McCain open to tax increases for wealthy

July 14, 1:22 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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It's getting hard to figure out what John McCain thinks about tax policy.  Initially against the Bush tax cuts favoring the wealthy, then for extending the tax cuts, and now this from McCain's campaign advisor Carly Fiorina:

In an interview, Carly Fiorina, a top adviser, explains that any tax increases on “middle- and working-class” Americans are off limits. She says if a bipartisan coalition is “creative enough” to fashion tax increases on wealthier Americans, that may prove palatable. (Link)

Ms. Fiorina talks often about being a business person and understanding "the numbers".  This sounds like even she is now questioning the dubious McCain economic plan.

On a related note, the McCain campaign's senior economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, providedMcCain's plan to balance the federal budget by 2013 to The Washington Post editorial board.  After a review of the proposal, the Post was not impressed:

Senator John McCain says that President McCain would balance the federal budget by 2013. The plan is not credible.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $443 billion in 2013 if President Bush's tax cuts are extended, as Mr. McCain wants, and the alternative minimum tax is merely patched to make certain it does not hit growing numbers of taxpayers. But Mr. McCain is proposing far more tax cuts. The only way he avoids having them add hundreds of billions more to the deficit in 2013 is by phasing them in and adding other caveats. Mr. McCain says on the campaign trail that he would repeal, rather than merely adjust, the alternative minimum tax, slash the corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, to 25 percent, and double the exemption for dependents. It turns out that none of that would be fully implemented by the end of the first McCain term. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates the extra cost of the scaled-back plan at $47 billion in 2013, bringing the deficit to a daunting $490 billion.