McCain and taxes

The Post had a great article today analyzing McCain's disaster of a tax plan.  Not only is it just dumb and budget-busting, it is also in direct contrast to many of McCain's earlier (more reasonable) political pronouncements and just a super-duper pander to the anti-tax at all costs Republican right.  Some highlights:

Now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee,
however, McCain is marching straight down the party line. The economic
package he has laid out embraces many of the tax policies he once
decried: extending Bush's tax cuts he voted against, offering
investment tax breaks he once believed would have little economic
benefit and granting the long-held wishes of tax lobbyists he has often
mocked.

McCain's concerns — about budget deficits, unanticipated defense
costs, an Iraq war that would be longer and more costly than advertised
— have proved eerily prescient, usually a plus for politicians who are
quick to say they were right when others were wrong. Yet McCain appears
determined to leave such predictions behind.

Of course, even in the face of such incontrovertible pandering, the article cannot help but fall back on the pathetic little, he said, she said, game, as if this is all just a matter of perspective:

To supporters, McCain has simply seen the light and now understands the
power that business tax relief has to spur economic growth and
innovation. Said J.D. Foster, a former Bush White House and Treasury tax policy expert, now at the Heritage Foundation: “It's logical that he wouldn't be repeating the arguments he made then. We all learn from experience.”

To critics, it is political pandering. “It's just part of the new John
McCain that's taking on the conventional wisdom that in tight races,
you have to energize the base and win by 50.000001 percent,” Chafee
said. “I was frankly surprised that he's kept it up after securing the
nomination. I thought he'd move to the center, and I haven't seen it.”

Of course, this is the opposite of “learning from experience.”  The concerns he had about the problematic nature of the Bush tax cuts when he was not running for the Republican nomination have proven dead-on. 

And if that's not enough, McCain is making ridiculous pronouncements that somehow he can balance the budget by savings here and there.  Think Progress has a nice visual that shows just how not true that is:

If we want to actually cut the budget deficit, we're simply going to have to raise taxes on the rich country-club Republicans, and that's that.