Remember the good ol’ days? When John McCain used to occasionally say sensible things and break with his party when they embraced ridiculous policy proposals? Good times, good times.
For example, Republicans have been railing against the existence of the estate tax for years. It’s a foolish gambit for the GOP — they want to cut inheritance taxes for the very wealthy, costing the government billions of dollars in revenue, and they characterize this as a key populist goal.
McCain used to see through this nonsense.
“In his 1906 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a federal inheritance tax . Roosevelt explained: ‘The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.’ Additionally, in a 1907 speech he said: ‘Most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax. In my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.’ He noted, however, that such taxation should ‘be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.’
“I agree with President Roosevelt, and I remain opposed to full repeal of the estate tax.”
That is, until he became the Republican presidential nominee. As of this morning, McCain finds the estate tax offensive.
“Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books, and the first step to reform is to keep it predictable and keep it low. After a lifetime building up a business, and paying taxes on every dollar that business earns, that asset should not be subjected to a confiscatory tax.”
Why, it’s almost as if McCain were some kind of flip-flopper or something. Heaven forbid.
Now, to be fair, unlike some of his more shameless reversals, McCain’s estate-tax change of heart does not constitute a complete 180-degree turn. Even when he was trying to be reasonable, McCain was willing to cut the estate tax, but not eliminate it altogether.
That said, any fair analysis points to a rather dramatic turnaround on the issue. McCain now believes the estate tax, which he’d partially embraced before, is “one of the most unfair tax laws on the books,” despite never having criticized the law before. Seth Colter Walls explained:
While it’s impossible to know whether McCain’s avoidance of that cliched demagoguery masks a conflicted heart, the Congressional Record does offer a few tidbits that reveal a more nuanced view of the issue than he expressed today.
In fact, a quick review of the dozens upon dozens of Senate debates about a tax that affects the fewer than an estimated two percent of estates shows no evidence that the Arizona Republican ever viewed the tax as fundamentally unfair before today. As he himself stated in a June 8, 2006 speech from the Senate floor, McCain has “consistently voted against repealing this tax because of the impact it would have on the deficit, as well as the possible chilling affect it could have on charitable giving in this country.”
For that matter, McCain heard conservative arguments about the estate tax hurting small business owners and farmers, but rejected the points as unpersuasive and unsupported.
Yet, here we are, and Mr. Straight Talk no longer believes what he used to believe.
Back in February, the far-right Washington Times reported that McCain “refuses to pander” and won’t “pander for conservative support.” It was foolish at the time, but it looks increasingly silly as the campaign unfolds.