WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican White House candidate John McCain will promise on Tuesday to lower corporate tax rates if he wins the U.S. presidency and ease the tax burden on middle-class workers to help revive the faltering economy.
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McCain will pledge to act quickly to lower corporate taxes from "the second highest in the world to one on par with our trading partners to keep businesses and jobs in this country."
He will propose a law to allow companies to expense new equipment and technology in their first year.
He supports keeping capital gains taxes low, doubling a tax exemption for children, and phasing out the "alternative minimum tax" which he said would save some 25 million middle-class families up to $2,000 in a year.
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"As president, I will propose an alternative tax system. When this reform is enacted, all who wish to file under the current system could still do so," he will say.
"Everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction."
McCain criticizes Obama for wanting to increase dividend and capital gains taxes and aiming to raise the minimum wage and link it to an index.
The iffy:
But he also takes aim at top corporate executives with big salaries and excessive severance packages.
"Americans are right to be offended when the extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEOs ... bear no relation to the success of the company or the wishes of shareholders," he will say, adding that some of those chief executives helped bring on the country's housing crisis and market troubles.
"If I am elected president, I intend to see that wrongdoing of this kind is called to account by federal prosecutors. And under my reforms, all aspects of a CEO's pay, including any severance arrangements, must be approved by shareholders," he will say.
God knows as a shareholder in a few companies I would like some say on CEO pay, but it absolutely is not the governments job to tell companies who to compensate their executives.
This actually kind of reminds me of a book by John Dalmas called "The General's President" , which I read over in Korea while freezing my ass off on Pohang Pier for Team Spirit '87. Man I miss the Reagan years In it there has been a military coup and some guy from Minnesota who one of the Generals met on a plane one time or something is installed as President. One of the first things he does is install wage controls where all wages have to be approved by the Department of Justice. In Dalmas's book of course it works swimmingly, unfortunately when Nixon tried it in real life it didn't go so well.
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