Vote for Dean! It'll only cost you $2,500 a year...

WSJ’s pulling no punches out of the gate. Stephen Moore of the “Right Wing” Club for Growth details how Dean’s stump proposals add up to take over $200 a month out of the pockets of middle class Americans. Great economic plan.

Under current law, a married couple with one child and a $40,000-a-year income pays income taxes of $1,503. Under the Dean tax, that family would pay $2,935—or just about double. For a family with two kids and an income of $80,000 a year, the extra Dean tax costs $1,780 a year. What Mr. Dean has never had to answer to in the Democratic primary, perhaps because the other candidates are too embarrassed to ask, is how a presidential contender whose campaign is dedicated to relieving the economic squeeze on working class families, believes that socking these folks with a $1,400- to $1,800-a-year tax hike will make their financial situation less stressful … His tax plan would be the equivalent of hitting small businessmen, who create about 70% of the jobs, over the head with a two-by-four. The highest tax rate under the Dean plan rises from 35% to 39.6%. Add on top of this perhaps the most insidious feature of the Dean tax. For the first time ever, he would eliminate the cap on payroll taxes. Henceforth, all income of more than $87,000 a year would pay a 15% payroll tax. This means the Dean tax plan raises the small-business tax rate from 38% to 55%. If you are a self-employed worker with an income of $125,000 a year, which in high-cost-of-living states like California and New York is hardly rich, Howard Dean wants to raise your taxes more than $8,000. That will create jobs?

The bit also details how Dean will also start taxing over 2 million families who don’t currently pay any taxes. It ends by quoting JFK, probably the last Democrat who got economics “that higher tax rates “will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget, nor enough jobs” to put Americans back to work.”

Posted by jank at January 2, 2004 12:47 PM