Both John McCain and Mitt Romney are calling for Bush’s tax cuts to be made permanent. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010.

Amazingly, according to this article, “Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation indicate that the cost of the tax-cut provisions the Tax Policy Center has analyzed would be $3.7 trillion over the 2009-2018 period”

More amazing is how this towering pile of trillions of dollars is suppose to be divided — if McCain and Romney get their way. According to The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center:

• The top 1 percent of households (currently those with incomes over $450,000) will receive more than $1.1 trillion in tax cuts over the next ten years, if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are extended and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax is continued.
• By 2010, the tax cuts will average more than $60,000 a year for households in the top 1 percent — and more than $150,000 a year for households with incomes above $1 million.
• The cost of the tax cuts (when fully in effect) for people with incomes over $1 million will exceed the total amount the federal government devotes to K-12 and vocational education, and it will exceed what the federal government spends on hospital and other medical care for veterans.
• The annual cost of the tax cuts for those with incomes over $1 million also will exceed the total savings in each of the next five years from the cuts the President’s budget proposes in an array of domestic non-entitlement programs, including education, health research, environmental programs, and others.

From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “THE SKEWED BENEFITS OF THE TAX CUTS”, by aviva aron-dine

John McCann seems to be gaining ground in the Republican primary race, but eventually, I believe, his comments about Iraq will torpedo his candidacy. Eventually, I believe, Republican primary voters will reject McCain.

McCain says that even at the time — March, 2003 — if he had known that Iraq had no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, he still would have advocated and supported a U.S. invasion of Iraq in order to topple Saddam Hussain. This is a pretty amazing position which reveals that McCain, rather than seeing the use of military force as the last possible alternative, sees the use of military force as a reasonable means to advance U.S. policy.

I think the key focus for many voters — including many Republican voters — in their evaluation of a presidential candidate, is the candidate’s attitude about war, and the candidate’s judgment about what constitutes proper uses of U.S. military force.

I just can’t bring myself to think that Republican primary voters will choose a presidential candidate with the views and attitudes about war and military force that McCain has clearly and uncompromisingly advanced.