Not that anyone would be surprised, but Mike Johanns voted for Sen. Jim DeMint’s “stimulus” bill, summarized here by David Weigel at the Washington Independent:
• Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
• Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
• Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
• Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
• Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
• Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
• Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
• Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
• Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.
What goes unstated here is that when you “simplify” the tax code to include fewer brackets, you’re going to end up increasing taxes on poor and middle class people who are moved into a larger bracket. So this is not only a tax break for the rich, it’s a tax increase for many poor and middle class families.
I would really like someone to explain to me how you can depend on supply side economics to fix a recession caused by a $2.7 trillion demand deficit. Critics of the stimulus argue that we really don’t have a similar historical model on which to judge how government spending would help fix this situation. Let’s, for a second, assume that to be true. If the alternate proposal is to rely on trickle-down economics, which it is, we actually have a pretty recent example in which $2 trillion in tax cuts, largely for the rich, not only failed to stimulate the economy, but led to an economic downturn: that would be right now.
UPDATE: Here is a PDF released by the White House that lists a state-by-state breakdown of funding. On the topic of state benefits from the stimulus package, it should be noted that Ben Nelson has been attached to an effort to strip nearly $25 billion in state stabilization funds from the package, although now he appears to be backing off.
Ah, ok. This is what Johanns meant when he talked about Nebraska values the other day ( http://journalstar.com/articles/2009/02/05/news/local/doc4989fe81c645e394092279.txt ). Here I was thinking he was just talking out of his ass.
That’s funny how he rejects it because there’s “no plan to pay for it.” What does he think will fill the void left by those tax cuts? Magic?
EDIT: Not that this really matters at all regarding this bill, but one of the commenters at the Yglesias blogged linked to this article from Salon about DeMint and his tax avoidance.
It sure makes all the crying about Obama’s appointees’ tax problems seem a little less serious.
I think the problem is that at this point the GOP has little to lose. The voting public has short term memory, and if the economy is still as bad off or worse in two years, then they get to campaign on the fact that the Democrats didn’t fix anything. If the plan is passed, and it does stimulate the economy, then they lose the economic battle, or go start advertising that Bush’s economic policy has finally payed off, which will be much harder for the public to swallow.
No disagreement there. It’s just too bad things have to be viewed through the prism of “What’s best for the power of our party?” rather than “What will work?”