The Washington Post as a §527 Committee

In an A4 article in the Post, McCain Camp Distorts Obama's Tax Policies, Exaggerates Their Adverse Impact, the Washington paper continues its shilling for democrat candidates. It purports to "analyze" the tax proposals of Senator Obama and review the criticisms offered by Senator McCain. He are two key paragraphs from the story to show the balanced coverage (with annotations) and (added emphasis from the original article).

The statement that Obama would "enact" the largest tax increase since World War II is also overblown. Bush's cuts will expire automatically at the end of 2010, so it is hardly a question of "enacting" a new tax increase. Pardon me but if rates are raised (from one day to the next) as is currently projected in the sunsets in the existing policy, isn't that a tax increase? According to Obama economics adviser Jason Furman, the revenue raised from letting the tax cuts expire would be returned to middle- and lower-income taxpayers in the form of tax credits to pay for health insurance, so the overall effect would be revenue-neutral. At least in the static revenue models that pass for analysis in Washington.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers pointed to an analysis by the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check that found that the gross tax increase would amount to $103.3 billion in 2011, the largest single-year tax increase since World War II. The Annenberg study pointed out, however, that "most economists" prefer to measure tax changes as a percentage of gross national product, in which case it would be the fifth-largest increase since 1943. When the Post has analyzed the Bush tax cuts they have frequently argued that they were "the largest in history" using the raw numbers. Obviously, the better analysis is of GDP, but were the Post to do that, the Bush Tax "Cuts" have actually raised taxes a bit. As a pecentage of GDP, just between 2003 and 2006, the take has increased. According to a letter to Senator Kent Conrad from the Congressional Budget Office,personal income tax collections went up in that short time by a nominal amount of about $250 billion, but as a percentage of GDP increased from 7.3% to 8%. Total revenues went from 16.5% to 18.4%. I have not seen the Post congratulating the Bush administration for their tax increases. Over the last several decades taxes as a percentage of GDP have fluctuated from mid-16% to just under 19%. The real question here about tax policy should be the distribution of burden and the underlying structure.