McCain campaign apparently doesn’t.

At the least spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer is stumped about how much those new tax cuts would cost and how McCain plan to pay for them, saying; “Obviously…it’s going to cost some amount of money,”

Well DUHHHHHHH… thanks for that brilliant insight Nancy… to get that kind of insight usually you need to slide a quarter into some kind of slot and wait for a mechanical fortune teller to tell you what your future holds.

I can see clearly that a future with a McPalin administration would be a disaster on epic proportions, not unlike the last eight years with commander cuckoo-bananas in charge.

The Only possiBle candidAte to vote for is pretty daMn clear if you Ask me… and Because of thIs, we neeD to gEt out and vote on ElectioN Day…

UPDATE: Apparently some of McCain’s advisers are unsure if McCain was scheduled to unveil his economic plan today. If people within his own campaign don’t know what the hell the campaign is doing, how the hell would the country look after four years of him?