BlogHer

A few weeks ago, at BlogHer in San Francisco , I sat in during a political debate between reps from the McCain and Obama camps. It was perhaps one of the best sessions at BlogHer – they tackled some of the issues that were on our collective minds.

I had lots of thoughts about the presentations – from choice of representation to level of discourse – but many of those don’t lend themselves to a blog entry about tax. So here’s the condensed version of my notes, focusing just on tax and economics…

You can read live blog entries about the sessions (as well as tweets, it was widely reported on twitter.com – you can find me at twitter.com/taxgirl)

McCain’s representative, Liz Mair, spoke first about the economy. McCain, she said, wants to grow the economy by keep taxes low. McCain also wants to make existing tax cuts permanent, as McCain feels that Bush’s tax cuts have spurred growth in “tough times.” It is, she says, nonsensical to think we can encourage growth by “taking money away from working families and small businesses.” She did not offer specifics as to the plan. Regarding Obama, she says, “You find a tax and he wants to raise it.”

Representative Allyson Schwartz, Obama’s representative (who, she noted, supported Clinton in the Democratic primary but is now 100% in support of Senator Obama) claimed, in response, that McCain’s tax policies would protect a very small percentage of American families, which are the wealthiest. She said that Obama will find revenue to replace that lost by his proposed tax cuts by eliminating loopholes and tax breaks for corporation and wealthy people.

McCain’s rep countered by saying that Obama’s budget introduces $600 billion in new spending, which is not fiscally responsible.

The next question for the candidates’ representatives involved small businesses. Specifically, the individual wanted to know how can Obama can keep small businesses from from failing. Rep Schwartz replied that Obama had a number of measures in place, including the elimination of capital gains for women owned small business; planned reduction of health care and energy costs. Specifically, she mentioned the elimination of the windfall profits tax for oil companies.

McCain would allow for health care choice and offer a tax credit to individuals for health care costs.

While my summary feels one-sided, an explanation is in order. The debate consisted a series of questions from the audience – as well as those submitted ahead of time via email – about everything from health care to FISA to information techonology to McCain’s military service. I have chosen to report only on the tax issues since that’s my area of interest. McCain’s representative did not spend a great deal of time talking about tax or the economy. In contrast, a central theme of almost every question that Rep. Schwartz answered focused on the economy and tax.

I have since asked both political candidates to provide me with some more details about their tax platforms – as well as answer some questions. I’ll let you know what they say!

(ed note: In case you get the feed and came back to the post to leave a comment, I inadvertently referred to Rep Schwartz as Sen Schwartz; that has been corrected)

(c) taxgirl, 2008

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