During the Reagan years the mantra of cutting taxes wasn't a campaign promise but part of an overall philosophy. That philosophy was grounded in the proposition that individual were not only wiser than Washington when allocating resources in investing and spending but that the citizen was also more autonomous and self determined. Lower taxes will only sound like an empty campaign promise if it isn't proposed within the context of giving the citizen greater liberty and freedom. The free-market system after all is liberty and freedom in motion. The greater liberty a country has the better the economy, they go hand in hand. High taxes are a restriction on freedom and therefore stagnate economies.
John McCain doesn't understand this. When Barak Obama proposes that he would cut taxes on 95% of all Americans, this sounds great. What he doesn't tell you, and what John McCain ought to know, is that the remaining 5% pay over 50% of all taxes. When Obama says he will raise taxes on Americans in the 5% range what he will end up doing is raising taxes on most of the people who pay them. If McCain was grounded in free-market tax policy he could certainly counter the argument on the damaging affects of Obama's proposal but instead sounds like a "big business" Republican who favors the rich over the poor. He'll cut taxes on the business, Obama on people.
One of the great misconceptions about tax policy is that when taxes are cut the federal deficit will grow. This isn't true. When taxes are cut the economy grows and so do revenues. This happened during the eighties under the Reagan tax cuts when federal revenues nearly doubled. The reason for this is that revenues rise when the economy is doing well. Investors don't mind paying taxes if their after tax return higher, in fact it encourages investment into the economy. When president Bush cut taxes the same thing happened. John McCain opposed the tax cuts under the false premise that it would cause deficits.
McCain with all his talk about being a conservative and having Reagan as one of his heroes has some explaining to do. In fact when it comes to the details McCain his quick to tell us how he disagreed with Reagan from time to time and in fact considers one of his important virtues as being a person who bucks his party "reaching out" across the isle. His bipartisanship has more to do with capitulating to liberal idealism then it has to do with convincing Democrats to vote on Republican concepts. In the debate he mentions how he was able to work together with Democrats and cites senators Fiengold, Kennedy and Libermann. In all he enacted or failed to enact liberal ideas. When McCain says he's a conservative to what do we attribute this label? His latest proposal touted in the second presidential debate was for the government to buy out mortgages. Part of his "reaching" out supposedly. Certainly he would have bipartisan support for such an intrusive government proposal, hows that for being a maverick.
