'Nightly News:' McCain Cuts Taxes for Rich, Obama for Many
No need to decide on your own; “NBC Nightly News” has already determined which presidential candidate has the best tax policy.
The Sept. 22 broadcast offered in-depth analysis of the two presidential candidates’ tax proposals. But according to CNBC correspondent Carl Quintanilla, the middle class stand to gain more from an Obama tax proposal.
“Amid all the rhetoric here’s one easy way to look at taxes,” Quintanilla said. “A middle-class household earning $38,000 to $66,000 a year would get an average tax cut under McCain of $325, under Obama, $1,100. Sound simple? It isn’t. The government suddenly has a trillion dollars in bailouts and the candidates disagree on how to tax the wealthiest Americans, the top 1 percent, to pay for it.”
Quintanilla laid the basic proposals out for viewers. According to the CNBC reporter, McCain favors more money in the hands of Americans and Obama favors higher taxes on some with the tax revenues going to those “left behind.”
“Either their taxes should be kept low as McCain says – so they’ll keep spending and employing Americans with their small businesses,” Quintanilla said, “or they should pay more, as Obama says, with that money going to help Americans he claims were left behind in our 20-year economic boom.”
Quintanilla portrayed Obama’s proposal as positive for the “vast majority” of Americans and McCain’s as beneficial only to the wealthiest households.
“Here’s what an Obama world would look like: The vast majority of households would pay less tax, not more,” Quintanilla said. “The wealthiest could see taxes go up $94,000, the very rich – $500,000. Obama would use that extra money on tax credits for students, homeowners and he’d eliminate income tax for seniors making less than $50,000.”
“What would McCain’s world look like? The top 1 percent of earners would see their taxes go down, an average of $50,000,” Quintanilla said. “Corporate taxes would go down, too. And he’d dramatically lower the estate tax on inheritances.
But it’s not just corporations and the nation’s top earners who would benefit from McCain tax cuts. All tax brackets would see lower tax bills under his proposal, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis Quintanilla cited in his report. He referred to the Center as “non-partisan,” but it is run by the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.
The “CBS Evening News” aired a similar report July 7, as reported by the Media Research Center on July 15. MRC pointed out, the conservative Tax Foundation’s analysis found that Obama would shift more of the tax burden to relatively few families.
“Obama’s plan would greatly accelerate the decades-long trend toward a federal government that depends for tax revenue almost exclusively on a few high-income people. ...1.13 million Americans would pay more in all federal taxes than 128 million of their fellow citizens combined,” the Tax Foundation reported.
The verdict on McCain’s tax policy proposal, according to Quintanilla: less money for a bloated government, which the reporter characterized as a bad thing.
“With fewer dollars coming into the IRS, experts say a McCain White House could make the federal deficit and the national debt even worse.”
But “Nightly News” failed to point out, even Obama has – as identified by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air on Sept. 8 – that raising taxes on anything or anyone during such a fragile economic period would not be a good idea.
“Obama acknowledged in an ABC interview that rescinding the Bush tax cuts in a recession – as he has described the economy – would be destructive,” Morrissey wrote.
