As a rule, Democratic presidential candidates don’t talk about taxes as much as Republicans do.
But this year, Democrats certainly get going when they discuss President Bush’s tax cuts.
Then just about every Democrat promises to roll them back if elected.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman has more.
Democrat Barack Obama makes no mystery of where he stands on tax breaks for wealthy Americans when he campaigns.
I would roll back the bush tax cuts for those making over 250 thousand. In some cases I’d like to see lower taxes.
The Illinois Senator would target tax breaks to low and middle income families.
…when I was in the state legislature, one of the things I introduced was state earned income tax credit, that provided millions of dollars of tax breaks for people who could least afford them.
This dual approach to taxes, giving breaks to the poor and middle class, while raising rates for the rich, is pretty much how most Democrats handle the issue.
New York Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton has said if she’s elected, she would restore tax rates to where they were when her husband Bill was in office.
At the MSNBC debate in October in Philadelphia, she said she thought that was only fair, given how she and the former President have joined the nation’s exclusive club of wealthy people.
I never thought bill and I would be in that category to be honest with you. So it’s kind of a new experience but it’s not one that makes us very comfortable because we should be investing in new energy we should be investing in college affordability, universal pre k, the kind of health care plan that I’ve outlined. That’s what we intend to do.
Senator Clinton is like other Democrats when she mentions programs she supports after discussing putting an end to tax cuts.
The candidates say reversing the cuts will help the government find the money needed to fund their targeted programs.
But Steven Wamhoff of the Center for Tax Justice in Washington says that line of reasoning will work for only a short time.
Well, the bush tax cuts expire in 2010.. I mean that gives you a little bit more money a little bit more money than they expected to have for a year, …you know for a year or two. But I mean beyond that the bush tax cuts were already..going to be gone anyway, according to all our budget projections.
Most of the Democrats seem unfazed by this problem.
And no candidate is talking about raising taxes beyond what would result if the Bush tax cuts were reversed.
Though the budget is tight, nearly every candidate talks about preserving tax cuts for the middle class.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has also brought up that he’d consider lowering taxes for certain businesses.
He said that in July, at the CNN-Youtube debate in South Carolina.
I would give a tax incentive to a company, if they paid over the prevailing wage. I would give a tax incentive to a technology company with no taxes for three years if they unionized, if they paid over the prevailing wage….i think we have to be creative about how we use the tax code.
Every Democrat can expect to face accusations that if they get into office, they’ll raise taxes.
But Dennis Kucinich has assured voters that he would not raise taxes.
He would restructure the government so that it would not cost more than it does right now.
He has said he’d pay for new programs he wants with the money saved from bringing all the troops home from Iraq.
Peter Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union in Virginia says of all the Democratic proposals he’s reviewed, Kucinich has the most fiscally sound approach.
Its ironic actually that dennis Kucinich probably has proposed some of the most offsets in federal spending to the programs he wants to enact. He has a very liberal and progressive agenda, but by virtue of the fact that he would cut military spending so dramatically, that’s actually putting him ahead of the other democratic candidates.
Among themselves, Democratic candidates have found they have differences on at least one tax issue.
It’s the Social security payroll tax that everyone who works pays for at least part of the year.
Former Senator John Edwards laid out the situation that irks many of the candidates at a debate in Iowa in September.
If you make 80,000 dollars a year, you’re paying social security taxes on every dime of your income. If you work on wall street, and you make 50 million dollars a year, you pay social security taxes on the first 97,000, no social security tax on the rest of it. This is not right. And its not fair.
Edwards, Obama, and Senator Chris Dodd want to raise the social security tax on those earning more than 200,000 dollars a year.
But they would not tax earnings between 97,000 and 200,000 dollars.
Senator Clinton has said the issue requires further study, since the social security system may need to be shored up at some point in the future.
Despite this spat on payroll taxes, Democrats really don’t talk to voters about tax policy as much as Republicans do.
John Romps, an economist at St Anselm College in Manchester says there’s good reason for that.
Democratic voters don’t focus very much on taxes.
I think they in general don’t like the bush tax cuts. They think the bush tax cuts are unfair and they assume any of the democratic candidates are going to do something about that. So I don’t think that you really make a lot of hay if you’re a democratic candidate, and you come out with a specific proposal.
New Hampshire political analysts say most Democrats will head to polls in January with little thought to what the candidates say about taxes.
They say voters have plenty of other issues to think about.
Those include health care, renewable energy policies, and the war in Iraq.
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Ask registered Democrats again after the Primary, but before the election, if they care about taxes. If the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch is not passed by this incredibly ineffectual Congress by the end of the year, and these middle to upper middle class Democrats get hit with an unexpected tax bill in April (and are still making their monthly installment payments to the IRS come Oct/Nov) they are definitely going to want to talk taxes and vote taxes.
Hillary will be hard pressed to explain why she was unable (as a highly influential member of the Senate) to pass a clean AMT relief bill for the middle class, allegedly her sacred constituency. Failure to provide AMT relief will represent the highest single tax increase on the middle class (year on year) in recent memory (if not history).
Hit middle class families with an expected tax bill of between $2-5K, and concerns about traditional "Democratic" values will wane in preference for economic survival and lower taxes.
To my knowledge, Bill Richardson is the only Democratic candidate who has vowed to eliminate the AMT. Given that he is a relative outsider to DC madness with little to no celebrity cache, I am inclined to believe him.