If You Like Michigan’s Economy, You’ll Love Obama’s
Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise
them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to
know something about the “infamous” top 1% of income tax filers: In
order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of
dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals
rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich,
it isn’t the Rockefellers they’re talking about; it’s the companies
where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax
filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise
the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that
provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will
also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the
Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers
ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out
of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the
savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a
credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the
end of his first term. Mr. Obama’s program offers no hope, or even a
promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing
federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the
corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers
the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would
dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the
role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort
abuse.The states have already tested the McCain and Obama
programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to
determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio
and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In
an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that
have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have
it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to
spare the nation from a similar fate.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.