McCain Calls for Tax Holiday

(April 15, 2008 ) – Like I was sayin… I can use a few more holidays.  GOP presidential candidate John McCain is calling on congress to have a gasoline tax holiday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

The proposal would eliminate the 18.4 cent per gallon federal tax on gasoline and the 24.4 cent per gallon on diesel fuel.  He also called to release oil from the strategic Petroleum Reserve to further ease gas prices.  The democrat party will most likely be against it either because they will call it reckless or they will say it doesn’t go far enough (you heard it hear first…).

Note also that the democrats also have outlined a proposal to increase the gasoline tax by 50 cents.  However, they won’t push for it until after the elections.

The announcement came as part of McCain’s detailing some of his economic plan.  Some of the other details are as follows:

–Raise the tax exemption for each dependent child from $3,500 to $7,000.

–Require more affluent people — couples making more than $160,000 — enrolled in Medicare to pay a higher premium for their prescription drugs than less-wealthy people.

–Offer people the option of choosing a simpler tax system with two tax rates and a standard deduction instead of sticking with the current system.

–Suspend for one year all increases in discretionary spending for agencies other than those that cover the military and veterans while launching an expansive review of the effectiveness of federal program.

Note that both Senators Clinton and Obama are for reducing the child tax credit from $3,500 to $3000 as part of their massive tax increase they refer to as “elimininating the Bush tax cuts”.

Voters need to keep in mind that the economic plans of the candidates impact them by either lowering their tax bill or increasing it.

It will be interesting to see how many people come out against lowering gas prices by eliminating the tax temporarily.

Pork Spending to Continue

(March 14, 2008) – Like I was sayin… they love to spend our money.

For years, presidential candidate John McCain has been against pork barrel spending in congress.  Pork spending is when a senator attaches an amendment to a spending bill to pay for pet projects.  Yesterday, John McCain voted for a 1 year moratorium on pork spending which failed to pass.  Obama and Clinton also voted for the bill even though they had over $390 million of earmarks in fiscal year 2008.

The issue that most Americans have with the practice is that the spending is attached to defence and other spending bills without debate.  There is also a lack of accountability of who benefits the most from the pork spending.  For instance, if my construction company donates or raises 100k for a political campaign and a pork item spends 10 million on a new cancer care wing of a hospital that my company builds, it pretty much is a payback at the expense of the American tax payer.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan watch dog group, 71 senetors voted against the measure to stop pork spending for 1 year.  From the site, you can contact your senator and let them know what you think.

If they can’t get a primary right, can they run the country?

(March 11, 2008) – Like I was sayin… some times you just have to keep trying until you get it right.

I have commented before about the whole super delegate thing.  I can’t believe that the dems actually put together a process that can be used to over-ride what the votes want.  It bothers me that they believe that is a fair process.

Then I see that they are trying to figure out how to get the MI and FL primary issues resolved.  First the DNC tells MI and FL if they move their primaries, the delegates don’t count.  Everybody agreed and the votes happened.  Being behind, the Clinton camp is pushing now for those votes to be counted.  They have a slim argument in FL, but in MI, Clinton was the only candidate on the ballot.

The real concern is that they are willing to make a bad decision that excludes the votes of some of the largest states and then afterward decide that maybe that isn’t such a good idea.  Did they not see this coming?

I am not saying that political parties don’t/can’t make mistakes, but this was a big one.  It will be interesting to see how this gets resolved.