McCain wants to cut gas tax temporarily

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) on Tuesday proposed a variety of tax cuts, including a temporary elimination of the 18.4-cent federal gas tax, as part of his platform to boost the ailing economy.

On Tax Day, McCain also said he would permanently repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the exemption for each dependent to $7,000 and reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25.

{mosads}“High tax rates are driving many businesses and jobs overseas — and, of course, our foreign competitors wouldn’t mind if we kept it that way,” McCain said in a speech in Pittsburgh. “But if I am elected president, we’re going to get rid of that drag on growth and job creation, and help American workers compete with any company in the world.”

The senator also vowed that he would introduce an alternative tax system and make it more difficult for Congress to increase taxes.

“When this reform is enacted, all who wish to file under the current system could still do so,” he said. “And everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction.”

McCain strongly criticized his Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), saying that, under their “various tax plans, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise — seniors, parents, small-business owners and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market.”

The Arizona Republican said those tax hikes are “the fine print under the slogan of ‘hope’: They’re going to raise your taxes by thousands of dollars per year — and they have the audacity to hope you don’t mind.”

McCain also vowed to cut spending, including a one-year freeze of discretionary government spending outside of military and veterans’ programs.

“ ‘Discretionary spending’ is a term people throw around a lot in Washington, while actual discretion is seldom exercised,” he stated. “Instead, every program comes with a built-in assumption that it should go on forever, and its budget increase forever. My administration will change that way of thinking.”

Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, said in a speech to the Building Trades National Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., “John McCain seems to think the Bush years have been pretty good because he’s offering more of the same.

“Somewhere along the way to the Republican nomination, I guess he figured that he had to stop speaking his mind and start toeing the line,” Obama told his audience, noting that McCain used to oppose making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

“I don’t think America can afford four more years of the failed Bush policies, and that's what he’s offering,” Obama stated.