The Triangle

Issue date: 10/31/08 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: MCT

It doesn't take a top economist to figure out that the nation's current economy is in trouble. Fiscal irresponsibility and excessive government spending in the last eight years have destroyed the surplus and economic growth this country saw during the Clinton administration. But as we have heard in the recent media buzz around this historic election, the question is no longer are we better off than eight years ago - but rather, will we be in a better economic situation looking four years into the future?
This question is extremely relevant for college students because the economy absolutely plays a large part in the availability of capital and jobs when graduation finally rolls around. The burden of national debt weighs heavily on our shoulders as the money coming from our wages goes towards the ever increasing interest payments for the holders of government securities instead of where it needs to go - finding new energy sources, improving education and infrastructure and providing universal health care. Do we really want to see stagnant wages and record levels of national debt that the country has not seen since 1955?
The answer is no, and the solution is Barack Obama. Sen. Obama's economic plan focuses on fiscal responsibility in Washington, fair tax policies, job creation and will ultimately provide working class families with tax cuts three times the size of Sen. McCain's, reducing tax revenues to the 18 percent of the gross domestic product levels that prevailed during the Reagan administration.
The first step is to repeal the tax cuts implemented by the Bush administration for families making over $250,000 that are set to expire in 2009. These tax cuts benefit the wealthiest class in the U.S. more than anyone else: the top income bracket of people earning an average of $1.25 million per year experienced tax rate cuts twice as deep as the middle class earners, mainly because they are the most affected by President Bush's tax cut rates on investment income and estate taxes. According to a January 2007 New York Times article, these initiatives, if extended in 2010 (as McCain plans), would cost the Treasury $1 trillion. If elected, Obama plans on repealing these tax cuts, reinstating the 1990 marginal income tax rates (36 percent and 39.6 percent) and re-establishing the tax rates on capital gains and dividend income to 20 percent for families making over $250,000 a year. All other tax brackets will remain the same and essentially no economic class will see a rise in their taxes from what they were paying in the 1990s, a time with high-income growth rates and when 23 million jobs were created.

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