" . . . It's worth checking out the DNC site where the Dems proudly note that Gore is seeking to deliver almost $10,000 per year in tax and spending breaks to families making $35,000 per year, while criticizing Bush for only delivering $2500."
-Most of Gore's tax cuts are conditional. Why should -you have to do something the Gov wants you to do to -get a tax cut, in light of $260 billion surpluses. -Bush's are much less so, albeit to the wrong people.
"Conditional tax cuts" is another word for government spending. All government spending is conditional- ie. it tells you we are giving you health care coverage rather than letting you spend the same money on a big screen television. What a bizarro Republican line you want to take Max to keep calling Gore's spending conservative.
But let's look at the $10,000 Gore projects for this family with two small children. This family is decribed this way: "A couple from Michigan has two children ages 2 and 4. The husband earns $24,700 as a short-order cook. The wife works full-time at the corner supermarket and earns the minimum wage. They have two children, a 2 year old in childcare and a 4 year old who has just started preschool. They are saving $10 every week for a down payment on a home."
Marriage Penalty Relief $225 Child / Childcare Tax Credit $600 Tax Credit for Savings $500 EITC Expansion $303 Minimum Wage Increase $2,000 Expanding Health Coverage $3,400 Qualified Universal Pre-School $2,400
Most of the $10,000 in new federal spending Gore projects is not even for tax cuts in any way, but is rather for health care spending and the expansion of federal spending for universal pre-school, with a large minimum wage kicker.
Wanting "more" is always a good position for progressives to demand, but it seems quite strange to call conservative a set of programs that would increase federal resources going to this family at a rate 50% above their present income. You are so fixated on the hypothetical anti-Keynesianism of his nominal budgeting projections that you seem to ignore the real projections of substantive expansions of spending by the government.
It is reasonable to argue whether the plan will be implemented, but on its face, this seems like a quite progressive spending plan, especially since the benefits are skewed proportionately towards lower-income families, a radical difference from Bush's plan which does deliver nearly all the benefits to the richest folks.
-- Nathan Newman