Seeing as how April 15 is every red-blooded American's favorite holiday, I thought I'd do a little research on Senator Obama's stance on taxes.
On the 'Economy' tab of his own website, Senator Obama's first reference to taxes is the need to cut taxes to America's middle class. This includes the creation of a "Making Work Pay" tax credit, a rebate which will eliminate taxes for 10 million Americans. Barack even wants to make revisions to the tax procedure so that most Americans will be able to file their taxes in 5 minutes or less. Such a time-saving initiative would surely be a welcome change for many Americans this time next year. On a more serious note, I think that Obama's proposed tax cuts are part (albeit not all) of what it will take to save the US from plummeting further into economic trouble, since the middle class makes up not only the majority of Americans, but also those that are getting the blunt end of the repression stick right now.
The website, ontheissues.org, provides a (reader-friendly!) point-by-point review of Obama's voting record on taxes, coupled with relevant quotes from his Senate career. Key points of Obama's actions on tax reform include:
- Companies that are willing to outsource jobs overseas should not continue to receive tax cuts from the fed, while offering tax incentives to businesses that keep who keep their employees native.
- Obama is in favor of repealing President Bush's tax cuts in order to allocate money for welfare programs, particularly the adoption of universal health care.
- He has repeatedly voted against repealing the death ('estate') tax, keeping with popular Democratic opinion in Congress.
- On the website Citizens for Tax Justice, Obama has earned a 100% rating on taxation issues, indicating that he is strongly in favor of progressive taxation. As of December of 2006, 190 members of Congress (~40%) received an 80-100% rating by ctj.org.
You can read all the exciting details on the Senator's tax voting record by
clicking right here.
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