Do you want Obama to let the Bush Tax Cuts expire?

No I completely agree with you... while Bush is not a good president Obama's inexperience shows here. He will cripple the economy because:

1) The rich will pull their money from the stock market and crash it because of capital gains tax increases

2) We will suffer enormously as a society because the tax increase will make our paychecks smaller

3) He is just going to spend that money on Welfare which enables the poor to stay poor and not go work (a very elitist thing to do. Keep the poor, poor)

4) He is going to destabilize the dollar severely as if Bush hasn't screwed it up enough.

I am going to have to vote for McCain unfortunately because I have no other choice. Obama is way way to radical with his views period.

I might vote for Bob Barr the libertarian but then my vote wont count for nothing.

So I guess it is McCain.

Yes. Happens all the time. Increase taxes and people spend less. The Democrats don't seem to grasp that or simply want that guaranteed cash. They certainly don't care about how I feel when I can barely pay my taxes in NY State. BTW: the top 5% means anyone over 145K, not 250K. I wish the media would question this. They also pay most of the Federal budget NOW, but for some reason everyone is fine with "other" people paying the bill. Never mind how much effort goes into making 145K+. Don't forget he plans to increase capital gains taxes and payroll taxes (over 250K). Let's do the math on that one: Payroll tax for the self employed is 13.5% if you make $1 Million (I wish), you will have to pay an additional $101,250 in tax. Don't forget the $400,000K these folks already pay (Liberals love to ignore net income). That's half just for federal. State is 7%, so another35-50K, and property taxes are 30-40K for these folks. Nice living, but holy cow. There you have it. Socialism. Watch how these people move their money off shore. That should create jobs. Edit: of course Obama's plan will bring in more revenue on paper! These people pay all the taxes. The bottom 50% in this country pay 3% of the federal budget. Those analyses don't account for economic activity.

I don't want to sound like I'm calling you a liar, but I'd like to see where you got those figures. I am in one of those categories and I didn't see anything like a 20% tax decrease. Did you? I wonder how these figures are calculated. I think there is some 'creative accounting' involved.

The Bush tax cuts are very heavily skewed towards the rich. Even if they are a good idea, the way Republicans talk about them is bogus.

For instance, when talking about the inheritance tax cut, they are always talking about people who are middle class, own family farms or family businesses that have become worth 3 or 4 million dollars, and why should they have to pay tax just because Uncle Henry died and left it to them? So Democrats have said "Okay, let's raise the limit to $50 million." Republicans won't go for it.

I'm not even blaming the Republicans here, the Democrats have bad ideas too. EVERY idea to reform taxes is sold as something that will lower -everyone's- taxes but it should be scrutinized for who it helps and who it doesn't.

Bush's tax cuts have contributed to the biggest deficits in history, and that's not even counting the cost of the Iraq War. We are so far in debt that our currency is losing its value. If Bush's tax cuts were supposed to reduce the deficit, they have failed spectacularly. In fact the only reason they were made temporary to begin with was so the GAO could lie about their eventual cost.

Obama's tax increase won't cut in until families of 200k. He also has zero capital gains for small business and those making 50k or less (i think), so in that sense he goes further than Bush.

Your numbers are not right. Families making 10,000 don't pay federal income tax, which is the taxes we are talking about.

Yes, he should let them expire. But he won't - he has said he will only repeal the tax cuts on people making over 250K or so.

The reason he should is that we need fiscal discipline. High debt=weak dollar=high oil prices right now, and we are screwing over future generations. We had perfectly good growth in the 1990s with those higher tax rates - what do you know, maybe tax cuts are not the only source of economic growth after all?

But he won't because democrats can never run on the policies that would be best for the country. They always have to pander to the "middle-class" however that is defined with a tax cut, and draw distinctions with Republicans only on the issue of tax cuts for the very rich. So I honestly believe Obama will not do anything to increase taxes on people making less than 100K. Capital gains taxes will not affect the vast majority of those people. The top 10% (over 150K income) hold over 88% of the stock in this country.

We are nearing economic crisis and the last thing we need is for struggling families to lose $3000-$4000 a year and even more if they depend on Capital Gains for extra income.

The Bush tax cuts actually have the rich shouldering more of the taxes.

The "tax cuts for the rich" crap is all propaganda

Personally, I don't see much of a difference in my taxes from one President to the next. What I have seen is that my grocery bill, my utility bill, my transportation, and anything not related to the Chinese GDP, have all risen. I'm in a much worse position than I was 8 years ago.

The other aspect to taxes is that they pay for the things our government does. If we are going to have trillion dollar wars, they have to be paid for. Either we borrow the money from investors and pay interest that rightly should go towards legitimate operating costs or we try to pay for what we do. We shouldn't be spending our kids into the grave to support an unnecessary war or federal mismanagement.

Your numbers do not reflect the actual tax rates. Just the decrease that Bush put in. I'm all for lower taxes. I am also for every person to pay the exact percentage of tax with no loop holes. That would be fair. I think that this should apply to all profits after your business expenses. I would like to see a different tax structure than the existing one. If that meens that Bushes needs to expire then so be it.

if You want to KILL the economy..

Of the 42.5 million tax returns that pay no income taxes, 52.9 percent received some form of a refundable credit – either the EITC or the child tax credit. In 2004, Uncle Sam paid out about $33 billion in “refundable” checks to the families and single individuals who qualified for the Earned Income Credit and another $9 billion to families who were eligible for the child credit.

Broadly speaking, the 42.5 million zero-tax filers are: low-income, young, female-headed households, part-time workers, and beneficiaries of the $1,000 per-child tax credit or the Earned Income Credit.

Despite the charges of critics that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 favored the “rich,” these cuts actually reduced the tax burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers and shifted the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers. Tax Foundation economists estimate that for tax year 2004, a record 42.5 million Americans who filed a tax return (one-third of the 131 million returns filed last year) had no tax liability after they took advantage of their credits and deductions. Millions more paid next to nothing.

Source-Taxfoundation.org.............FACT

Well, who wants to pay more in taxes? However, the sad fact is taxes are going up. With the defecit where it is, war costs, and a weakening dollar there is no choice. Get used to it. The question is how much they'll go up. If you don't mind paying more for extensive social programs vote Obama, if you want to pay as little as possible and keep government out of it vote McCain.