Obama's tax plan

NY Post Editorial:

Last week's passage of the rescue plan still leaves the economy as Issue One in 2008 - and this could give John McCain an electoral opportunity.

He needs to seize it.

The fact is Barack Obama's ties to the far left - to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, radical community groups and rapacious unions - are an objective threat to the nation's already wobbly economy.

McCain should say so - in detail and with vigor. He needs to tell the truth about Obama, his allies and their economically perilous plans.

* Take Pelosi. She already put politics ahead of economic stability with her venomous blame-the-GOP lecture that doomed the first vote on the rescue plan.

McCain should remind the world.

* Or take Obama's ties to radical "community" groups like ACORN, which pushed lenders to make bad loans, helping to spark the current crisis.

It's a natural for the GOP contender.

* Then there's Big Labor. It's betting millions on Obama - because he backs Labor's dream of scrapping the secret ballot for votes on unionizing. It's called the "card check" plan - and it empowers unions to coerce workers into unionizing.

What a way to boost membership. (And to free up time and cash to promote protectionism and undermine free trade.)

McCain can blast it as antidemocratic.

* Next, there's the class-warfare Left and Obama's stiff tax hikes, estimated at some $1 trillion-plus over 10 years.

Yes, he claims those making below $250,000 won't be hit. But he's already voted to hike taxes on folks making just $42,000 - and he plans to boost levies on Social Security, capital gains, dividends, corporate income, oil, coal, natural gas . . . and so on and so forth.

Maybe Obama hasn't seen the news: Financial firms - many in New York - are drowning. How will they survive his tax hikes? How will the middle class?

And how will the wealthy - who likewise reside here disproportionately and who'll be smacked but good - respond?

Goodbye, jobs and investment.

...

All those Democrats chortling over the losses on Wall Street and the failure of many of its executives should consider how many of them will no longer be making in excess of $250,000 a year so they will not be able to fund Obama's ambitious expenditures, not to mention his tax credits to non tax payers.

With his other economic policies there will be fewer lower paying jobs too.